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I can’t believe that just happened

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Your most memorable experience in World of Warcraft… GO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When /G goes silent

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

<You are not in a guild.>

Wait. What?

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

“What happened?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once bitten, twice shy.

#1ReasonWhy

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Monday, November 26th, a Twitter hashtag popped up on my feed. I normally ignore hashtags, but this one was suddenly being spammed by 4-5 people I follow, all of whom were game developers I followed. Even more noticeable, all were women. I discovered that someone, while having a conversation about sexism in the board game (pen and paper?) industry had started the hashtag as a way of connecting the various discussions she was having. Someone saw that she was giving reasons why it sucked to work in her male dominated field. The someone is a game developer, and as a female, could relate. So she started throwing her reasons into the ring as well.

36 hours later, there have been THOUSANDS of tweets, numerous blog posts, even a dozen or so game industry news posts, and yet another mentors list started up. All focused on ripping off the bandaid that has been precariously placed over the festering wound that is sexism in the video game industry.

I must say, I leapt RIGHT into it. Didn’t stop to think, and didn’t stop to worry, I jumped right in and shouted along with the rest. It never occurred to me that I might get in trouble with my work, despite the fact that it is exceptionally easy to figure out where and who I work for, mostly because, everything I would tweet about, doesn’t happen at my current job. Some women kept silent because the things they would say DO still happen at their jobs.

Really early in the discussion, a friend of mine, (white male developer) responded that it seemed like things were blown out of proportion and those sexist things didn’t happen anymore. Three hours later, he was tweeting that he was so sorry he had no idea, because the flood of women tweeting had grown so quickly and there were so many stories. Not stories of “heard from a friend” but each one a personal tale of things that have happened. Not ancient history, but RECENT history. GDC 2012 recent. This fall recent.

I wanted to recount some of my tweets here and then talk about what this all meant to me.

#1Reasonwhy

  • is that at companies you might have to sign a paper saying you won’t sue for Sexual Harassment, because their games are “mature”.
  • Because when you say something is inappropriate you are told you are being “too sensitive”.
  • because when a panel at PAX is about women in games, it’s about girlfriends who play games, not women making them.
  • because if I do an interview about being a game designer, everyone talks about how I look, instead of what I said.
  • is because at some companies, you have to worry about co-workers becoming overly attached, and getting fired because of it.
  • because old school devs/publishers still believe “shrink it and pink it” is how you target women.
  • because if I say something should be removed from a game because it’s offensive, I have to defend my position.
  • because during interviews it’s implied I will leave when I have kids.
  • is because parents expect boys to “goof off” playing games, but girls should do more “important” things like learn to cook.
  • I had a guy at GDC ask me if I was lost.
  • because when I play games, and guys find out I am a girl, they assume I am a lying guy, or just there for attention.
  • because when I wanted to play D&D as a kid, I was “weird”. (I did anyway.)
  • because when I say I am a gamer, people tell me “Farmville” doesn’t count. (I then link my WoW armory.)
  • is because if I bring up gender and sexism, I am assumed to be a man hater.
  • is because of things like the Frag Dolls, where guys only want women gamers included if they are “hot”. And that’s accepted.
  • because I once had an artist bait me by asking how he was supposed to make a character female without boobs or a bow.

At the time (really early in the trend) I thought I was listing off terrible things that people would completely disbelieve. Over the course of the night, I learned that my experiences, while bad, are no where NEAR the terrible some women have had to deal with. Not only that, but I was in such numerous company, that my tweets were lost in the sea of tweets that were nearly identical.

I often point to the Guildhall as the place that gave me all the tools to do what I needed in the video game industry and taught me what I needed to know to succeed. That is no less true when talking about sexism and how I should expect to be treated in the game industry.

While at the Guildhall, we had to work on team projects. During one such project the TortoiseSVN servers went out (our source control) and we had to pass the “latest” version of the game around on a thumb drive. One of the programmers offered up his thumb drive as it was big enough. When I popped the drive into my computer to grab the latest version, I discovered why guys *hate* using icons on Windows folders. There right next to our game file was a picture of a woman in a sexual situation. Oh yeah. That’s *exactly* what I wanted to see sitting in a ROOM FULL OF GUYS. Later, on this same project, a programmer put in placeholder art. Not that abnormal. The art was of a young (minor) girl pulling down her underwear with her butt towards the camera. All the guys on the team thought it was hilarious. Me, not so much. I ignored it, until I realized that it got turned in for a MILESTONE that way. WTH? Here was something, in a GRADUATE SCHOOL setting, that was going to have MY NAME on it, that effectively had a picture bordering on child porn! I was furious. So I went to the professor in charge of our team. Care to guess what happened? Absolutely nothing. I was told I was being too sensitive and that I better get used to it, because this was going to happen in the industry. This would lead to the LIST. The LIST is a list of guys in the industry I categorically refuse to work with. I would rather leave and make indie games as a starving artist than work with these men. (To be fair, a woman could be added to the LIST, but it hasn’t happened yet.)

