There has been, since the start of the Cataclysm, a devaluation of lower level characters. But let's understand the context in which I wish to place this statement. While guilds were emphasized to a large degree, it's been made clear that only the highest level characters are valued.
What?
I wondered to myself the other night, as I was trying to reach honored with my guild with my level 85 DK, why is it that I deserve more guild reputation than someone questing from level 10-80? I can go from 80-85 far faster than from 10-80, yet I seem to be valued by the system in such a way that my guild reputation increases significantly faster than my level 33 Hunter.
I have no doubt that GC or someone has made a blue post on this subject, and I'm just not aware of it, but it got me thinking about one's value in a guild. I suppose accept it the same way I accept that I'm not granted with the same amount of experience for completing a quest at 20 as I am at 83, it would only make sense that the same level 20 toon of mine is not worthy of any guild reputation.
For me it think of it very simply, is your quest more important than mine? Is is more valuable? Are you, then, more important? Now I'm not one to talk too much about game design because I'd rather leave those discussions to people with more experience and knowledge of these things. I'm just sharing my observations based on my experiences, not attempting to design the perfect game. But in this game I play, I can't but help feel devalued by the devs as they tell me that all the time I put into leveling this toon to 80 is so much less important and significant than those who level from 80-85.
In leveling my alts I do all things I'm allowed in order to help provide experience for the guild. I quest, I BG, I dungeon, I gather and I craft and I even give gold to the guild bank. But what am I given for my efforts? About 30 rep points in 30 levels, that's what. On the other hand, if I log into my DK I can do 1/4 of the things that I do at lower levels but earn more rep. This must mean that I'm more valuable, more important.
The only reason to be in a guild for the first 70-80 levels is to take advantage of guild perks. Well not the ONLY reason, there is playing a game with friends or other good people, but that's a different subject, I'd prefer sarcasm in this post. So for the sake of making a point, let's assume tha the only reason is for guild perks. But what emperical evidence can I produce at lower levels that proves that I even deserve these perks? I'm not a source of significant experience or reputation (for myself), so why bother? Why even grant access to low level toons to guild perks if they can't actually show they've contributed?
I don't really have a solution, I'm just a bit upset by this reality. I like to earn what I get, but that's just me. Ah well, it's the system and I guess I just need to get used to it, right? It doesn't stop me from enjoying my games, but it just doesn't seem to make sense to me, that's all.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Showing posts with label Game Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game Design. Show all posts
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
MMO's Failures at Storytelling
It's not really their fault, MMO's can tell a story, it's just it falls short in so many ways. It's just this, I think it's hard for a video game to truly, in a deep and emotional way, move you with its story. Why? It's the fault of books.
So to that end I propose, for the sake of the future of MMO's, that we burn all the books in the world.
/waitforit
/waitforit
/waitforit
Dang, I hope you didn't believe me there! Of course I think book burning is tragic, immoral, illogical, illwhatevered baddness and all out evilness. That still doesn't mean that it's not the fault of thousands of years of literature, whether it be carved into stone or typed out and posted to the world wide interwebnetsess or bound and sold at Border's Bookstore.
I'm no expert at these kinds of things, but I've got a pretty good idea why a story from an MMO doesn't measure up in quality with that of good old fashioned literature in book form. It's not internalized the same way word on a page are. Let me attempt to explain (although I'm sure I'll suck at it).
From personal experience, when I'm reading a book that doesn't completely suck, something happens to my brain. I enter a sort of trancelike state where my mind receives the information from the words and then is given freedom to shape images in his head in a very personal way. True, many book authors will describe a scene or a person with great detail, letting you, the reader, know of the color of the carpet or the temperature of the air or the amount of light coming through the windows. But even then our mind creates other details that the author never thinks to include, and it's these little things that makes the scene personal to us, almost to a point where the reader is authoring the story simultaneously with the actual writer.
Have you ever seen a movie or TV show adapted from a book and said to yourself or someone else "that's not how I pictured him/her to look like". It's funny, really, because even when an author describes a person, each reader pictures someone unique and different, sometimes even changing major features to suit his/her whims. This is an example of a book becoming personal, and a reader's relationship with that piece of literature.
In a video game, all the visuals are provided, and often story is communicated with words or text or quests or whatever, but a visual is given to you with no room for interpretation or personalization. That barrier to personalization keeps the user from fully participating in the story in the way that readers participate in creating details while reading a book.
So right away MMO devs are at a disadvantage when trying to tell a story. They can make the story compelling, but they lose the ability for the player to participate in the character's creation.
I have some experience in writing...some. I've written some short stories and am about 75% completed with a fictional novel, along with a lot of poetry between the years of 16-26 (the "wooing years" I call them). I have my wife read what I write, to criticize and to encourage me, but often when I discuss with her the "behind the scenes" details of my characters or scenes, she tells me that she pictured something different in her mind while reading. It's good, really, because it forces me to make sure that I'm consistent, but it also proves the point I made earlier about a reader personalizing a story regardless of what the author wrote.
The story of Arthas, as told via the game of WoW, is interesting. There are points that you see where you want to reach through the screen and strangle him for making some of the decisions that he made, but ultimately I have never felt for Arthas or any other character in that fantasy world the same I have felt about hundreds of other characters I've read in books.
Perhaps a contributing factor is that MMO's generally deal with fantsay, while much of literature, even fantasy novels, often deal with real human issues of love, hate, jealousy, power, etc in ways that are significanly more realistic than a cartoon character on a computer monitor.
Again, I don't blame MMO's for not being as good, I just think that there are inevitable barriers that cannot be crossed no matter the skill of the dev in creating compelling story lines or scenes. Not to mention, often in liturature you share the journey of the main character, from their insecure beginnings to their heroic finale. Music, TV, movies, and MMO's just don't measure up to books in sucking in the reader/player and immersing them in such a personal way as to make that person feel that, at times, that they are actually there.
So, why talk about something like this? Why bash MMO's for their failures?
Well partly because I, like others, have been thinking or discussing a lot lately about the future of MMO's and how they could be "better", that is please old and newer type players. I'm not really intelligent enough about game design to throw my hat into the ring too often, I'd just like to say that I don't think that we should expect MMO's to create immersive stories because I don't believe that they are capable of it.
So let's try to fix them in other ways. RP is immersive, but it's personal and done in the player's mind. Images on a screen have never proven to immerse someone into a story the way words on a page do, and I'll argue that point till the day I die. I'd love to see changes to the World of WoW, I'd really love it. I'd like to see consistency and reason in the stories I play through as well, but I'm not asking for something that I don't think a video game is capable of.
That's all I have for now, I'm sure I'll think of other stuff later, I usually do. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day in whatever world you play in.
So to that end I propose, for the sake of the future of MMO's, that we burn all the books in the world.
/waitforit
/waitforit
/waitforit
Dang, I hope you didn't believe me there! Of course I think book burning is tragic, immoral, illogical, illwhatevered baddness and all out evilness. That still doesn't mean that it's not the fault of thousands of years of literature, whether it be carved into stone or typed out and posted to the world wide interwebnetsess or bound and sold at Border's Bookstore.
I'm no expert at these kinds of things, but I've got a pretty good idea why a story from an MMO doesn't measure up in quality with that of good old fashioned literature in book form. It's not internalized the same way word on a page are. Let me attempt to explain (although I'm sure I'll suck at it).
From personal experience, when I'm reading a book that doesn't completely suck, something happens to my brain. I enter a sort of trancelike state where my mind receives the information from the words and then is given freedom to shape images in his head in a very personal way. True, many book authors will describe a scene or a person with great detail, letting you, the reader, know of the color of the carpet or the temperature of the air or the amount of light coming through the windows. But even then our mind creates other details that the author never thinks to include, and it's these little things that makes the scene personal to us, almost to a point where the reader is authoring the story simultaneously with the actual writer.
Have you ever seen a movie or TV show adapted from a book and said to yourself or someone else "that's not how I pictured him/her to look like". It's funny, really, because even when an author describes a person, each reader pictures someone unique and different, sometimes even changing major features to suit his/her whims. This is an example of a book becoming personal, and a reader's relationship with that piece of literature.
In a video game, all the visuals are provided, and often story is communicated with words or text or quests or whatever, but a visual is given to you with no room for interpretation or personalization. That barrier to personalization keeps the user from fully participating in the story in the way that readers participate in creating details while reading a book.
So right away MMO devs are at a disadvantage when trying to tell a story. They can make the story compelling, but they lose the ability for the player to participate in the character's creation.
I have some experience in writing...some. I've written some short stories and am about 75% completed with a fictional novel, along with a lot of poetry between the years of 16-26 (the "wooing years" I call them). I have my wife read what I write, to criticize and to encourage me, but often when I discuss with her the "behind the scenes" details of my characters or scenes, she tells me that she pictured something different in her mind while reading. It's good, really, because it forces me to make sure that I'm consistent, but it also proves the point I made earlier about a reader personalizing a story regardless of what the author wrote.
The story of Arthas, as told via the game of WoW, is interesting. There are points that you see where you want to reach through the screen and strangle him for making some of the decisions that he made, but ultimately I have never felt for Arthas or any other character in that fantasy world the same I have felt about hundreds of other characters I've read in books.
Perhaps a contributing factor is that MMO's generally deal with fantsay, while much of literature, even fantasy novels, often deal with real human issues of love, hate, jealousy, power, etc in ways that are significanly more realistic than a cartoon character on a computer monitor.
Again, I don't blame MMO's for not being as good, I just think that there are inevitable barriers that cannot be crossed no matter the skill of the dev in creating compelling story lines or scenes. Not to mention, often in liturature you share the journey of the main character, from their insecure beginnings to their heroic finale. Music, TV, movies, and MMO's just don't measure up to books in sucking in the reader/player and immersing them in such a personal way as to make that person feel that, at times, that they are actually there.
So, why talk about something like this? Why bash MMO's for their failures?
Well partly because I, like others, have been thinking or discussing a lot lately about the future of MMO's and how they could be "better", that is please old and newer type players. I'm not really intelligent enough about game design to throw my hat into the ring too often, I'd just like to say that I don't think that we should expect MMO's to create immersive stories because I don't believe that they are capable of it.
So let's try to fix them in other ways. RP is immersive, but it's personal and done in the player's mind. Images on a screen have never proven to immerse someone into a story the way words on a page do, and I'll argue that point till the day I die. I'd love to see changes to the World of WoW, I'd really love it. I'd like to see consistency and reason in the stories I play through as well, but I'm not asking for something that I don't think a video game is capable of.
That's all I have for now, I'm sure I'll think of other stuff later, I usually do. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day in whatever world you play in.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Where Did I Come From? Contemplating Character Creation
I never thought about it much, even when taking my first steps into Azeroth, about where I came from, ya know, how did I actually come into being? Given that I never thought about it much means that, for me at least, it's not really that important. But something happened recently that made me think about it and whether it's important or not.
I gave RIFT a go.
While watching the opening cinematics for both Guardians and Defiants I noticed that I am told about my creators, about where I come from, whereas in WoW, I just appear out of nowhere and am supposed to have feelings all of a sudden. It's interesting, to me at least, how the Guardians have been risen by their gods as Ascended (I think I'm getting this right, I didn't take notes and am going off poor memory), super heros brought back to life to defeat the evil Regulos and do some other heroic stuff and stuff.
The Defiant built machines, and with those machines created a race of "Ascended", in other words, magical Frankensteins with a defined purpose. In either case the story makes a HUGE point of telling you where you come from. It also tells you why you're here, but that's a separate subject.
WoW just kind of apparates you into Northshire and gives you a stick without telling you where you came from. I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. I mean, sooner or later you learn that you are not intended to be a hero anyway but a punching bag for elitist jerks who treat you like you're 3 years old...AND, LET'S NOT FORGET, TO GET MORE LOOT!!!!!!