A few terms later, I had my second experience with sexism at the Guildhall. The Guildhall at the time was a super intense program. You didn’t have time for an outside life, so you got pretty close to all your classmates. (Yep, I even ended up dating and marrying one of them.) One weekend we had a party, and I wore a tank top. Apparently, it was a bit tight. I had lost alot of weight at the Guildhall, so I was pretty happy with the way I looked and finally felt confidant enough to wear something that wasn’t two sizes too big. I later find out from a friend that one of the other guys at the school walked into my team’s room the next week and proceeded to start making comments about my shirt. He said things to the effect of that I “clearly wasn’t getting satisfied” and if I needed any help he was “more than willing to step up”. Lucky for me, one of the guys on the team (a sportsman type so he was quite large compared to all the other guys) stepped up and threw him out. (To this day, one of my favorite people.) Add another guy to the LIST.

When I left the Guildhall I started trying to get interviews everywhere. One of the first things I was told was “Oh it’s great, you’re a girl! You will get interviews JUST because they never see girls.” I really didn’t like the implication. Even further it was insinuated that I would likely get job offers *just* because I was female. I didn’t want job offers because I was female. I wanted job offers because I was AWESOME.

Here are some other things that happened, vagued up and out of chronological order. I got an email asking me about doing an interview one time, and the person on the other end thought it would be great to point out it had to be specially scheduled because they couldn’t take me to the normal interview place, a strip club. While on the subject of strip clubs, at GDC one year, I was standing in a group of people. We were all invited to an after party (omg awesome!) and then the person doing the inviting, stopped, looked at me, frowned and made a point of UN-inviting me. “You won’t like it, there will be strippers there.” (Ugh.)

As a female, playing and making games, guys tend to latch on. They have all had experiences with girlfriends who didn’t get gaming or even things like playing WoW. I already do. This makes it very easy for them to relate to me without having to leave their comfort zone. I expected to have guys ask me out or hit on me. What I didn’t expect was employers telling me to “be careful” in how I turn them down. One lead even went so far as to indicate that if I offended any of his guys when I turned them down, I would likely need to “update my resume”. I have had to learn to always bring up my husband in the first interaction at interviews and when meeting new people.

Oh interviews… what a tangled mess. Legally potential employers are not allowed to ask your marital status, age, or child plans. I have had an interview where the guy interviewing me asked if I had any questions about the company’s maternity policy at the end of the interview. When I indicated that I was not really worried about it, he smiled, laughed and said “Oh good. We don’t like hiring women about to become moms, they never come back from maternity leave.” Well, at least I know how you feel. I have interviewers who will make sure to call out during the interview that they work on “mature” games and that means I might see pictures of naked women or things that are “nsfw” and I need to be okay with that otherwise I can just leave now. One interviewer responded with relief when he found out I was married, as it meant I was “unlikely” to cause problems on the team.

Once you get past interviews, there are the inevitable HR interviews where you get to hear such lovely things as “What counts as harassment”, “How to deal with guys who ask you out”, and the ever lovely “You work in the game industry huh? That’s pretty brave. I guess you are used to this now.” Like the fact that it is prevalent makes it okay. Like because I knew it was like this when I got in, that means I just have to deal with it.

I also want to really point out, companies are not afraid of screwing women over as much as men. There is a weird double standard. I got paid HALF of what my male counter part did at a studio once. Why? Because I was hired on a temp basis, then when I wasn’t temp anymore, they didn’t have the money to pay me what I deserved. Lovely. I was also once informed, to my face, that a position I was promised, wasn’t being offered to me, because they needed it to offer to a guy they were trying to recruit. They had to offer him that position and not mine, because “he had a family to support” and needed a full time gig. Apparently I didn’t. Like I didn’t have student loans or rent to pay.

On the subject of looks… I am not “hot”. I am a overweight by at least 20 lbs. But I do have red hair (point in my favor), though I always wear t-shirts and blue jeans. Specifically MENS t-shirts. Why? Because when I branched out and wore baby doll shirts and fitted t-shirts, I got hit on, told I was being inappropriate, and actually had guys say, to my face, things about my breast size. Yay. Oh and what’s on the shirt matters too. I wore a Penny Arcade shirt that says “I’d tap that.” with a Magic the Gathering tap symbol on it. I was pulled aside, talked to about my “inappropriateness” and forced to change. All the while guys were in the office, ON THE SAME DAY wearing “Rogues do it from behind” and “How big is your sack?” complete with WoW bags on it, t-shirts. I did an interview about breaking into games, what a designer does, and what it’s like being a girl in games. It was put on YouTube. Every female commentor talked about my stories and asked questions. Every male commentor talked about my looks and the face that I was wearing a Team Fortress 2 shirt. They were not complementary on my looks, unless they liked redhair, then they were WILDLY sexual and inappropriate. I wore out YouTube’s report button that day.

The worst part about the whole looks thing is that it leads to situations where, I as a woman, am uncomfortable looking at women who have been put on display for the sole purpose of sex appeal. Ie – Booth Babes. Penny Arcade does alot of things wrong, but this one, this one they got RIGHT. But if I complain about the poor woman shoved into the skin tight latex outfit, I am told I am just “jealous” because I am ugly. Yeah that’s it. It has nothing to do at all with the fact that I am here to work, not have sex.

Oh and don’t even get me started on Fat, Ugly, or Slutty. That’s a whole other animal in gamer culture that needs to be exorcised and banished.

One year at PAX they had the Frag Dolls on a panel talking about Women in Games. I took it to be a “women making games” which yeah, my bad, but even a “women playing games” would have been better than it turning into the Frag Dolls preening on stage in skimpy outfits, talking about how they got paid to learn to play the games they play, and how they love beating guys. Oy vey. So much wrong I couldn’t even sit through it. I wouldn’t care about the skimpy outfits if there had even been one doll who was over 130lbs. Or if the implication that the majority of them were hired THEN trained to play video games. Or if I hadn’t realized that the point wasn’t to appeal to women who played games but rather to appeal to MEN who played games by creating a false image of super hot gamer girls who just want to find a nice nerdy guy to play games with. To this day I can’t hear or see them without feeling my stomach churn.

When talking games with guys, it gets really offensive. And sadly, they have NO IDEA. I have a Nintendo bag I use as a purse. I have had male gamers ask me, while POINTING AT IT “Oh, do you play video games?” No, I just like the yellow stars… WTH?!? Or when I go into a new Gamestop or my local one gets a new employee, and I walk in, the guys working there always flock to me, and ask if I need help. When I say no, they hover. Then comment on everything I look at. (Although, I must admit to a sense of great pleasure when these unknowing men find out I make games, and the looks on their faces… it’s priceless.) Fortunately I have managed to break a few Gamestop employees of this habit by informing them that not only do I know games, but I make them as well. They tend to remember that.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I talk to a guy about playing games and they automatically assume I mean Farmville or Bejeweled. (Although, let’s be fair, some of those Farmville players are HARDCORE.) I roll my eyes and wait for the conversation to get interesting before pointing out that yeah, I played x, y, and z games. I beat the first two and hated the third. Oh, why yes, I DO play WoW. What level is my character? haha, silly boy… I have ONE OF EACH CLASS AT 85!* (*except warriors, and she is 80 because… god they are boring to play.) Not only that I am top DPS and occasionally heal in my raiding guild. (Again, the faces are PRICELESS.) I have video games from the PS1 era. I beat Suikoden WITH ALL THE STARS. Legend of Zelda – Check. Ocarina of Time? – Check. Baldur’s Gate? KotoR? Morrowind? Castlevania? Eternal Darkness? Heroes of Might and Magic? All check. (Oh and I could go ON.) Don’t compare gaming pedigrees with me. I got sent home with a note from school because I insisted Xyzzy was a word thanks to Zork. My FIRST MEMORY is of the end of King’s Quest 2. Oh and here’s a comic, that really illustrates this point.

Really oddly, some guys in the game industry seem to get really defensive over NOTHING. I was once asked which of 4 female characters I liked. I assumed that the guy doing the asking really wanted my opinion, and asked because we were attempting to target children aged 10-12 of both sexes. I looked at the four character designs, admitted that they were all pretty good, but this one, this one was the best. I pointed the one out. The girl in the drawing was standing up straight, with her shoulders squared, in a very heroic stance, and appeared to be about 12. Her hair was long, and in a ponytail. She looked like a strong interesting girl. Boom. The artist pointed at another one and said it was his favorite. The character was quite a bit younger appearing, around 7 or so. She had her finger in her mouth, her head tucked shyly, one foot turned with her toes dug into the ground, and pig tails, with big ass bows. She was looking coyly up at the viewer, with her body turned slightly to the side. It was by far the worst of the 4 sketches. I pointed out the character was too young, and the bows were a big turn off (not even mentioning the annoyance of her super shy stance). He actually said to me that he knew better and he knew girls loved bows. It took ALL MY STRENGTH not to point out that ONE of us HAD BEEN a 12 year old girl (and actually much more recently), MAYBE we should listen to her input. It was at this point I realized, he didn’t want my input. He wanted to needle me. He wanted to “push that button” and see how I would react. Not even.

Gamers also tend to assume that “feminist” is a bad word. Feminists hate men. I am a feminist. I don’t hate men. In fact, I know a metric TON of wonderful, intelligent, fascinating, and amazing gamers who are men. I married one of them. What I want, isn’t games made for women only, that’s just as bad as games made for men only! I want GOOD GAMES that do not alienate me as a woman and player. That’s it. That’s all I want. I want my opinions and input listened to when working on a team. I don’t want to be ignored because I am a girl. I don’t want my ideas invalidated because I am not the target audience. I don’t want to have to play a male.

The more I read the twitter posts, the sicker I felt. Also, let me just make one really important statement.

IF ANYONE TOUCHES YOU INAPPROPRIATELY CALL THE COPS. DO NOT TAKE IT. CALL THE COPS IMMEDIATELY. Okay? Good.