All jesting aside, I don't know whether it's better to be created from "nowhere" or made by a machine. It seems like the Guardians in RIFT get the lucky draw, risen by the all powerful beings or whatnot, while Defiants or WoW players are either some rare cyborg meat suit or a nothingless creature brought from some alternate dimension by some dude in his mom's basement looking for some cheap weekend thrills.
No, I suppose none of it really matters. I was just thinking and all, you know how that goes. It's "just a game", who cares about story when you can pew pew all day long and get shiny purple shinies thingies. Aargh, I'm in a bad mood today, can you tell? I'm treating this issue as if it doesn't matter, which it doesn't, but in some weird way I'm supposed to think that it does? When it comes down to it, I appreciate that the creators of RIFT were thoughtful enough to tell me where I come from. I do enjoy WoW still, or I wouldn't play it, but now whenever I create a new toon I know I'm going to be thinking, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I drew the short straw when it came to character creation lore/background. /sigh.
I'll be alright, I'll get over this tragedy, and maybe, just maybe the reason I'm here (in Azeroth), will be compelling enough to make up for the fact that I have no idea where I come from.
I gave RIFT a go.
While watching the opening cinematics for both Guardians and Defiants I noticed that I am told about my creators, about where I come from, whereas in WoW, I just appear out of nowhere and am supposed to have feelings all of a sudden. It's interesting, to me at least, how the Guardians have been risen by their gods as Ascended (I think I'm getting this right, I didn't take notes and am going off poor memory), super heros brought back to life to defeat the evil Regulos and do some other heroic stuff and stuff.
The Defiant built machines, and with those machines created a race of "Ascended", in other words, magical Frankensteins with a defined purpose. In either case the story makes a HUGE point of telling you where you come from. It also tells you why you're here, but that's a separate subject.
WoW just kind of apparates you into Northshire and gives you a stick without telling you where you came from. I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. I mean, sooner or later you learn that you are not intended to be a hero anyway but a punching bag for elitist jerks who treat you like you're 3 years old...AND, LET'S NOT FORGET, TO GET MORE LOOT!!!!!!
All jesting aside, I don't know whether it's better to be created from "nowhere" or made by a machine. It seems like the Guardians in RIFT get the lucky draw, risen by the all powerful beings or whatnot, while Defiants or WoW players are either some rare cyborg meat suit or a nothingless creature brought from some alternate dimension by some dude in his mom's basement looking for some cheap weekend thrills.
No, I suppose none of it really matters. I was just thinking and all, you know how that goes. It's "just a game", who cares about story when you can pew pew all day long and get shiny purple shinies thingies. Aargh, I'm in a bad mood today, can you tell? I'm treating this issue as if it doesn't matter, which it doesn't, but in some weird way I'm supposed to think that it does? When it comes down to it, I appreciate that the creators of RIFT were thoughtful enough to tell me where I come from. I do enjoy WoW still, or I wouldn't play it, but now whenever I create a new toon I know I'm going to be thinking, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I drew the short straw when it came to character creation lore/background. /sigh.
I'll be alright, I'll get over this tragedy, and maybe, just maybe the reason I'm here (in Azeroth), will be compelling enough to make up for the fact that I have no idea where I come from.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Success!
Earlier this week I spoke of an epic failure of mine. Sad to say that I have not since logged into my Priest out of fear of being recognized. The time will come again, someday, when I'll give it another go.
I've had other thoughts lately, all of which I suppose can be applied to real life or to any of the games we play, including WoW.
According to Webster's, definition 2b, the most well known and applicable definition SUCCEED is:
"to attain a desired object or end".
While SUCCESS is: (2a) "degree or measure of succeeding" and (3) "one that succeeds".
As with all words in every language, the exact definition can evolve over time, can be used in a "slang" context, thereby changing the meaning of the word all together. And sometimes, generally accepted definitions of words are created within certain societies that sometimes describe a general concept or lead us to a particular way of thinking. Such is the problem with the word success, and I think I know why.
Possible Definitions
Goals
If you were to tell me that you succeeded in the Cho'gall fight last night that could actually carry with it more than one meaning. How? It's entirely dependent on the goals of the raiders, a group of individuals coming together with the same purpose and often the same definition of success. For most raiders, success means actually killing the boss. But are there some people who view getting the boss down to 20% or 10% a success? Maybe. I'm not saying that raiders generally see 10% as success, but I'm also saying it's possible.
What if I were to tell you that a 10M raiding group was filled with 8-year olds, and that group came within 10% of downing Cho'gall? For them, being so young and inexperienced, 10% could be a success if that is how they, as individuals who formed this 10-man raiding group, defined it. So in the end, you can have two very plausable success stories, and each was dependent on stated individual and group goals.
RL Examples
Let's step back into the real world for a moment. Nothing bothers me more than the "generally accepted American definition of success". That is, wealthy, good home, nice car, great job with power and influence, blah, blah, blah. It's a definition handed out by social pressures, contrived and accepted by the masses, but subject to individual life circumstances. The boy raised by filthy rich parents who's hopes and dreams lie in the potential of said boy to grow up and become a US Senator, success is defined by the parents as US Senator, but we must, if we believe in freedom of conscience and choice, to allow the boy to have his own definition of success. What if all this young man wants is a 50K/year job, a nice family he can spend weekends at the park with, and a car that doesn't require a personal driver. We must allow him to define his own success, right?
Fight Design
Back to WoW. We love to judge, whether it's to say WoW is great or WoW sucks or whatever, we define the success of the devs by our individual expectations of the game. Sometimes we allow others to shape our definition of what is a successful 5-man dungeon design, or a successful 10/25-man raid fight design. We believe that there is some rule book out in the nethersphere that says that a "tank and spank" fight can't be a successful fight design. Successful by who's standards? If the devs' goal was to create a tank and spank (Patchwork), then they were successful in creating the fight they wanted. The other side of the equation, the player, can formulate his/her own opinion based on what they believe to be a successful fight, but those opinions come from expectation, or somewhere else that I can't fully explain. After all, where a mass opinion originates is often hard to trace back to its genesis.
Progress
If a raid group is having trouble with a particular fight, where the first night they achieve 75%, the next 65%, the next 50%, a raid leader may try to motivate their group by saying that "progress is success...we'll get 'em down soon". Still, in the back of the raid group's minds they know that they weren't successful? Why? Because people who raid come into it with a shared goal, one that each member holds individually, but shares as a goal in common that success = Boss Dead.
General Stuff
What is a successful crafter? Someone who maxes their profession and learns every, single recipe in the game? Or maybe that person believes that success is crafting items that he/she can sell for obscene profits in trade or on the AH. Success for some is maxing gold per character, being the wealthiest player in WoW history. Still success for others is achieving the all-ambiguous "fun" during whatever playtime they have that day.
Success must be individual, it can never be forced upon anyone. People may choose to accept the expectations of their raid leader, thereby defining success the same way as everyone else who has accepted the same expectations, and that's good because that means that everyone is working to a common goal - the same goal. Some are weak minded, and believe that another person's definition of success should be their own because it's more noble or above their own. For those people, you get what you deserve.
Questing
Do you like how questing works nowadays? You go to a hub, you get 3 quests: #1 = Kill, #2 = Gather, #3 = Bandage/Strengthen. Over and over and over this pattern repeats, for 85 levels until you just want to die. Then you hit 85 and you do dailies, the same quests over and over and over. Is this successful quest design? Perhaps, depends on who you ask. I'm sure Blizzard loves the quest design that has people do the same stuff over and over and over for incremental rewards, it keeps people playing and paying after all. Do some player criticize it? Absolutely. For those players, it's not successful game design because it doesn't meet their expectations.
WoW a Success?
For as much as I enjoy reading blogs of people who discuss game design, I'm convinced, by all the things I've read, that there is no perfect design because we, the players and payers of these games, have varying expectations and goals, interests and attitudes. Like Syl wrote, I kinda accept WoW for what it is, knowing it doesn't attain success in every aspect, according to my expectations. I'm sure Blizzard considers WoW a success as a whole, as evidenced by their subscription numbers. ATVI defines success by net revenue and % increases, not by raid design or questing design or 5-man design. The player doesn't care about their net income or whether they're paying a dividend this year, they just want to have "fun".
Captain Obvious?
Is what I've said just too obvious and redundant? Or maybe I'm deranged and don't understand how society works? Perhaps I'm just an idiot who needs a new brain? Or maybe I'm right and need to allow other people to define their own success in WoW. Success for my 8-year old boy is killing a Pali in a battleground, mostly because they stink like last week's dinner, while for others it's being the first to kill all raid bosses on 25M Heroic. Either way, I must allow for others to define success AND reject anyone's expectations of me. I don't want someone telling me that questing is a failure feature if I truly believe it's a success.
Oddly enough there are many things about life and the universe where I believe in truths and absolutes, but gaming is not one of those. If you provide a compelling argument and give me the chance to experience something for myself, like the LK fight, then I have the right to agree or disagree whether that fight was a success. But don't tell me I'm an idiot or I'm inexperienced and don't understand what success is. I define success myself, for myself, and I believe all others should do the same.
Groups of people rising up in protest against the establishment moves the powerful to change their minds...sometimes. For that group who finds success in changing how a game is made, good for you. But consider this, there are some out there who were content with how it was, who found the prior product a success. I guess in the end everyone can't win, everyone can't be happy, everyone can't achieve the success they define for themselves. Someone will always want to change their mind, to take away what they love, to distort your own expectations and make you feel that your success isn't as good as theirs.
On the other hand, there are many who are charismatic enough, convincing enough, and skilled enough to draw people towards a definition of success that they define, ultimately being shared by the whole. It's what happens when you raid. It's what makes the game fun for ME, when I share a goal of success with 9 or 24 others and we can share in the exhilaration of downing that one boss in that one raid that took forever to kill. We succedded, and the success was ours!
I've had other thoughts lately, all of which I suppose can be applied to real life or to any of the games we play, including WoW.
According to Webster's, definition 2b, the most well known and applicable definition SUCCEED is:
"to attain a desired object or end".
While SUCCESS is: (2a) "degree or measure of succeeding" and (3) "one that succeeds".
As with all words in every language, the exact definition can evolve over time, can be used in a "slang" context, thereby changing the meaning of the word all together. And sometimes, generally accepted definitions of words are created within certain societies that sometimes describe a general concept or lead us to a particular way of thinking. Such is the problem with the word success, and I think I know why.
Possible Definitions
Goals
If you were to tell me that you succeeded in the Cho'gall fight last night that could actually carry with it more than one meaning. How? It's entirely dependent on the goals of the raiders, a group of individuals coming together with the same purpose and often the same definition of success. For most raiders, success means actually killing the boss. But are there some people who view getting the boss down to 20% or 10% a success? Maybe. I'm not saying that raiders generally see 10% as success, but I'm also saying it's possible.
What if I were to tell you that a 10M raiding group was filled with 8-year olds, and that group came within 10% of downing Cho'gall? For them, being so young and inexperienced, 10% could be a success if that is how they, as individuals who formed this 10-man raiding group, defined it. So in the end, you can have two very plausable success stories, and each was dependent on stated individual and group goals.
RL Examples
Let's step back into the real world for a moment. Nothing bothers me more than the "generally accepted American definition of success". That is, wealthy, good home, nice car, great job with power and influence, blah, blah, blah. It's a definition handed out by social pressures, contrived and accepted by the masses, but subject to individual life circumstances. The boy raised by filthy rich parents who's hopes and dreams lie in the potential of said boy to grow up and become a US Senator, success is defined by the parents as US Senator, but we must, if we believe in freedom of conscience and choice, to allow the boy to have his own definition of success. What if all this young man wants is a 50K/year job, a nice family he can spend weekends at the park with, and a car that doesn't require a personal driver. We must allow him to define his own success, right?