Really early, while still at the Guildhall, I got to meet Brenda Braithwaite. (Now Brenda Romero.) I have followed her work, mostly because, HEY LADY DESIGNER, there aren’t many of them and I wanted to learn from her. I couldn’t wait to see her tweets and she did not disappoint. The one I was really waiting for was this. It is brought up all the time that women aren’t very visible in the industry. NOPE. AND THEY AREN’T GOING TO BE UNTIL YOU STOP REFERRING TO THEM ONLY IN RELATION TO THEIR HUSBANDS. No offense to Romero, but of the two, she has the better portfolio. Why is it a woman with DECADES of experience is so instantly linked to a guy that she just recently (this year) married? Should I expect this? I married a programmer. Hell, he even has a twin brother who is also a game programmer. There are Pittmans ALL over the place in the industry. Should I expect to always be linked to them? Even though it’s arguable that my most popular game has done better than my husband’s most popular game?

I began to feel really really lucky. Yeah, I have had some bad experiences, but I wasn’t afraid to talk about them, like some women. I have a LIST of guys I will never work with, but I haven’t had to leave a position yet. And my current job, in 2 years I have had ONE moment that could even make it into this conversation and it was a perfect example of how things should go. There was a line in the dialog that really smacked of casual sexism. I bought it up with the writer that it needed to be removed. It was. Bam. Later, talking to someone about how nice it was, they were confused as to why the line needed to be removed. “But, it’s being complementary?” As if boiling down a woman’s value to a numerical value was okay, as long as the number was high. Once I made that statement, the awareness washed over his face, he looked a bit shamed, and that was the end of it. In one moment, I spoke up, and I know for a fact, I made my game better. This seems like a good time to say, hey guys I have worked with that don’t cause all this… thanks. Thanks for accepting when I say something isn’t cool, you stop. When I say something needs to be cut or adjust to keep from alienating women, you accept that I might be right and we work together to adjust. Thanks for 90% of the time making it a non-issue. (Does anyone else find it ironic that my most positive experience in the Industry is at an Activision studio? Activision gets alot of wildly undeserved crap. I love working for them and I would recommend them as an employer to anyone. Class A company, all around.) Thanks to my lead, for when I told him I was pregnant, and expecting right before we were supposed to ship, his only response was “Oh that’s great! Congratulations! (I will admit, I didn’t expect that. My maternity leave went so smoothly. I had such fears and worried about it. But not only did my company completely rock through my pregnancy in supporting me, but also made my transition back so seamless it was surreal.)

As a side note, I wonder how many other women have noticed that the presence of a woman on the team tends to reign in a large amount of this without even trying? I heard about a studio’s culture before starting, then once I did, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. A lead actually made the comment that it seemed like some of the guys were too embarrassed to make their inappropriate suggestions and comments when I was there. My existence cleaned up the locker room.

The whole thread of tweets started to get really depressing. So many women, with so many of the same issues and problems. Then so many men, both non-empathetic and trolls, showing up to make comments or attacks. I finally started having to block people on Twitter. There were good tweets too. Good things came from this. Awareness, another mentor list, and other hashtags that detail all the awesome things in the industry. But at the end of the say, even when we got gaming press, we also got tons of people who were simply unable to understand WHY this was such a big issue. “The majority of gamers are men, so all games should be for men.” “Why don’t you just go make your own games?” “Why not just get another job?” “I have never seen it.” I can’t even respond to these, because I know, regardless of how logical or founded my argument is, they are looking at it through their male lens, from a place of privilege. Unless they take the time to try to understand what it is like in my spot, my shoes, my body, they will never understand. Thank god for all the male game developers I know who took that time. Who made the effort to break out of their comfort zone. Who are so much better than the middle ground. Huzzah.

Here we are, 4000 words later. Sexism is alive and well in the game industry. Is it getting better? God yes. May I introduce you to Chell and Glados? Have you seen the Transmogrification feature in WoW that lets you get rid of or create skimpy outfits? Have you played Skyrim and seen that there is NO DIFFERENCE between men and women protagonists? Have you played XCOM and seen both male and female NPCs in positions of power? (Your squaddies are even allowed to be women!) Have you played Dishonored where men and women are treated fairly in the world and the leader is an Empress? Did you see Mirror’s Edge? Did you notice the new Lara is actually mostly covered (though we still need to work on that whole sexual assault fiasco) by logical clothing? (Not a game, but MAN, did you SEE BRAVE?!?! Yay Pixar!) I have worked at a company for two years and have gotten used to not having to deal with these problems. I have met men in the industry who are just as feminist as I am. It IS getting better. We aren’t there yet. But every year, we get closer to games that appeal to everyone, and we get closer to having games that women can love and relate to. And every time a game is released that appeals to all audiences, not just WASPs, we are including more fascinating people. People who will bring interesting ideas. People who will make our games EVEN BETTER. At the end of the day, that’s my goal. To make the BEST game possible. I don’t care where an idea comes from, if it makes my game better, GOOD. I am not leaving. I love my job, and even with all the grime, I am not going anywhere. I have made games I want to play and I intend to do that until they nail shut my coffin.

Thank you as well to all the amazing women who took the time to share their stories and experiences. Who didn’t keep silent. Who didn’t ignore the situation for fear of reprisal or attacks. Huzzah.

I will leave with these two tweets I made before the #1reasontobe hashtag got started.

#1reasonwhy you should be a girl designer anyway? Because every time you speak up and stop unintentional sexism, you MADE A GAME BETTER.

#1reasonwhy shows it is important to work with people you like more than on a game you like. You can survive bad games with the right peeps.

Game of the Year

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Whew, has 2012 been a good year for games.

I made a joke that Dishonored was my game of the year, that wasn’t worked on by a Pittman. (There were two games released in 2012 that had Pittman input.)

Then I realized, that’s actually a really good list to make. My games of the year:

 

Contenders:

XCOM Enemy Unknown – Turn based strategy

Dishonored – First Person Sneaky

Diablo 3 – Hack and Loot

The Secret World – Lovecraftian MMO

Borderlands 2 – Shoot and Loot

Skylanders Giants – Collect and Loot

Mists of Pandaria – WoW Expac

*Skyrim – 2011 MSRPG (Massively Single player RPG)

 

At least for me, these were the big games I played in 2012. There a about a dozen more I bought and simply didn’t have time to play.

I can immediately cut Diablo 3 (see my Random rants) and Mists of Pandaria. I love MoP. I think it is my second favorite WoW expansion. BUT. Despite the fact that it does radical things, I play that game more than any other, and it is super fun, it’s just secondary to the other games on the list.

I cut Giants because despite the fact that I really do believe it is one of the most amazing games of the year, it is *my* game, so that’s unfair.

I cut Borderlands 2 because despite it being my brother in law’s game, it too is very random like Diablo. It also has some pretty heavy design flaws. And I hate Handsome Jack.

Skyrim is included because despite playing it quite a bit at the end of 2011, I really got into it during 2012. God, such a good game. But it is 2011… It shouldn’t even be here, although I did want to bring it up.

XCOM is glorious. More blog posts to follow about it, but mostly, this one doesn’t win because of horrid UI, poor explanation of the importance of satellites, and good lord, could the end have been any more abrupt?!?

This leaves me with Secret World and Dishonored. Both are *really* fantastic games. Either choice is a good choice. You should take the time to play both. Secret World is so glorious in so many ways. Dishonored is beautiful and so well designed.

But in the end, Secret World feels like it should have been a single player game or perhaps a co-op game. Not an MMO. I feel like making it an MMO, while totally the kind of game the genre needs, made the game weaker.

So Dishonored, you are my GOTY for 2012. Until I go back and play Lego Lord of the Rings or Darksiders 2 and realize they were so much more fun. Then you’ll get bumped.

And that’s my silly little GotY post. 🙂

Blizzard, Lua, and Addons.

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

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

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

The things I learned this weekend:

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to rethink my design.

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

Alright, so on to testing.

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

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

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

 

Warcraft Breads – Rock-Salted Pretzel

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I got a shiny new KitchenAid mixer. It’s the bright red one. I decided I wanted to make tons and tons of breads and such with it. But I needed a plan. Which breads? How often? How would I discover new recipes? Then later that night in the middle of the raid, it hit me. I sat to eat a Buttery Wheat Roll… and I thought, hurm, I could MAKE wheat rolls now!

So I decided to start easy, with some Pretzels. I love pretzels. But it’s not Brewfest, which is the only place in game I knew to get pretzels. A quick Wowhead search lead me to Rock-Salted Pretzels sold by Plugger Spazring.

Tasty golden pretzels.

So I got an alt to remote me to the Grim Guzzler in Blackrock Depths.

Joyia, hoping a Direbrew Mole Machine to Blackrock.

Sure enough, he sells my pretzels. Awesome. Now for the real world equivalent.

Picking up a full stack of 20. I love warm pretzels.

Pretzels are shockingly easy to make. All you need is a little flour, salt, sugar, yeast, water, a bit more salt, baking soda, and butter. I would put it’s cooking skill at around 50, as it doesn’t require any special equipment or tricky bits. All told, it takes about an hour to make.

Here’s the ingredients:

DOUGH:

  • 2 and 1/2 cups of flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 package instant yeast (2 and 1/4th teaspoons)
  • 7/8ths to 1 cup water

Bath and Topping:

  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 2 tablespoons baking soda
  • coarse, kosher or pretzel salt, optional
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

To start, let’s make the dough.

Add all the dough ingredients into your mixer. The water needs to be slightly warm, just like the yeast likes. The variation in the water is due to the variation in air moisture. For moist areas or during the summer, use less water, otherwise a bit more. I always start with 7/8th and just add small splashes until the dough doesn’t have any crumbly bits that don’t want to stick to the main ball. Mix until all blended and starting to form a big sticky ball.

Dough pre-water

The Dough, all mixed up, ready to knead.

Now, using a bread hook, knead the dough for 5 minutes. (Or knead by hand, to level your strength and stamina.)

Once the dough is good and kneaded, form into a ball, lightly flour and stick in a bag for 30 min. This gives the yeast time to rise. Also gives you time to farm some herbs or ore or maybe run a dungeon, if you are a tank or healer with a short queue.

The dough, balled up, floured and rising.

Go ahead and mix up the “bath”. Boil the 1 cup of water, then add it to the baking soda. It will fizz and bubble. The baking soda needs to completely dissolve in the water.

The baking soda and water bath for the Pretzels.

Once your dough is done rising, now comes the FUN part. Preheat your oven to 475 and prepare a baking sheet with either parchment paper or spray to keep your pretzels from sticking.