Fight Design
Back to WoW. We love to judge, whether it's to say WoW is great or WoW sucks or whatever, we define the success of the devs by our individual expectations of the game. Sometimes we allow others to shape our definition of what is a successful 5-man dungeon design, or a successful 10/25-man raid fight design. We believe that there is some rule book out in the nethersphere that says that a "tank and spank" fight can't be a successful fight design. Successful by who's standards? If the devs' goal was to create a tank and spank (Patchwork), then they were successful in creating the fight they wanted. The other side of the equation, the player, can formulate his/her own opinion based on what they believe to be a successful fight, but those opinions come from expectation, or somewhere else that I can't fully explain. After all, where a mass opinion originates is often hard to trace back to its genesis.
Progress
If a raid group is having trouble with a particular fight, where the first night they achieve 75%, the next 65%, the next 50%, a raid leader may try to motivate their group by saying that "progress is success...we'll get 'em down soon". Still, in the back of the raid group's minds they know that they weren't successful? Why? Because people who raid come into it with a shared goal, one that each member holds individually, but shares as a goal in common that success = Boss Dead.
General Stuff
What is a successful crafter? Someone who maxes their profession and learns every, single recipe in the game? Or maybe that person believes that success is crafting items that he/she can sell for obscene profits in trade or on the AH. Success for some is maxing gold per character, being the wealthiest player in WoW history. Still success for others is achieving the all-ambiguous "fun" during whatever playtime they have that day.
Success must be individual, it can never be forced upon anyone. People may choose to accept the expectations of their raid leader, thereby defining success the same way as everyone else who has accepted the same expectations, and that's good because that means that everyone is working to a common goal - the same goal. Some are weak minded, and believe that another person's definition of success should be their own because it's more noble or above their own. For those people, you get what you deserve.
Questing
Do you like how questing works nowadays? You go to a hub, you get 3 quests: #1 = Kill, #2 = Gather, #3 = Bandage/Strengthen. Over and over and over this pattern repeats, for 85 levels until you just want to die. Then you hit 85 and you do dailies, the same quests over and over and over. Is this successful quest design? Perhaps, depends on who you ask. I'm sure Blizzard loves the quest design that has people do the same stuff over and over and over for incremental rewards, it keeps people playing and paying after all. Do some player criticize it? Absolutely. For those players, it's not successful game design because it doesn't meet their expectations.
WoW a Success?
For as much as I enjoy reading blogs of people who discuss game design, I'm convinced, by all the things I've read, that there is no perfect design because we, the players and payers of these games, have varying expectations and goals, interests and attitudes. Like Syl wrote, I kinda accept WoW for what it is, knowing it doesn't attain success in every aspect, according to my expectations. I'm sure Blizzard considers WoW a success as a whole, as evidenced by their subscription numbers. ATVI defines success by net revenue and % increases, not by raid design or questing design or 5-man design. The player doesn't care about their net income or whether they're paying a dividend this year, they just want to have "fun".
Captain Obvious?
Is what I've said just too obvious and redundant? Or maybe I'm deranged and don't understand how society works? Perhaps I'm just an idiot who needs a new brain? Or maybe I'm right and need to allow other people to define their own success in WoW. Success for my 8-year old boy is killing a Pali in a battleground, mostly because they stink like last week's dinner, while for others it's being the first to kill all raid bosses on 25M Heroic. Either way, I must allow for others to define success AND reject anyone's expectations of me. I don't want someone telling me that questing is a failure feature if I truly believe it's a success.
Oddly enough there are many things about life and the universe where I believe in truths and absolutes, but gaming is not one of those. If you provide a compelling argument and give me the chance to experience something for myself, like the LK fight, then I have the right to agree or disagree whether that fight was a success. But don't tell me I'm an idiot or I'm inexperienced and don't understand what success is. I define success myself, for myself, and I believe all others should do the same.
Groups of people rising up in protest against the establishment moves the powerful to change their minds...sometimes. For that group who finds success in changing how a game is made, good for you. But consider this, there are some out there who were content with how it was, who found the prior product a success. I guess in the end everyone can't win, everyone can't be happy, everyone can't achieve the success they define for themselves. Someone will always want to change their mind, to take away what they love, to distort your own expectations and make you feel that your success isn't as good as theirs.
On the other hand, there are many who are charismatic enough, convincing enough, and skilled enough to draw people towards a definition of success that they define, ultimately being shared by the whole. It's what happens when you raid. It's what makes the game fun for ME, when I share a goal of success with 9 or 24 others and we can share in the exhilaration of downing that one boss in that one raid that took forever to kill. We succedded, and the success was ours!
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Croatoan!
"Croatoan", the name of an episode of the TV series Supernatural = TRUE
"Croatoan", the name carved into a tree in the center of the abandoned English settlement of Roanoke, VA = TRUE
"Croatoan", the name of a Native American tribe whose own settlement was found South of Roanoke = TRUE
What's funny about the Supernatural episode is that their explanation and meaning of Croatoan is a demonic virus that turns people into a mass of like minded crazy people who ultimately disappear into the unknown. In the episode they talk about the abandoned Roanoke settlement and how nobody, to this day, really knows what happened to those early colonists. With all other options remaining undiscussed, we come to find out the this mysterious demonic virus is the real reason behind the vanishings of the late 16th century.
The more rational theory, i.e. one not invented for entertainment purposes only, is that those Roanoke colonists found friends with the Croatoan nation and ultimately setteled with them, mixing over the years to later become what we know today as the Lumbee people (who, btw, still live in the same coastal regions of NE North Carolina, south of Roanoke.
Reality sucks, fantasy is often much more interesting. And the concept that a demonic virus can turn all of us insane before causing us to disappear into the nether-regions of the universe makes for better writing...and watching. Unless, of course, you just love watching things like PBS & CSPAN.
WoW's Croatoan?
I know it's annoying to hear, but change is constant. One thing we can be sure of is that the way in which we interact with each other today will change into something else tomorrow. Imagine how long the Queen of Spain had to wait before Christopher Columbus reported back. There was no email or Twitter back in those days. But even has over 500M people obsess over, er, utilize social networking sites such as Facebook, you can rest assured that not even a $50 Billion valuation of the company will keep it up and running 20 years from now. At the pace we're going, Facebook will be obsolete in 10.
I don't know that I'm one to talk about life cycles of games, etc, but I'm going to anyway. See, WoW has been around for a while, in gaming life terms. I've been playing for over two years now, I believe, and others for over 6 (or is it 7?, I forget). There will be more content patches for Cataclysm, and most likely one or more expansions. Many people have asked the question before, "when will WoW reach its end?", I guess I'd like to pose the possibility that it will do so via Croatoan.
No, I don't think that the community will depart peacefully and simply migrate to another game with nothing but a word etched into a tree. I believe that WoW will suffer the fate of a demoic virus, with one person infecting the next until all are driven crazy and go off to play some other new game, but remain infected still. I wouldn't claim that this will happen to everyone, I guess what I'm saying is that WoW won't go quietly.
Believe it or not, as for myself I mostly provide anecdotes to prove a point, but from my first day to today there is more hostility in WoW among the players. In a simple BG the other day, I sat staring at the BG chat more than anything (well not really, but I did read a lot of it), I noticed how much people were yelling at each other and blaming one another for our failures. Other examples are horror pug stories, which increased x100 since the inception of LFD, largely due to the fact that a significantly larger population was now grouping with random strangers, thereby causing statistics to amplify what was already there. Meaning, there were already bad pugs before LFD, but since so many more people were running pugs, and raids became more pug friendly, there were just more horror stories to listen to.
But don't worry so much about what others think, what have you seen with your own eyes? Have you seen more abusive language, more blatant disrespect for other people based on random, uncomprehensible motivations? Surely not everyone is infected with Croatoan, but it's starting to spread. More people means more things happen, both good and bad. But just as the news reports bad stories, the bad experiences get amplified in our minds due to the emotional effect it has on us. The more emotional we get, the less rational, the more susceptible we become to negative influences.
Perhaps we will respond in kind, fall victim to the bait set by the trolls and in so doing, become deformed, grow tusks, and spew illogical hate over something that we would otherwise deem meaningless. Or maybe there are many good people, who upon sensing the Croatoan virus crawl up their arms over their skin will wish to dash to the decontamiation area below Gnomeregan and cleanse themselves of the filth, after which they will also decide that the Croatoan people are much more friendly than the imposing English empire - i.e. will find another game to play and do so quietly.
Perhaps what will be left at the ending days of WoW will be nothing but infected Croatoan people, oddly working together for some demented goal. The devs, upon seeing a population of demons, posessed by the common goal to end all life, will flip the switch, causing the infected to shout to high heaven for the crime of having their beloved game stripped from them. News flash with Brian Williams reports that Blizzard Entertainment suddenly and without warning, turned off all servers, shutting down the most popular MMO in history. Upon sending a field reporter to Blizzard headquarters, nobody was there to greet them.
Slowly the reporter and camera crew will walk into the Blizzard offices, and finding them empty will find their way into the server room. On a screen, still turned on, will be one word flashing the reporter in the face: CROATOAN.
"Well Brian," the reporter will say, "It seems that WoW has gone the way of the Roanoke colony of the late 16th century. If our insider reports are correct, WoW failed due to a massive community infection. Some made it safely out to play other games, some have disappeared and may never be seen in the MMO community again, and the host of the infected are outside burning down our TV van. Odd indeed are all these things, but I was told there were signs. Signs of an infection, but Blizzard only applied patches, never a healing ointment. Well, we don't know what's next, nor how many will participate in the next 'big thing', but what we do know is that there is no cure for a virus, only treatment of the symptoms."
Malarkey
I love hyperbole, don't you? I don't really think all that will happen, but it's more entertaining than real life. Still, I do believe that Croatoan, in some form, will and has infected many players. It's not as severe as I paint it, but the end result, I believe, is a game that will leave more questions than answers when all is said and done. Will people ever be able to point to what caused WoW to fail? Maybe it will simply grow old and die, a prisoner to improved technology and our insatiable appetite for a more immersive experience. Who knows? But wouldn't it be cool if Blizzard did that, for just one day, leave their workstations and put a sign on their front door: CROATOAN
For one day, as a pratical joke, the reaction that would illicit would be, well, historical.
"Croatoan", the name carved into a tree in the center of the abandoned English settlement of Roanoke, VA = TRUE
"Croatoan", the name of a Native American tribe whose own settlement was found South of Roanoke = TRUE
What's funny about the Supernatural episode is that their explanation and meaning of Croatoan is a demonic virus that turns people into a mass of like minded crazy people who ultimately disappear into the unknown. In the episode they talk about the abandoned Roanoke settlement and how nobody, to this day, really knows what happened to those early colonists. With all other options remaining undiscussed, we come to find out the this mysterious demonic virus is the real reason behind the vanishings of the late 16th century.
The more rational theory, i.e. one not invented for entertainment purposes only, is that those Roanoke colonists found friends with the Croatoan nation and ultimately setteled with them, mixing over the years to later become what we know today as the Lumbee people (who, btw, still live in the same coastal regions of NE North Carolina, south of Roanoke.
Reality sucks, fantasy is often much more interesting. And the concept that a demonic virus can turn all of us insane before causing us to disappear into the nether-regions of the universe makes for better writing...and watching. Unless, of course, you just love watching things like PBS & CSPAN.
WoW's Croatoan?
I know it's annoying to hear, but change is constant. One thing we can be sure of is that the way in which we interact with each other today will change into something else tomorrow. Imagine how long the Queen of Spain had to wait before Christopher Columbus reported back. There was no email or Twitter back in those days. But even has over 500M people obsess over, er, utilize social networking sites such as Facebook, you can rest assured that not even a $50 Billion valuation of the company will keep it up and running 20 years from now. At the pace we're going, Facebook will be obsolete in 10.
I don't know that I'm one to talk about life cycles of games, etc, but I'm going to anyway. See, WoW has been around for a while, in gaming life terms. I've been playing for over two years now, I believe, and others for over 6 (or is it 7?, I forget). There will be more content patches for Cataclysm, and most likely one or more expansions. Many people have asked the question before, "when will WoW reach its end?", I guess I'd like to pose the possibility that it will do so via Croatoan.
No, I don't think that the community will depart peacefully and simply migrate to another game with nothing but a word etched into a tree. I believe that WoW will suffer the fate of a demoic virus, with one person infecting the next until all are driven crazy and go off to play some other new game, but remain infected still. I wouldn't claim that this will happen to everyone, I guess what I'm saying is that WoW won't go quietly.
Believe it or not, as for myself I mostly provide anecdotes to prove a point, but from my first day to today there is more hostility in WoW among the players. In a simple BG the other day, I sat staring at the BG chat more than anything (well not really, but I did read a lot of it), I noticed how much people were yelling at each other and blaming one another for our failures. Other examples are horror pug stories, which increased x100 since the inception of LFD, largely due to the fact that a significantly larger population was now grouping with random strangers, thereby causing statistics to amplify what was already there. Meaning, there were already bad pugs before LFD, but since so many more people were running pugs, and raids became more pug friendly, there were just more horror stories to listen to.
But don't worry so much about what others think, what have you seen with your own eyes? Have you seen more abusive language, more blatant disrespect for other people based on random, uncomprehensible motivations? Surely not everyone is infected with Croatoan, but it's starting to spread. More people means more things happen, both good and bad. But just as the news reports bad stories, the bad experiences get amplified in our minds due to the emotional effect it has on us. The more emotional we get, the less rational, the more susceptible we become to negative influences.
Perhaps we will respond in kind, fall victim to the bait set by the trolls and in so doing, become deformed, grow tusks, and spew illogical hate over something that we would otherwise deem meaningless. Or maybe there are many good people, who upon sensing the Croatoan virus crawl up their arms over their skin will wish to dash to the decontamiation area below Gnomeregan and cleanse themselves of the filth, after which they will also decide that the Croatoan people are much more friendly than the imposing English empire - i.e. will find another game to play and do so quietly.
Perhaps what will be left at the ending days of WoW will be nothing but infected Croatoan people, oddly working together for some demented goal. The devs, upon seeing a population of demons, posessed by the common goal to end all life, will flip the switch, causing the infected to shout to high heaven for the crime of having their beloved game stripped from them. News flash with Brian Williams reports that Blizzard Entertainment suddenly and without warning, turned off all servers, shutting down the most popular MMO in history. Upon sending a field reporter to Blizzard headquarters, nobody was there to greet them.
Slowly the reporter and camera crew will walk into the Blizzard offices, and finding them empty will find their way into the server room. On a screen, still turned on, will be one word flashing the reporter in the face: CROATOAN.
"Well Brian," the reporter will say, "It seems that WoW has gone the way of the Roanoke colony of the late 16th century. If our insider reports are correct, WoW failed due to a massive community infection. Some made it safely out to play other games, some have disappeared and may never be seen in the MMO community again, and the host of the infected are outside burning down our TV van. Odd indeed are all these things, but I was told there were signs. Signs of an infection, but Blizzard only applied patches, never a healing ointment. Well, we don't know what's next, nor how many will participate in the next 'big thing', but what we do know is that there is no cure for a virus, only treatment of the symptoms."
Malarkey
I love hyperbole, don't you? I don't really think all that will happen, but it's more entertaining than real life. Still, I do believe that Croatoan, in some form, will and has infected many players. It's not as severe as I paint it, but the end result, I believe, is a game that will leave more questions than answers when all is said and done. Will people ever be able to point to what caused WoW to fail? Maybe it will simply grow old and die, a prisoner to improved technology and our insatiable appetite for a more immersive experience. Who knows? But wouldn't it be cool if Blizzard did that, for just one day, leave their workstations and put a sign on their front door: CROATOAN
For one day, as a pratical joke, the reaction that would illicit would be, well, historical.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Questing, Deadmines, Silverpine
Of all the changes since the Shattering, three things have stood out in my mind: Questing, Deadmines, Silverpine. These three things are those I have experienced and I will not commment on something I have not yet seen or done, so here we go.
Questing:
I've done the Human, Gnome, Troll and Undead starting areas. The Human and Undead have some improvements, especially Undead, and each goes by really quickly. The Gnome starting area was cute and had some really good music, while the Troll starting area provided a nice dialogue between Vol'jin and Garrosh but was a bit overloaded with tiki target dummies. All said and done I did enjoy each of them. Perhaps it was only because it was different and I can't see objectively, but I didn't really see anything wrong, I mean they are just starting areas, right?
Questing overall has become compact, orderly, efficient. The new feature where you finish a quest out in the world, can turn it in without going back a million miles to the questgiver and pick up the next one in the chain really adds to the pace of questing and takes away many a long stroll back to the quest hub. This especially becomes prevalent in Silverpine forest, which I'll get to, but can be seen in all areas to different degrees.
A good example of efficient and progressive questing can be seen in the Southern Barrens. You start up north and do some quests bashing alliance forces, then move down to the next camp, then to the next, until finally you reach the Battle Scar at the very south where all the area "PvP" comes to a head and you see the tensions between Alliance and Horde in their full glory. It was a fun trek as no quest hub held me questing in an area for too long, it was planned well enough so that by the time I'm done I've completed the 5 levels the zone is intended you to pass through.
Some may say it goes to fast and an Exp nerf needs to be put in place, I'll leave that argument for others to make. For myself I'm able, for what I've seen so far, to go through a zone and see it's full story (good or bad), from beginning to end. That's something that I've never done before, so in that sense I see that Questing has improved.
Deadmines:
I wasn't expecting it to be any different than the old one, as I believed the changes were only meant for the Heroic lvl 85 version. So it was a fun surprise to see the deadmines changed. Quest givers are inside the instance, at the beginning (and appear at the end INSIDE the instance), which makes it convenient for sure. Perhaps the best thing was after we downed the first boss I see in party chat "wtf are monkeys doing here? lol". Yeah, monkeys with pick axes in the Deadmines, it was beautiful to see and absolutely hilarious.
All boss fights are changed, and each one is challenging in its own right. Improved boss mechanics, a little coordination is required to keep everyone alive, and at the pinnacle of it all to see Cookie the murloc jump into his cauldron and throw food at everyone was a sight I shall never forget. Oh yeah, there was a big bad Worgen on the boat that makes everything go foggy...really cool fight.
The changes are terriffic, really a fun experience to go through. Having to dodge cannon balls to dodging loaves of bread make the Deadmines my new favorite low-level dungeon.
Silverpine:
Captivating story line, fascinating movtives of the Banshee Queen, a stroll through the ruins of Gilneas city, and ultimately to a bugged quest that killed all questlines in the zone make this my most loved and hated new zone.
What angers me most is that this particular quest that's bugged and stopped my new Troll Druid from finishing the story there was bugged in the Beta, on the PTR, and now on live. You would think that Blizzard would have done something about it considering it prevents people from seeing all the climactic events of the zone, but hey, why worry when you're getting paid, right?
That said, the zone had all the great elements of the new questing mechanics that any other zone had. All the worgen you get to kill really makes you starting thinking that you're a vampire with a human girlfriend that....uh, really bad tangent, sorry!
If the bugged can get fixed I may say that it's the best new zone in the game, but then again there are a couple dozen zones I haven't tried yet so my opinion really isn't worth much right now.
Let's just get Cataclysm rolling already, I don't like this two week waiting period to experience everything. But until then, there is still much to enjoy, to see and to do.
Questing:
I've done the Human, Gnome, Troll and Undead starting areas. The Human and Undead have some improvements, especially Undead, and each goes by really quickly. The Gnome starting area was cute and had some really good music, while the Troll starting area provided a nice dialogue between Vol'jin and Garrosh but was a bit overloaded with tiki target dummies. All said and done I did enjoy each of them. Perhaps it was only because it was different and I can't see objectively, but I didn't really see anything wrong, I mean they are just starting areas, right?
Questing overall has become compact, orderly, efficient. The new feature where you finish a quest out in the world, can turn it in without going back a million miles to the questgiver and pick up the next one in the chain really adds to the pace of questing and takes away many a long stroll back to the quest hub. This especially becomes prevalent in Silverpine forest, which I'll get to, but can be seen in all areas to different degrees.
A good example of efficient and progressive questing can be seen in the Southern Barrens. You start up north and do some quests bashing alliance forces, then move down to the next camp, then to the next, until finally you reach the Battle Scar at the very south where all the area "PvP" comes to a head and you see the tensions between Alliance and Horde in their full glory. It was a fun trek as no quest hub held me questing in an area for too long, it was planned well enough so that by the time I'm done I've completed the 5 levels the zone is intended you to pass through.
Some may say it goes to fast and an Exp nerf needs to be put in place, I'll leave that argument for others to make. For myself I'm able, for what I've seen so far, to go through a zone and see it's full story (good or bad), from beginning to end. That's something that I've never done before, so in that sense I see that Questing has improved.
Deadmines:
I wasn't expecting it to be any different than the old one, as I believed the changes were only meant for the Heroic lvl 85 version. So it was a fun surprise to see the deadmines changed. Quest givers are inside the instance, at the beginning (and appear at the end INSIDE the instance), which makes it convenient for sure. Perhaps the best thing was after we downed the first boss I see in party chat "wtf are monkeys doing here? lol". Yeah, monkeys with pick axes in the Deadmines, it was beautiful to see and absolutely hilarious.
All boss fights are changed, and each one is challenging in its own right. Improved boss mechanics, a little coordination is required to keep everyone alive, and at the pinnacle of it all to see Cookie the murloc jump into his cauldron and throw food at everyone was a sight I shall never forget. Oh yeah, there was a big bad Worgen on the boat that makes everything go foggy...really cool fight.
The changes are terriffic, really a fun experience to go through. Having to dodge cannon balls to dodging loaves of bread make the Deadmines my new favorite low-level dungeon.
Silverpine:
Captivating story line, fascinating movtives of the Banshee Queen, a stroll through the ruins of Gilneas city, and ultimately to a bugged quest that killed all questlines in the zone make this my most loved and hated new zone.
What angers me most is that this particular quest that's bugged and stopped my new Troll Druid from finishing the story there was bugged in the Beta, on the PTR, and now on live. You would think that Blizzard would have done something about it considering it prevents people from seeing all the climactic events of the zone, but hey, why worry when you're getting paid, right?
That said, the zone had all the great elements of the new questing mechanics that any other zone had. All the worgen you get to kill really makes you starting thinking that you're a vampire with a human girlfriend that....uh, really bad tangent, sorry!
If the bugged can get fixed I may say that it's the best new zone in the game, but then again there are a couple dozen zones I haven't tried yet so my opinion really isn't worth much right now.
Let's just get Cataclysm rolling already, I don't like this two week waiting period to experience everything. But until then, there is still much to enjoy, to see and to do.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
A Vote for Your Spells
It's election day in the USA, proof that I rhyme when I've got the time. That said, I'm not dead, and to the voting booth I go to tell those politicians what I know.
A New Decision Making Paradigm
Imagine a game developing world where the players were given the right to vote on the different spells and talents that their favorite toon has. Wouldn't all Warriors want an attack that could one-shot all raid bosses and feel justified in receiving such a spell? Of course they would, Warriors are arrogant elitists, every single one of them, right? Alright, they are not all like that, but no doubt if Warriors or anyone else had a say in what spells they had every toon would be running around with 100 action bars with 12 spells on each totaling 1,200 spells/abilities/talents.
But if the voting process was highly regulated, like sports betting is in Las Vegas, could there be an instance where player voting could directly determine gameplay in a way that was beneficial? Let's assume that we're all Mages. In my limited experience in Magedom I recall that I got the Blizzard spell fairly early on, around level 20 or thereabouts. Now, Blizzard isn't available to Mages until level 52 (I think). What if this went up for a vote? When would a Mage want Blizzard?