Lightly grease a space to work with your dough, and divide it into 8 equal pieces, then let them sit for about 5 min. Pour your bath into a 9″ square pan.

Dough separated before rolling.

Roll each piece of dough into a long, thin rope (about 28″ to 30″ long), and twist each rope into a pretzel.

Pretzel dough, all rolled out and ready to twist.

Working with 4 pretzels at a time, place them in the pan with the baking soda/water, spooning the water over their tops; leave them in the water for 2 minutes before placing them on the baking sheet. This baking soda “bath” will give the pretzels a nice, golden-brown color.

Pretzels in their bath.

Transfer the pretzels to the prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle them lightly with coarse, kosher, or pretzel salt (I used regular kosher salt, as I didn’t have any coarse pretzel salt, they were just as good). Allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes.

Pretzels all ready for the oven.

Bake the pretzels for 8 to 9 minutes, or until they’re golden brown.

All done! Beautiful golden brown.

Remove the pretzels from the oven, and brush them thoroughly with the melted butter. Keep brushing the butter on until you’ve used it all up. It’s  a lot of butter, but that’s the way the brewmasters make them, so just keep using it.

All buttered up and ready for restoring health!

Now you should have 8 large Rock-Salted Pretzels to restore health! This recipe makes for a great base to make variations of pretzels too. Add cinnamon to the dough for a tasty spicy pretzel, or cheese to the top for nommable cheese pretzels. Also, I generally use King Arthur Flour, as it is just a higher quality flour. If you make breads and cakes often, I recommend trying it, as it completely changed the quality of all my recipes. (KAF is like a +10 to cooking.)

This recipe is also really great with kids. They love playing with the dough. You can make pretzel sticks or nuggets as well, but that will likely shorten the cooking time a bit.

Now, time to kick up your feet with some Conjured Glacial Water and a Rock-Salted Pretzel and enjoy the fruits of having the cooking profession.

Ready Player One

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I recently read Ready Player One over the Christmas break. As it had been descibed to me, it was a book about what happens when everyone plays WoW, loves video games, and pretty much worships the 80s. As an avid WoW player, a rabid reader, and a child of said decade, I figured, why not, it seems to be right up my alley. Ready Player One: Target audience: me.

So how did I like it? Should you read it?

1. Do you like old video games and like impressing people with your encyclopedic knowledge of them?

2. Do you like movies made between 1980 and 1996 and like impressing people with your encyclopedic knowledge of them?

3. If there was a multi-billion dollar scavenger hunt through a virtual world, where all the clues were directly related to question 1 and 2, would you take part?

If you answered yes, to any of these questions, you will likely like RP1. RP1 is an orgy of pop culture, video games, and geek culture on the level of ComicCon. If ComicCon were a virtual world like Second Life where pretty much everyone spends all of their time. The book is one long scavenger hunt, about a socially awkward and nearly outcast boy, who becomes a hero, without ever really changing who he is. Never is the nerd forced to stop being a nerd. In fact, his nerdiness receives him praise and admiration from all who encounter him.

Wait, scratch that. RP1 is every nerd/geek/dork’s wet dream. A virtual school where you can mute bullies? Yes, please. The ability to make yourself appear normal, as opposed to fat, short, red haired, bespectacled, or so thin and pale you look like a drinking straw? Why in God’s name would I ever ever meet people in real life again! RP1 is absolute porn on a stick, dipped in chocolate and deep fried for those of us who loved all the things the characters in the book revere. The ability to be famous because you can beat a video game? The chance of winning unlimited wealth because you can recite a movie from heart? Becoming the hero, not because you slayed the dragon, but rather because you did something relatively inconsequential that later turned out to be the magical macguffin you needed to save the world? Okay, well maybe we are getting into spoiler territory with that one, but seriously, anyone who has ever played a graphic adventure knows the truth of “If you can pick it, it’s gonna be important later.”

RP1 is set in a future where virtual technology has advanced to the point that people can easily enter a virtual world, called OASIS, where they can do… anything. Kids are given access so they can go to virtual schools. People show up to virtual work. Chat rooms are more like hang out spots. It’s like WoW mated with Second Life and had the perfect love child. Of course, the author points out a few of the social ramifications of such a creation. No one interacts in real life anymore. Poverty is widespread, escapism the reality. The government is second to the virtual government. The sad thing is though, the author notices these huge, monolithic social issues, and then completely ignores them in favor of more anime references. Yet another video game name drop. The fact that the big bad in the book, IOI, is an internet service provider and wields more power than anything else even mentioned is terrifying, and yet even at the end, when the credits roll, they are still in charge of the access. They are still alive as Glados would say, because she would totally be a part of them.

The book is great. Fairly well written, with a few odd pacing moments. It has some truly unbelievable conceits that one just accepts to move on with the story, but in reality, it’s a nice fun romp through a virtual world every nerd wishes they could live in. But then the crippling truth of the book is… it only appeals to us. Those of us who want to live in OASIS, not the real world. The main character isn’t really a hero, despite saving the virtual world. He is given the tool to save the real world. The one with crippling resource shortages, wide spread starvation, and more social problems that could ever be solved, even if all it’s members weren’t spending most of their time plugged into computers.