The logical answer is I WANT EVERYTHING AT LEVEL 1. And if not logical then at least predictable. So let's add constraints to the voting equation. You may learn Blizzard at 20, but you will have to give up another damage spell until level 40, which are you willing to give up? Frost Bolt or Fire Bolt? Of course this is just an example, but if you give someone the option of gaining a spell at 20 or 30, I believe 100% will want it at 20. So, you make the voter make compromises, or choose to leave things how the developers want to reshape them. This may or may not work, I don't know exactly, it's just a thought.
Same principle applies to talents. 'At what level do you want Living Bomb'? Well, uh, let me think...LEVEL 1, duh! No, for talents we'll keep certain restrictions that devs place on them, but the option could be that a talent can be moved up higher in the talent tree only if it's accompanied by a nerf to the spell. The vote is yours, and if you choose to move the talent you must accept the consequences.
Interestingly this would create imbalances, and those would be the fault of the player. Despite that, however, players would still find ways to blame the devs for creating a system that gave them, the player, the right to make direct changes via their voting systems, thus the fault still lies with the devs for allowing stupid people to create the game instead of smarter people that it's fun to disagree with.
Voting in changes to spells and talents would be similar to real life voting. With everyone given the chance to vote, people both informed and ignorant, we accept a system that has consequences both good and bad. Then again, some of those consequences are relative, and I'm sure it would act the same in a game. Some people would like the changes, others would hate them. But all would have to accept them to a degree because the system would allow direct player input into the decisions.
How it is now can be useful. Smart people give quality feedback and the devs to their best with it. WoW, just as in RL politics, will always have proponents and opponents, people who like the resulting changes and others who hate them and call for all kinds of changes. I for one am glad I don't have a vote in direct spell or talent changes. But the reason isn't what you think it is. I'm glad because if we, the players, did have a say, I would be angry with some idiot who was able to get enough people fired up over something stupid and influenced them to vote in a direction that I would disagree with. But then that's sorta how I feel about real life voting. I'm glad everyone has the right in my country (over 18 years of age), but I wish that a few of those would just stay home. Not because I disagree with them, but because they are too stupid to know even the names of the people running for office. How I would hate it if trolls had a say in my talent tree.
The system may not be perfect, in life or WoW, but both serve their respective populations well. In WoW it's better to keep the players involved but not given direct control. In RL it's good to give everyone a voice, no matter how stupid or uninformed they are. You see, in a game it does not matter if there is a Big Brother, because that super power is not bent on destroying my will to choose. The devs really are trying to make a good game, whether we think it's good is another quesiton. They try because they love to make games, it's what they do. In life, if my voice was taken away and Big Brother established, making ALL my choices for me, my life would have little variety, no creativity and even less meaning. Both systems work well...well enough.
I vote to have no vote in the games I play! Give me a voice, but don't make it binding.
Political (Tangent)
Youngin' people 18-25 will only vote at a 30% clip this election season...if we're lucky. Young people just don't care, coupled with the fact that they don't know as much as they think they do. Oh, don't look at me that way, but the reality is that the longer you live two things can happen: 1) Biases become more biased, you become entrenched in traditions for the sake of tradition, or 2) Experience shows you the differences between rehtoric and reality. From that position we base our decisions and we vote accordingly. So even though young people are free to fight for what they believe, often they lack perspective of those who have actually lived through more years. That's what I think and I'm sticking to it.
A New Decision Making Paradigm
Imagine a game developing world where the players were given the right to vote on the different spells and talents that their favorite toon has. Wouldn't all Warriors want an attack that could one-shot all raid bosses and feel justified in receiving such a spell? Of course they would, Warriors are arrogant elitists, every single one of them, right? Alright, they are not all like that, but no doubt if Warriors or anyone else had a say in what spells they had every toon would be running around with 100 action bars with 12 spells on each totaling 1,200 spells/abilities/talents.
But if the voting process was highly regulated, like sports betting is in Las Vegas, could there be an instance where player voting could directly determine gameplay in a way that was beneficial? Let's assume that we're all Mages. In my limited experience in Magedom I recall that I got the Blizzard spell fairly early on, around level 20 or thereabouts. Now, Blizzard isn't available to Mages until level 52 (I think). What if this went up for a vote? When would a Mage want Blizzard?
The logical answer is I WANT EVERYTHING AT LEVEL 1. And if not logical then at least predictable. So let's add constraints to the voting equation. You may learn Blizzard at 20, but you will have to give up another damage spell until level 40, which are you willing to give up? Frost Bolt or Fire Bolt? Of course this is just an example, but if you give someone the option of gaining a spell at 20 or 30, I believe 100% will want it at 20. So, you make the voter make compromises, or choose to leave things how the developers want to reshape them. This may or may not work, I don't know exactly, it's just a thought.
Same principle applies to talents. 'At what level do you want Living Bomb'? Well, uh, let me think...LEVEL 1, duh! No, for talents we'll keep certain restrictions that devs place on them, but the option could be that a talent can be moved up higher in the talent tree only if it's accompanied by a nerf to the spell. The vote is yours, and if you choose to move the talent you must accept the consequences.
Interestingly this would create imbalances, and those would be the fault of the player. Despite that, however, players would still find ways to blame the devs for creating a system that gave them, the player, the right to make direct changes via their voting systems, thus the fault still lies with the devs for allowing stupid people to create the game instead of smarter people that it's fun to disagree with.
Voting in changes to spells and talents would be similar to real life voting. With everyone given the chance to vote, people both informed and ignorant, we accept a system that has consequences both good and bad. Then again, some of those consequences are relative, and I'm sure it would act the same in a game. Some people would like the changes, others would hate them. But all would have to accept them to a degree because the system would allow direct player input into the decisions.
How it is now can be useful. Smart people give quality feedback and the devs to their best with it. WoW, just as in RL politics, will always have proponents and opponents, people who like the resulting changes and others who hate them and call for all kinds of changes. I for one am glad I don't have a vote in direct spell or talent changes. But the reason isn't what you think it is. I'm glad because if we, the players, did have a say, I would be angry with some idiot who was able to get enough people fired up over something stupid and influenced them to vote in a direction that I would disagree with. But then that's sorta how I feel about real life voting. I'm glad everyone has the right in my country (over 18 years of age), but I wish that a few of those would just stay home. Not because I disagree with them, but because they are too stupid to know even the names of the people running for office. How I would hate it if trolls had a say in my talent tree.
The system may not be perfect, in life or WoW, but both serve their respective populations well. In WoW it's better to keep the players involved but not given direct control. In RL it's good to give everyone a voice, no matter how stupid or uninformed they are. You see, in a game it does not matter if there is a Big Brother, because that super power is not bent on destroying my will to choose. The devs really are trying to make a good game, whether we think it's good is another quesiton. They try because they love to make games, it's what they do. In life, if my voice was taken away and Big Brother established, making ALL my choices for me, my life would have little variety, no creativity and even less meaning. Both systems work well...well enough.
I vote to have no vote in the games I play! Give me a voice, but don't make it binding.
Political (Tangent)
Youngin' people 18-25 will only vote at a 30% clip this election season...if we're lucky. Young people just don't care, coupled with the fact that they don't know as much as they think they do. Oh, don't look at me that way, but the reality is that the longer you live two things can happen: 1) Biases become more biased, you become entrenched in traditions for the sake of tradition, or 2) Experience shows you the differences between rehtoric and reality. From that position we base our decisions and we vote accordingly. So even though young people are free to fight for what they believe, often they lack perspective of those who have actually lived through more years. That's what I think and I'm sticking to it.
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Ultimate Troll Debate Guide
(Disclaimer: The following post is...oh, forget it. I've got nothing to apologize for. Enjoy!)
Teacher: What is a Troll?
Student #1: (Raising hand) A Troll is a mythological creature, believed to live in mountains, caves, or rocks. They are big, ugly, and stupid, and believed to turn to stone from contact with direct sunlight. Trolls can be man eaters, but they will usually go for any sort of meat, including Dwarf & Hobbit meat (the best way to cook them, however, is still up for debate).
Student #2: Pfft, student #1 is a real kiss-butt lol!
Student #3: As student #2 nicely describes, a Troll, sometimes known as an Internet Troll, is somebody who makes inflammatory comments on internet discussion forums, chat rooms or blogs. The primary goal of the Internet Troll is to provoke an emotional response from other readers.
Student #2: LOL noob #1, you just got pwnd!
Teacher: Thank you class, very well put #3. #1, you are correct also, but that is not the kind of troll we will be discussing today. I would like to take the opportunity to teach you, class, how to best formulate the most effective and logical responses to a Troll in an attempt to once and for all win the debate against them.
Student #2: This is so gay!
Teacher: On that note, shall we begin?
I. IDENTIFICATION & NOTIFICATION
a. The first step in the process is to identify a Troll. Currently, WoW allows users to /Ignore people for whatever reason they choose. Another player could be an ex-girlfriend, a bookie always asking you when you are going to pay him back, your 6th grade teacher (eew!), or in some cases Trolls, whose posts in trade chat are abhorrent to the point that you refuse to read the refuse the Troll is spewing. What we’re going to implement is another list, in addition to Friends and Ignore, it will be a Troll list.
b. A Troll List will help you separate people into categories, you know, just like segregation used to do. The point that 20% of the accounts on any given realm have placed any toon of another, singular account on their Troll list, that account, including all his/her toons, will be branded with a huge Scarlet T – for Troll. When they post in any in-game chat (trade, party, raid, etc) their name and post will appear in bright Scarlet. In this manner, any consistent trolls can be easily identified, no matter which toon they play on because it will be able to distinguish the originating account.
II. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
a. Branding a Troll is the first and most important step into effectively debating them. The second step is to gather information on the Troll. Starting with Enhanced RealID. Anyone branded with a Scarlet T will be required to purchase the Enhanced RealID tool in order to continue playing on an active account.
i. NOTE: Here we must note that Trolls are infamous for getting around silly things like “paid accounts”, so Blizzard has created the best authentication tool to date to cope with this issue. The Cyborg Genesis project was launched in the year 2007, unknown to the public. It’s goal, to infiltrate a person’s home with nanobots capable of infecting any human in the world who plays a Blizzard game with an electronic tracer. This tracer activates when the person speaks into a microphone or types on a computer. Any where in the world a Troll can attempt to login, under any free trial account, and he will be recognized. The nanobots will only be activated when a player is branded as a Troll. Thus solving the issue of Trolls using other people’s accounts or switching accounts or using free trial accounts to harass the playing public. This project, now unveiled, will allow us to further our discussion on the Enhanced RealID.
b. Enhanced RealID gathers all personal information on the Troll. Name, age, home and cell phone, address, height, weight, hair color, eye color, personality traits, family members and all their personal info, credit card information, social security # info, education, etc, etc, etc. All this information will be viewable to those who have placed this Troll on their Troll list. Knowledge is Power. And handed the keys to the knowledge of the personal information of the Troll, you are now in a far more powerful position to debate with Trolls than ever before.
III. THE SECRET POLICE
a. One of the great inventions of our age was the implementation by many governments of secret police, perfected by the Soviet Union in the 1970’s and 80’s. Now out of a job, former members of the secret police are available to you, the WoW player, at no cost except your soul. These secret police men and women (because women can be evil too) will be sent to the home of the Troll and can engage in a myriad of activities per your orders. See the following list:
i. Kidnapping
ii. Blackmail
iii. Torture
iv. Impersonating your favorite federal agency (IRS, SEC, Homeland Security, etc)
v. Brainwashing
vi. Singing show tunes on the front lawn of the Troll night and day
vii. Repossessing of home or vehicle
viii. Infiltrating the Trolls place of work, becoming their boss, firing them then black-balling the Troll in his/her community to deny them further employment opportunities
ix. Blogging (which falls under torture and brainwashing)
b. These secret police will do what Blizzard has never done, punish those guilty of Trolling. Just don’t ask them about their specific tactics, it’s a legal thing.
IV. ENTER THE DEBATE
a. By following the above steps, you have now placed yourself in a powerful position to debate the trolls in your chosen chat channel. You will see guaranteed results in the form of…no more Trolling, Trolling with apologies attached, Trolling with unfinished sentences (See Secret Police), and Trolling with beautiful, poetic language that fills your heart with such joy that you take that branded Troll off your Troll list.
b. You have now guaranteed yourself a victory over all Trolls. If you find that your success is accompanied by a never-ending guilt for having ruined the personal lives of one or dozens of otherwise innocent people, just remember that you are having more fun than you ever were before, and all that water-boarding was TOTALLY WORTH IT!
Teacher: What is a Troll?
Student #1: (Raising hand) A Troll is a mythological creature, believed to live in mountains, caves, or rocks. They are big, ugly, and stupid, and believed to turn to stone from contact with direct sunlight. Trolls can be man eaters, but they will usually go for any sort of meat, including Dwarf & Hobbit meat (the best way to cook them, however, is still up for debate).
Student #2: Pfft, student #1 is a real kiss-butt lol!
Student #3: As student #2 nicely describes, a Troll, sometimes known as an Internet Troll, is somebody who makes inflammatory comments on internet discussion forums, chat rooms or blogs. The primary goal of the Internet Troll is to provoke an emotional response from other readers.
Student #2: LOL noob #1, you just got pwnd!
Teacher: Thank you class, very well put #3. #1, you are correct also, but that is not the kind of troll we will be discussing today. I would like to take the opportunity to teach you, class, how to best formulate the most effective and logical responses to a Troll in an attempt to once and for all win the debate against them.
Student #2: This is so gay!
Teacher: On that note, shall we begin?
I. IDENTIFICATION & NOTIFICATION
a. The first step in the process is to identify a Troll. Currently, WoW allows users to /Ignore people for whatever reason they choose. Another player could be an ex-girlfriend, a bookie always asking you when you are going to pay him back, your 6th grade teacher (eew!), or in some cases Trolls, whose posts in trade chat are abhorrent to the point that you refuse to read the refuse the Troll is spewing. What we’re going to implement is another list, in addition to Friends and Ignore, it will be a Troll list.
b. A Troll List will help you separate people into categories, you know, just like segregation used to do. The point that 20% of the accounts on any given realm have placed any toon of another, singular account on their Troll list, that account, including all his/her toons, will be branded with a huge Scarlet T – for Troll. When they post in any in-game chat (trade, party, raid, etc) their name and post will appear in bright Scarlet. In this manner, any consistent trolls can be easily identified, no matter which toon they play on because it will be able to distinguish the originating account.
II. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
a. Branding a Troll is the first and most important step into effectively debating them. The second step is to gather information on the Troll. Starting with Enhanced RealID. Anyone branded with a Scarlet T will be required to purchase the Enhanced RealID tool in order to continue playing on an active account.
i. NOTE: Here we must note that Trolls are infamous for getting around silly things like “paid accounts”, so Blizzard has created the best authentication tool to date to cope with this issue. The Cyborg Genesis project was launched in the year 2007, unknown to the public. It’s goal, to infiltrate a person’s home with nanobots capable of infecting any human in the world who plays a Blizzard game with an electronic tracer. This tracer activates when the person speaks into a microphone or types on a computer. Any where in the world a Troll can attempt to login, under any free trial account, and he will be recognized. The nanobots will only be activated when a player is branded as a Troll. Thus solving the issue of Trolls using other people’s accounts or switching accounts or using free trial accounts to harass the playing public. This project, now unveiled, will allow us to further our discussion on the Enhanced RealID.
b. Enhanced RealID gathers all personal information on the Troll. Name, age, home and cell phone, address, height, weight, hair color, eye color, personality traits, family members and all their personal info, credit card information, social security # info, education, etc, etc, etc. All this information will be viewable to those who have placed this Troll on their Troll list. Knowledge is Power. And handed the keys to the knowledge of the personal information of the Troll, you are now in a far more powerful position to debate with Trolls than ever before.
III. THE SECRET POLICE
a. One of the great inventions of our age was the implementation by many governments of secret police, perfected by the Soviet Union in the 1970’s and 80’s. Now out of a job, former members of the secret police are available to you, the WoW player, at no cost except your soul. These secret police men and women (because women can be evil too) will be sent to the home of the Troll and can engage in a myriad of activities per your orders. See the following list:
i. Kidnapping
ii. Blackmail
iii. Torture
iv. Impersonating your favorite federal agency (IRS, SEC, Homeland Security, etc)
v. Brainwashing
vi. Singing show tunes on the front lawn of the Troll night and day
vii. Repossessing of home or vehicle
viii. Infiltrating the Trolls place of work, becoming their boss, firing them then black-balling the Troll in his/her community to deny them further employment opportunities
ix. Blogging (which falls under torture and brainwashing)
b. These secret police will do what Blizzard has never done, punish those guilty of Trolling. Just don’t ask them about their specific tactics, it’s a legal thing.
IV. ENTER THE DEBATE
a. By following the above steps, you have now placed yourself in a powerful position to debate the trolls in your chosen chat channel. You will see guaranteed results in the form of…no more Trolling, Trolling with apologies attached, Trolling with unfinished sentences (See Secret Police), and Trolling with beautiful, poetic language that fills your heart with such joy that you take that branded Troll off your Troll list.
b. You have now guaranteed yourself a victory over all Trolls. If you find that your success is accompanied by a never-ending guilt for having ruined the personal lives of one or dozens of otherwise innocent people, just remember that you are having more fun than you ever were before, and all that water-boarding was TOTALLY WORTH IT!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Fighting the Need to be Perfect
I give full credit to Larisa for providing me with a topic that I've been inspired to write today. There are some things that ruffle my invisible feathers (not imaginary, I know I have them, I believe I can fly AND touch the sky), and player behavior is one of them. I am no expert in human behavior, and I'm pretty sure nobody else is either, so let's just have a nice little chat about things we observe, and try and make connections where possible that make some sense.
Let's talk about Classical Conditioning, a behaviorist model of behaviorism psychology.
"It posited that behavioral tendencies are determined by immediate associations between various environmental stimuli and the degree of pleasure or pain that follows. Behavioral patterns, then, were understood to consist of organisms' conditioned responses to the stimuli in their environment. The stimuli were held to exert influence in proportion to their prior repetition or to the previous intensity of their associated pain or pleasure."
"But I do wish there was some way to turn around this virtual phobia of inefficiency -- this terror of being WRONG -- that we have managed to instill in our player base."
It looks like he is saying that the devs created the stimulus with their development choices, and the players' response to this, the response that is the safest and creates the greatest pleasure, is a community of players afraid to be wrong, to follow the tried and tested wisdom of "cookie cutter" specs, of raid leaders demanding X gear score and Y achievement in order to non-fail their way through a raid. We all know the behavior, we're familiar with it either because we see it constantly in trade chat or we've been subjected to such scrutiny ourselves. We can't deny that the min/maxing attitude has permiated into a majority of the player base at end game. In many it has created a phobia, a fear of being left out for choosing one talent over another, a fear of being WRONG according to those who have the power to decide such things (i.e. raid leaders).
I do not question whether or not the devs have created an environment condusive to these attitudes and behaviors, I think that Larisa has treated that subject nicely, as have many of her wonderful readers/commenters. Many agree that these attitudes have been around for a long time, and there are many factors which led to them. I'd like to take the discussion into a slightly different direction. You see, Ghostcrawler wants to fix the player's attitudes and behaviors. He doesn't want people to feel afraid of talenting the WRONG spec. He doesn't want raid leaders to choose people for a group based on cookie cutter criteria of GS/Achieve/Spec, etc. But...the devs also are afraid to take away some of the environmental conditions, the stimuli, that allows for these behaviors because, in part, the player base has obtained pleasure in many of the changes.
But if GC is right, and the blame is 100% the developers, if they instilled these behaviors in us through their game design, then Classical Conditioning is hard at work in WoW. Personally, I think it's all a big pile of cow dung. Personally, I don't believe myself so conditionable (is that even a word? Well I'm going with it...) as Pavlov's dog. I point to my personal experience here. I think GC takes too much on himself and we, the players, are not as accountable for our behavior as we ought to be.
It's not a lack of choices in talents, it's not min/maxers who instill fear in the new 80 with "inefficient" talents, it's not ONLY the environment, it's a horrifying lack of leadership that is of equal blame of game design which encourages the behavior that GC does not like to see. When I did raid, I came to a point where I was sick of being held to unreasonable gear and achievement standards by pug raid leaders, so I started to raid lead pugs on my own. They were never a steamrolling experience, and there were often wipes and challenges, but never did any group I lead ever fail to complete the goal set out at the beginning of the raid. And in the process I was able to include people that would have otherwise been excluded becuase they did not choose to follow some cookie cutter spec, or other reasons.
What we fail from is bad leadership, ignorant leadership, tyrannical leadership, unreasonable leadership, stubborn leadership, greedy leadership, lazy leadership, need I go on? What we suffer from is people wanting to force other people to play "the right way", or the way that that leader desires, at not only the exclusion of others but outright public demeaning of specs and gs and achieves that are undesireable. I am not talking to any of my readers specifically, but for as much as environment influences the players, it's the players who choose to be led by said influences and whether to reinforce behavior or punish it. (Please read this on reinforcement and punishment, etc, it will help you understand).
What we have is a player base void of sufficient leadership. We need not place blame needlessly or in undue amounts. In such a reciprocal relationship nobody should shoulder all the blame. But let's not hide from a situation just because we're afraid to hurt each others feelings. I do not claim to be a perfect raid leader, nor hold all those qualities which I most desire in a leader. But I have tried to take a stand in the past and learn to become a better leader. I don't say this, again, to suggest that I'm any better than anyone, but at least I know that I have tried to fight against the norm. Can you say the same about yourself? I know some of you can, you've shared your experiences with me before.
Ghostcrawler will never fix the problems of behavior that he sees by tweaking the stimuli connected, to whatever degree you personally believe. No, you can't change a nation all at once, but you can change yourself, and encourage other individuals to do the same. In the process, as individuals change their paradigm, the nation begins to change, but from the inside and not from external stimuli.
I think that there are a lot of people lying comfortably in their shells, capable of doing great things and being great leaders. But timidity gets the best of most of us when faced with an angry mob demanding GS/Achieve/Cookie Cutter Spec. So how will you combat such demands? Not you as in "ya'lls", but you personally. What will you do individually to change the overall tone of raid leadership, pugging, talent specs, etc? Will you fall in line with the least degree of resistance? Many will, it brings pleasure to not have to face conflict. Larisa asked for ideas on what things could change to help the situation. My solution, become a leader. Make the change in yourself and ask others to follow.
How would you respond to local chat that said:
LFM raiders for Tol Barad. I care how you play, not GS or Achieve. I care if you know what you're doing, but don't demand any specific talent combination in your spec. Let's rock this place! Let's be honest with ourselves and with each other. Dont' send tell if you know you are not up to the challenge. But if you are let's join forces and have fun in the process. Who's with me?
Ok, maybe not the most eloquent speech, I'm no King Henry V. Leaders, come out of your shells and lead! Show everyone that there are a lot more people than we think with open minds and a willingness to learn and to teach. If GC wants things to change, allow him and the devs to make changes they feel will help (with your suggesions, of course), but YOU have to do your part as well, which may be more important than anything any developer can do.
Let's talk about Classical Conditioning, a behaviorist model of behaviorism psychology.
"It posited that behavioral tendencies are determined by immediate associations between various environmental stimuli and the degree of pleasure or pain that follows. Behavioral patterns, then, were understood to consist of organisms' conditioned responses to the stimuli in their environment. The stimuli were held to exert influence in proportion to their prior repetition or to the previous intensity of their associated pain or pleasure."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
To put it simply, stimuli > response. Ghostcrawler is apparently taking the Classical Conditioning approach by taking blame for the player base's phobiaa of being "WRONG" when choosing our talents, creating inefficient specs that are not desireable to many raid leaders.