This book could have been a fantastic philosophical discussion. It could have been the cautionary tale of allowing ourselves the ultimate fantasy. How everything a human thinks they want is really what is absolutely worst for them. The fact that the “hero” is given the tool to save the world, the real one, not the virtual one, and he glances at it, then WALKS AWAY, just proves this book was written by a nerd for nerds. He would rather make more references and more jokes than face and deal with the very real and very terrifying truths his tale reveals in the dangers of virtual fantasy fulfillment. The dangers of living in video games, movies, music, and tv shows. He would rather end on the hero sitting next to the girl, happy to not want to go back into the virtual world, not realizing that only having one person change isn’t going to change the horrid truth that their world is still dying. It’s still on the brink of chaos and destruction. The author ignores the philosophical, moral, and religious ideas that his book touches on in favor of another video game joke. True discussion and thought could have come from this work, with a bit more gravitas.

It’s a great adventure book for nerds/geeks/dorks, who worship Steve Jobs, Richard Garriott, and Shigeru Miyamoto, instead of the nerds who want to step up and make these men look like idiots. The nerds who want to figure out how to make cold fusion a reality. The nerds who want to find the Higgs Boson. The nerds who aren’t content playing other people’s games, watching other people’s movies, and listening to other people’s music, but instead strive and seek to create their own. The people who would be fixing RP1’s world, instead of practicing Pac Man and watching Pretty in Pink.

I guess I shouldn’t admit that despite it’s faults, I really liked this book. Oh well. I am going to go re-watch Lord of the Rings now.

Impressions of 4.3

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I didn’t expect much from 4.3.

I mean, look at Cataclysm’s track record:

Patch 4.1

Extremely difficult and punishing heroics.

Extremely difficult and punishing raids.

Slow gearing.

Wildly monotonous dailies next to a pvp zone.

Patch 4.2

Extremely difficult, reused, and punishing heroics.

Extremely difficult and punishing raids.

Slow gearing.

Wildly monotonous dailies.

 

With all that, who was looking forward to more of the same? Not me. I was looking forward to Transmogrification, mostly for the ability to wear t5 on my warlock again. And boy do I look awesome.

What I wasn’t expecting was Morchok. To die. On our first attempt. Dead. Huh. After taking 2 weeks to kill Magmaw and 3 weeks to kill Shannox, that was a tad bit of a shock. So our raid snagged in some extra people and went to LFR. And we cleared 4/4, raking in the loot like it was Christmas morning. Week 1 we were 3/8. Now this is more like it.

What I wasn’t expecting was Murozond. The best.fight.in.Cataclysm. Seriously. Getting to “reset” the fight every 20%? That is *awesome*. Hero for the whole fight. Cooldowns SPAMMED. DPS through the roof. People popping back up after they died!

The mechanics in the new dungeons were simple, easy to understand, and relatively clear in how to overcome. The lore is interesting. The dungeons themselves, short, sweet, and LOOTY.

What I wasn’t expecting was the Darkmoon Faire. Wow, are those mini-games fun.

What I wasn’t expecting was running the 3 new heroics on 4 toons and capping on valor on all 4 toons in one week. Considering I am pretty sure I have run those 3 way more than all of the trollroics on all my toons combined.

 

I came for the Transmog and stayed for the end game. What a shock.

On Being Legendary, Pt. 2

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There are a ton of reasons why this post took so long to write.

1. Our guild stalled out on Shannox for the first 6 weeks of Firelands.

2. They gave 5 embers to a guy who then left. (Shocker, as they didn’t take my suggestions on how to pick someone to get the embers.)

3. We converted from a 25 man to a 10 man raiding group.

4. To deal with converting, we now have 2 dps teams and so dps only gets to raid half of the time. Hence, our embers are pretty evenly split between two players. (Me and another Lock.)

 

But finally I am able to write that my embers have been collected, and last night I walked into the Nexus to complete the quest Through a Glass Darkly.

Holy hand grenades, was I not prepared.

I can actually solo level 70 Nexus on my lock fairly easily, but this was a whole new level of difficult. I didn’t have too much trouble until I reached the final boss. Then I had the great joy of wiping for 3 hours trying to kill him.

This was both the greatest and worst quest ever.

Great:

1. I just killed a thing that was AMAZINGLY difficult.

Terrible:

1. That AMAZINGLY difficult was also frustrating.

(Let’s just assume from here on, the first one is a good, the second is a bad.)

2. I had to use skills I so rarely get the chance to use.

2. I had to use skills that are so rarely used… FOR A REASON.

3. I love playing affliction and dot management.

3. I could only play affliction because I had to have the fel hound out.

4. Speaking of Fel Hounds, man does that dude rock when glyphed and has mana feed.

4. Man is the Fel Hound RETARDED when it comes to staying out of the fire.

5. The Nexus was a pretty cool instance.

5. The circular platform with a flying boss makes it impossible for my pet, a good 25% of my damage, to attack said boss.

6. I understood what I needed to do, even though it was somewhat “random-ish” it wasn’t too cheap.

6. I also understood how much easier this would have been if I had been a mage.

7. I have an amazing staff!

7. That is equal item level to two other staves that are just drops off of bosses… and that didn’t cost weeks of raiding, 9k gold, or 400g worth of repair bills.