"But I do wish there was some way to turn around this virtual phobia of inefficiency -- this terror of being WRONG -- that we have managed to instill in our player base."
It looks like he is saying that the devs created the stimulus with their development choices, and the players' response to this, the response that is the safest and creates the greatest pleasure, is a community of players afraid to be wrong, to follow the tried and tested wisdom of "cookie cutter" specs, of raid leaders demanding X gear score and Y achievement in order to non-fail their way through a raid. We all know the behavior, we're familiar with it either because we see it constantly in trade chat or we've been subjected to such scrutiny ourselves. We can't deny that the min/maxing attitude has permiated into a majority of the player base at end game. In many it has created a phobia, a fear of being left out for choosing one talent over another, a fear of being WRONG according to those who have the power to decide such things (i.e. raid leaders).
I do not question whether or not the devs have created an environment condusive to these attitudes and behaviors, I think that Larisa has treated that subject nicely, as have many of her wonderful readers/commenters. Many agree that these attitudes have been around for a long time, and there are many factors which led to them. I'd like to take the discussion into a slightly different direction. You see, Ghostcrawler wants to fix the player's attitudes and behaviors. He doesn't want people to feel afraid of talenting the WRONG spec. He doesn't want raid leaders to choose people for a group based on cookie cutter criteria of GS/Achieve/Spec, etc. But...the devs also are afraid to take away some of the environmental conditions, the stimuli, that allows for these behaviors because, in part, the player base has obtained pleasure in many of the changes.
But if GC is right, and the blame is 100% the developers, if they instilled these behaviors in us through their game design, then Classical Conditioning is hard at work in WoW. Personally, I think it's all a big pile of cow dung. Personally, I don't believe myself so conditionable (is that even a word? Well I'm going with it...) as Pavlov's dog. I point to my personal experience here. I think GC takes too much on himself and we, the players, are not as accountable for our behavior as we ought to be.
It's not a lack of choices in talents, it's not min/maxers who instill fear in the new 80 with "inefficient" talents, it's not ONLY the environment, it's a horrifying lack of leadership that is of equal blame of game design which encourages the behavior that GC does not like to see. When I did raid, I came to a point where I was sick of being held to unreasonable gear and achievement standards by pug raid leaders, so I started to raid lead pugs on my own. They were never a steamrolling experience, and there were often wipes and challenges, but never did any group I lead ever fail to complete the goal set out at the beginning of the raid. And in the process I was able to include people that would have otherwise been excluded becuase they did not choose to follow some cookie cutter spec, or other reasons.
What we fail from is bad leadership, ignorant leadership, tyrannical leadership, unreasonable leadership, stubborn leadership, greedy leadership, lazy leadership, need I go on? What we suffer from is people wanting to force other people to play "the right way", or the way that that leader desires, at not only the exclusion of others but outright public demeaning of specs and gs and achieves that are undesireable. I am not talking to any of my readers specifically, but for as much as environment influences the players, it's the players who choose to be led by said influences and whether to reinforce behavior or punish it. (Please read this on reinforcement and punishment, etc, it will help you understand).
What we have is a player base void of sufficient leadership. We need not place blame needlessly or in undue amounts. In such a reciprocal relationship nobody should shoulder all the blame. But let's not hide from a situation just because we're afraid to hurt each others feelings. I do not claim to be a perfect raid leader, nor hold all those qualities which I most desire in a leader. But I have tried to take a stand in the past and learn to become a better leader. I don't say this, again, to suggest that I'm any better than anyone, but at least I know that I have tried to fight against the norm. Can you say the same about yourself? I know some of you can, you've shared your experiences with me before.
Ghostcrawler will never fix the problems of behavior that he sees by tweaking the stimuli connected, to whatever degree you personally believe. No, you can't change a nation all at once, but you can change yourself, and encourage other individuals to do the same. In the process, as individuals change their paradigm, the nation begins to change, but from the inside and not from external stimuli.
I think that there are a lot of people lying comfortably in their shells, capable of doing great things and being great leaders. But timidity gets the best of most of us when faced with an angry mob demanding GS/Achieve/Cookie Cutter Spec. So how will you combat such demands? Not you as in "ya'lls", but you personally. What will you do individually to change the overall tone of raid leadership, pugging, talent specs, etc? Will you fall in line with the least degree of resistance? Many will, it brings pleasure to not have to face conflict. Larisa asked for ideas on what things could change to help the situation. My solution, become a leader. Make the change in yourself and ask others to follow.
How would you respond to local chat that said:
LFM raiders for Tol Barad. I care how you play, not GS or Achieve. I care if you know what you're doing, but don't demand any specific talent combination in your spec. Let's rock this place! Let's be honest with ourselves and with each other. Dont' send tell if you know you are not up to the challenge. But if you are let's join forces and have fun in the process. Who's with me?
Ok, maybe not the most eloquent speech, I'm no King Henry V. Leaders, come out of your shells and lead! Show everyone that there are a lot more people than we think with open minds and a willingness to learn and to teach. If GC wants things to change, allow him and the devs to make changes they feel will help (with your suggesions, of course), but YOU have to do your part as well, which may be more important than anything any developer can do.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Creative Inspiration
Where does inspiration come from? I refer to creative inspiration, the kind that wakes up the mind of the artist, author, game maker, and the like to produce amazing works that is enjoyed by so many. Do people use stepping stones to lift themselves up high enough to see over the haze of the normal human mind into a universe of endless possibility? Or does creative inspiration come from some alternate universe through mystical inter-dimensional travel mechanisms that serve to enlighten the mind of us paltry human beings?
I know that there are a lot of people out there that make the attempt to create the ‘perfect’ game, whether it’s a MMO or FPS or even board game (yes, board games still exist in the 21st century). In their attempts they all fall short due to the seemingly endless definitions of perfection that are both a blessing and a curse to those who make and those who play the games. No game has been made perfect, at least according to somebody. Still, despite the failure to achieve perfection, and our recognition of imperfection, we play away at games that are surprisingly humorous, clever, artistic, intelligent, immersive, well thought, and even ingenious. The creativity that goes into a game such as World of Warcraft is no less impressive to me than the creativity of Beethoven’s 5th symphony.
(Although, I admit that Mozart writing his first symphony at age 7 is more impressive than any game I’ve played, but not in content, simply for the fact that he was frickin’ 7 years old.)
I have never been a stout follower of WoW lore, but I have started reading more things here and there lately and have come to really appreciate the depth to which writers go to create motive and move stories forward and introduce heroes and villains that I can both love and hate; and doing all this while remaining consistent. It’s incredibly difficult to maintain consistency in a fantasy story, as the writer’s mind is naturally engaged in ‘making things up’, there can easily be mistakes and slips of the mind which produce contradictory realities that require reconciliation in order for the reader to be satisfied. Again, there may have been inconsistencies in WoW lore that I know not of, but for the most part it’s amazingly consistent.
I believe that creativity is made easier, or should I say that inspiration flows more freely where there is already intelligence and knowledge. I used to work for a large mortgage company (accounting dept) and brought to the company certain skills and knowledge that their current staff of accountants didn’t have in the same degrees. I knew a lot more about the mortgage industry in general, and technically I could program applications like Excel to interface with our accounting software to significantly speed up certain processes and improve accuracy to near perfection. I used my knowledge in creating things that could not have been created by others at the company, not because they weren’t smart enough, but because my specific knowledge and skill set made it possible for me to see things from a different perspective and therefore find different answers to the company’s problems.
The same is true for any creator (of anything), and so Blizzard doesn’t just hire idiots or slouches that live in their mom’s basement to design their games. They, I assume, hire people who have demonstrated competence and specific knowledge in the fields necessary to do their jobs. Without this specific knowledge, these developers could not do the jobs that were needed. Their perspective would be limited, and therefore so would their ability to solve problems and receive creative inspiration.
Don’t think, however, that I would ever suggest that knowledge is the source of creative inspiration, but it is a factor. The other side of creativity comes from a place that I cannot explain or rationalize. I believe that everyone is born with some particular talent(s). These talents can be improved upon, additional talents can be developed through hard work, but there is ultimately some aspect of a person’s talent set that cannot be explained. How did it flash into somebody’s head to create a computer game that thousands or millions could play at the same time, could interact with each other in various ways, all the while throwing around fire balls, lightening bolts, and shadowy darkness at “bad guys” and, sometimes (just for fun), at each other?
I realize that MMO’s like WoW are part of a process, where through time one game or story has evolved into another, and where they merged the ideas merged, and the next thing you know we have what is available to the market today in the many computer games that we enjoy so much. All of them born out of creative inspiration of somebody, taken by another and added upon or altered depending on the second person’s own innate creativity.
I stand in awe of the super creative people of this world. Those engineers who can build giant dams and bridges and buildings that touch the clouds. Our world and our games are born out of the vision of many, and enjoyed by so many. I speak a lot about the vision of great authors or artists, but in that I must include those that first created the computer games that we now enjoy, and those that continue in the wonderful traditions of creative inspiration that permeate the game making world.
There are so many out there who will decry game developers for not making the perfect game, or at least one that nearly attains perfection. True, some may not contain the creativity necessary to hold my attention, but all of them are born out of somebody’s creative mind, and that inspiration is something to be praised. It’s not as easy as people think to create something truly great, or else great would be common place and no longer great. There was only one Mozart, one Tolkien, one Rowling. There are many game developers, all of differing skill and knowledge and talent levels. Not all games will be great, it is a human impossibility, and no game will ever be perfect, that’s yet another.
Speaking for myself I will continue to play games that I view have achieved a particular level of greatness according to may tastes. To me, WoW isn’t perfect and never will be. But I am in awe of the creative inspiration that seems to occur on a regular basis that that game company. All business decisions aside, their creative minds cannot be insulted, and I am grateful to be able to live in this day in age where they and many other creative minds can give us entertainment worth talking about.
I know that there are a lot of people out there that make the attempt to create the ‘perfect’ game, whether it’s a MMO or FPS or even board game (yes, board games still exist in the 21st century). In their attempts they all fall short due to the seemingly endless definitions of perfection that are both a blessing and a curse to those who make and those who play the games. No game has been made perfect, at least according to somebody. Still, despite the failure to achieve perfection, and our recognition of imperfection, we play away at games that are surprisingly humorous, clever, artistic, intelligent, immersive, well thought, and even ingenious. The creativity that goes into a game such as World of Warcraft is no less impressive to me than the creativity of Beethoven’s 5th symphony.
(Although, I admit that Mozart writing his first symphony at age 7 is more impressive than any game I’ve played, but not in content, simply for the fact that he was frickin’ 7 years old.)
I have never been a stout follower of WoW lore, but I have started reading more things here and there lately and have come to really appreciate the depth to which writers go to create motive and move stories forward and introduce heroes and villains that I can both love and hate; and doing all this while remaining consistent. It’s incredibly difficult to maintain consistency in a fantasy story, as the writer’s mind is naturally engaged in ‘making things up’, there can easily be mistakes and slips of the mind which produce contradictory realities that require reconciliation in order for the reader to be satisfied. Again, there may have been inconsistencies in WoW lore that I know not of, but for the most part it’s amazingly consistent.
I believe that creativity is made easier, or should I say that inspiration flows more freely where there is already intelligence and knowledge. I used to work for a large mortgage company (accounting dept) and brought to the company certain skills and knowledge that their current staff of accountants didn’t have in the same degrees. I knew a lot more about the mortgage industry in general, and technically I could program applications like Excel to interface with our accounting software to significantly speed up certain processes and improve accuracy to near perfection. I used my knowledge in creating things that could not have been created by others at the company, not because they weren’t smart enough, but because my specific knowledge and skill set made it possible for me to see things from a different perspective and therefore find different answers to the company’s problems.