8. Now that I have the stage one staff I am the only one collecting for stage two!

8. I have to kill the same seven bosses over and over and over again for the next SEVEN WEEKS to get the next stage. Are you KIDDING ME?!?

 

The more I have thought about this, the angrier I am. This staff should at least be the iLvl of the staff of Rags. The quest or the extra boss or the money sink should have been spread out. Now I just have two lame collections that essentially are: farm Firelands for x amount of time. Really Blizz? You couldn’t try to be a little more original? It’s like they got to this part, went, okay, that’s an awesome first stage. Oh we’re out of time? Oh well just throw in two more collections and call it a day.

Regardless I suppose I should be happy I have the Branch of Nordrassil. I should be happy I have started my cinder collection. Really I am just annoyed at Blizzard for not thinking out the rest of the quest line and making it JUST as interesting as Through a Glass Darkly. I am annoyed that the second parts now have no variation other than farm Firelands.

To Nerf or Not to Nerf?

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When Blizzard announced their intention to nerf t12 in preparation for t13, I immediately though, “Oh thank god.” No anger, no rants, no sadness, merely a soothing sense of relaxation and peace.

What the hell?

Peace?!? Soothing relaxation? A tension I didn’t even KNOW was there was pushing on me. The tension of progression. Snapping at my husband. Ignoring chores I needed to do. Being unhappy and frustrated with my hobby. I didn’t notice that it was there until it was suddenly gone. Why do I care if we wipe on Aly for two nights this week, we have downed her once pre-nerf so post nerf, we got it in the bag.

I think the most indicative thing of what this raiding tier had become for me was the replacement of a glyph. Seems like such a small thing right? I replaced the Glyph of Fear with the Glyph of Shadow Bolt. Such a tiny thing. But I had been looking for ways to push my dps just a bit farther… Just a bit… Enough to nerf my cc and utility to eek out 200 more dps. The thing is, I *hate* those DPS. I hate them. I love utility. And I really loved my utility when I had more of it. Why was I pushing my dps? Because my raid wasn’t progressing.

Casual doesn’t mean what it used to. It used to be that casual meant just a few hours a week. Now casual means medium levels of gear and people who barely know how to stay out of the fire. When Blizzard made raids more accessible, they had people who didn’t know how to raid, raiding and loving it. But now those same people expect to raid, and they can’t. In Cataclysm a raid can’t carry 2-5 people and be fine. Everyone needs to carry their own weight.

Instead of running with whoever you wanted to, now you have to run with people who know how to raid, and possibly hurt the feelings of those who are less good. For those who would jump in and say, “L2P NOOB!” Remember, WoW has always worked to cater to the path of least resistance. What is the path of least resistance when it comes to learning new, painful boss fights, to not keyboard turn, and how to play their class to the fullest to overcome the challenge or just saying “Bah, this is too hard. I liked Wrath better” and canceling their account? The 1 million subscriber dip points to the truth.

Some people are saying “OMG this is unprecedented!!!” Hello, I would like to introduce you to the ICC Buff. Remember the one that started at 5% and grew to 30% over the course of a few months? Instead of a slowly growing buff to the players to make the fights easier, they are just nerfing the bosses across the board.

This brings me to my point. Blizzard knows. This is a company who has built their entire business on balance and stats. They *know* how to balance. They do it more than any other company. I would bet every piece of gold I have that they have massive amounts of data flowing in on everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have huge files where they can look at every single classes’ dps on every boss in t11 and t12. We use WoWLogs, which is close, but flawed. We run sims that are best estimations. They have the real deal.

They know exactly how many players have been in Rag’s room. They know how many guilds have downed him. They know the percentages. They know what people are dying to. They know what fight people are by passing. They know everything.

People on these blogs and forums talk about the difficulty being fine, talk about how the nerf is too much, too soon, they talk about how well their casual guild is doing on heroics… Wait, what? I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but if your guild is on heroic modes, you are NOT CASUAL. My guild is casual. No attendance requirements, no spec requirements, no “stacking” to get the best buffs and we are 6/7. But even without my guild, only 6 guilds on my entire server have downed Rags. Only 6. And only 2 of them are 25 man guilds.

Wait, before you say, “Oh well your server just sucks.” I agree, it does. We are ranked 164 in the US servers. I thought, well that makes sense… OH BUT WAIT. THERE ARE 241 SERVERS. That means almost 80 servers are below us. 80 servers with HOW MANY PLAYERS? Including my old server. Including the other server I used to play on. I always thought we were the far end of the universe, apparently we aren’t! We are on the low end, but not near as bad as I thought.

Blizzard knows. They have the numbers to back up their decision. It may be different on your server or in your guild, but the WoW world at large is struggling and not seeing progression. If the end game is where the game really begins, shouldn’t more people see it?

They tried a valiant effort with Cataclysm to return to the harder style of Burning Crusade, but you can’t put spilled milk back in the jug. Players got used to raiding in Wrath. Players enjoyed raiding in Wrath. Players are leaving in droves because raiding in Cata isn’t nearly as fun. And Blizzard surely has the numbers to prove it and back it up.