The same is true for any creator (of anything), and so Blizzard doesn’t just hire idiots or slouches that live in their mom’s basement to design their games. They, I assume, hire people who have demonstrated competence and specific knowledge in the fields necessary to do their jobs. Without this specific knowledge, these developers could not do the jobs that were needed. Their perspective would be limited, and therefore so would their ability to solve problems and receive creative inspiration.
Don’t think, however, that I would ever suggest that knowledge is the source of creative inspiration, but it is a factor. The other side of creativity comes from a place that I cannot explain or rationalize. I believe that everyone is born with some particular talent(s). These talents can be improved upon, additional talents can be developed through hard work, but there is ultimately some aspect of a person’s talent set that cannot be explained. How did it flash into somebody’s head to create a computer game that thousands or millions could play at the same time, could interact with each other in various ways, all the while throwing around fire balls, lightening bolts, and shadowy darkness at “bad guys” and, sometimes (just for fun), at each other?
I realize that MMO’s like WoW are part of a process, where through time one game or story has evolved into another, and where they merged the ideas merged, and the next thing you know we have what is available to the market today in the many computer games that we enjoy so much. All of them born out of creative inspiration of somebody, taken by another and added upon or altered depending on the second person’s own innate creativity.
I stand in awe of the super creative people of this world. Those engineers who can build giant dams and bridges and buildings that touch the clouds. Our world and our games are born out of the vision of many, and enjoyed by so many. I speak a lot about the vision of great authors or artists, but in that I must include those that first created the computer games that we now enjoy, and those that continue in the wonderful traditions of creative inspiration that permeate the game making world.
There are so many out there who will decry game developers for not making the perfect game, or at least one that nearly attains perfection. True, some may not contain the creativity necessary to hold my attention, but all of them are born out of somebody’s creative mind, and that inspiration is something to be praised. It’s not as easy as people think to create something truly great, or else great would be common place and no longer great. There was only one Mozart, one Tolkien, one Rowling. There are many game developers, all of differing skill and knowledge and talent levels. Not all games will be great, it is a human impossibility, and no game will ever be perfect, that’s yet another.
Speaking for myself I will continue to play games that I view have achieved a particular level of greatness according to may tastes. To me, WoW isn’t perfect and never will be. But I am in awe of the creative inspiration that seems to occur on a regular basis that that game company. All business decisions aside, their creative minds cannot be insulted, and I am grateful to be able to live in this day in age where they and many other creative minds can give us entertainment worth talking about.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Data
I am not a professional researcher. I am not a professional historian. I am a professional accountant with experience in many different industries. One, in particular, relates to this post by Larisa about whether WoW is really dying. The industry I speak of and my part in it is the Mortgage & Real Estate.
I'd like to say first that "It's not my fault!" Seriously, I had nothing to do with you buying a house you couldn't afford thinking that it would appreciate 200% over the next 12 months but now you're upside down on your loan and can't sell your house and can't afford the higher interest rate from the 3/1 Arm you bought. It's not really your fault either, I just like playing with people.
I think the big difference between Blizzard and the individual who claims that WoW is dying is Data, or information gained through years of research. The big difference between the loan officer who was trying to sell you a loan you couldn't afford and you was information...they had it, you didn't, but they too had a family to feed.
If you want to know all the reasons for the real estate collapse, I know the circumstances more intimately than most but won't spell it all out in tedium here. My particular position with this billion dollar mortgage bank was one where I and my supervisors had a lot of data. And as it was my and others' jobs to forecast and interpret this data, I did my very best.
I recall a beautiful afternoon here in Las Vegas when I went to lunch with our CFO, Controller and other accounting friends. This was about a year before things started to circle the drain, a time of tremendous growth, tremendous risk, and tremendous profits. There had been signs, however, signs that I noticed a couple years before. Underwriters of loans began to question the results of home Appraisers. But when appraisers stood their ground and a second confirmed the higher than usual home value, underwriters were forced to allow the loans to be processed.
One point of data led to another, until this fateful lunch outing when I told my bosses that our business was bound to fail. "It's just too risky, and nobody is paying attention to the underlying values of these mortgages, which are being sold to people who can't afford them and bought by banks who have desintegrating purchase standards. There's no way these loans can be pooled unless there's collusion on the secondary markets." Come to find out, there was (separate topic). My CFO started to ask our Secondary Marketing manager to look closely at the loans being sold to our investors. And as the year waned our CFO brougt data to our owners and told them that we needed to pull back on the risky loans and form a more traditional model that would keep us in business.
One February morning, Valentines day I think it was, we all came into work and an email was waiting for us.
"We're closed. Go home. No jobs for anyone."
We had data, we had viable and verifiable information upon which we based our council. That the owners didn't listen was their choice.
Re: the immenent death of WoW, it's my simple belief that they, a multi-billion dollar public company, has more information and data than any single player in the world. No matter how smart you may think you are or how much you think you know, Blizzard simply has more resources to collect the data they need to base decisions on.
Does that mean that all their decisions are good or the right business path? Absolutely not. But having been a part of a billion dollar business and having access to ALL the company data, I can with confidence say that I would rather trust people with the information than those without. I am not referring to concepts and ideas of game mechanics, lore, etc, I'm referring to the "big picture" data and information. People don't tend to choose to NOT play WoW because of the chat window (which was seeminly messed up this last patch), no, I'm not a single voter when it comes to WoW, and I'd venture to guess that most of you aren't either.
Blizzard has the data and believes that they will sell X # of copies of Cataclysm, have X # of subscribers during months Y & Z. They monitor that data and use it as a PART of their decision making process. And so far the decisions that they have made have led to increased popularity and access, not less.
As I hinted at before, I don't trust their data 100% because there are always variables in product creation and general business practices that will alter the expected course. But given the vast amounts of research they have done, I dare say that they know more than you or me put together. WoW isn't dying the way I guess some people have claimed for the past few years. It is losing individuals, but I guarantee Blizz isn't basing their decision on the whims of some individuals, they have the big picture in front of them, something nobody out there except for them can claim to have.
So let's just see if the choices they implement upcoming and in Cataclysm make this game more or less popular. As of now it's all just guess work.
I'd like to say first that "It's not my fault!" Seriously, I had nothing to do with you buying a house you couldn't afford thinking that it would appreciate 200% over the next 12 months but now you're upside down on your loan and can't sell your house and can't afford the higher interest rate from the 3/1 Arm you bought. It's not really your fault either, I just like playing with people.
I think the big difference between Blizzard and the individual who claims that WoW is dying is Data, or information gained through years of research. The big difference between the loan officer who was trying to sell you a loan you couldn't afford and you was information...they had it, you didn't, but they too had a family to feed.
If you want to know all the reasons for the real estate collapse, I know the circumstances more intimately than most but won't spell it all out in tedium here. My particular position with this billion dollar mortgage bank was one where I and my supervisors had a lot of data. And as it was my and others' jobs to forecast and interpret this data, I did my very best.
I recall a beautiful afternoon here in Las Vegas when I went to lunch with our CFO, Controller and other accounting friends. This was about a year before things started to circle the drain, a time of tremendous growth, tremendous risk, and tremendous profits. There had been signs, however, signs that I noticed a couple years before. Underwriters of loans began to question the results of home Appraisers. But when appraisers stood their ground and a second confirmed the higher than usual home value, underwriters were forced to allow the loans to be processed.
One point of data led to another, until this fateful lunch outing when I told my bosses that our business was bound to fail. "It's just too risky, and nobody is paying attention to the underlying values of these mortgages, which are being sold to people who can't afford them and bought by banks who have desintegrating purchase standards. There's no way these loans can be pooled unless there's collusion on the secondary markets." Come to find out, there was (separate topic). My CFO started to ask our Secondary Marketing manager to look closely at the loans being sold to our investors. And as the year waned our CFO brougt data to our owners and told them that we needed to pull back on the risky loans and form a more traditional model that would keep us in business.
One February morning, Valentines day I think it was, we all came into work and an email was waiting for us.
"We're closed. Go home. No jobs for anyone."
We had data, we had viable and verifiable information upon which we based our council. That the owners didn't listen was their choice.
Re: the immenent death of WoW, it's my simple belief that they, a multi-billion dollar public company, has more information and data than any single player in the world. No matter how smart you may think you are or how much you think you know, Blizzard simply has more resources to collect the data they need to base decisions on.
Does that mean that all their decisions are good or the right business path? Absolutely not. But having been a part of a billion dollar business and having access to ALL the company data, I can with confidence say that I would rather trust people with the information than those without. I am not referring to concepts and ideas of game mechanics, lore, etc, I'm referring to the "big picture" data and information. People don't tend to choose to NOT play WoW because of the chat window (which was seeminly messed up this last patch), no, I'm not a single voter when it comes to WoW, and I'd venture to guess that most of you aren't either.
Blizzard has the data and believes that they will sell X # of copies of Cataclysm, have X # of subscribers during months Y & Z. They monitor that data and use it as a PART of their decision making process. And so far the decisions that they have made have led to increased popularity and access, not less.
As I hinted at before, I don't trust their data 100% because there are always variables in product creation and general business practices that will alter the expected course. But given the vast amounts of research they have done, I dare say that they know more than you or me put together. WoW isn't dying the way I guess some people have claimed for the past few years. It is losing individuals, but I guarantee Blizz isn't basing their decision on the whims of some individuals, they have the big picture in front of them, something nobody out there except for them can claim to have.
So let's just see if the choices they implement upcoming and in Cataclysm make this game more or less popular. As of now it's all just guess work.
Monday, May 24, 2010
On MMO's, Attitudes, and Other Crap
I've been inspired. Larisa and her pink pig tails brought to my attention (not the first to do it nor the last) the sentiments of a segment of the gaming population that purport that MMO's are in need of a Cataclysm of it's own, as the current menu items are stagnant and on the verge of plunging into oblivion.
I didn't think leaving a comment would allow me to express all my thoughts that wouldn't have her deleting it due to its length, so I'm saying what I think right here. So listen up.
You can check out the article that got Larisa going, and consequently me as well. There is talk about lack of evolution or innovation. Let me quote Wolfshead here so I get it right:
"The only explanation I can fathom for the lack of evolution in the genre is that Blizzard is purposely withholding all of their innovations for their upcoming next gen MMO..."
Let me get this straight, Blizzard is to blame for thousands of other people not being innovative? That would assume that other game developers are paid by Blizzard to not innovate, not yet anyway. This argument assumes that Blizzard is so powerful they control the budgets and development of the entire industry.
I am lucky enough to live in America, and even more fortunate to live on planet Earth (not that I'd have much of a future on Venus or Mars or something). But in my country and in our world there are many intelligent, ambitious, creative, and innovative people who seek to maximize their talentsa, abilities, and sometimes their profit margins to create competitive products and services. There are a few industries where people are paid to be unproductive, the US Governemnt pays farmers to not farm too much (Don't believe me? Research it yourself and find out that I'm telling the truth).
Sorry, I digress.
MMO industry is not the farming industry, other MMO companies are not paid to not innovate, and to claim that one company holds the strings on the release of all innovation is ridiculous at best.
I haven't been around 11 years, more like 1 and 1/2. I've seen clearly the stangant nature of a new level 80 having to spam run heroics to gear up, day after day after day...but that's not the whole game. It's true that you can't do any/everything you want in a game, all games have rules and limitations and we live and play these games with that foreknowledge. It then is in our hands whether to pursue entertainment in this manner knowing that inherent to any game will be limitations of some sort. Innovation, although limitless, still must find joy within the bounds of certain laws.
As part of Wolfshead's concluding statement he relates the following:
"What I’m going to say will sound trite but it needs to be said: read a book, take up a hobby, plant a real garden, walk a dog, spend some time with your family and friends, seek out the meaning of life. Get some perspective and open your eyes. At least for me, maybe I need to realize that there’s more to this life than looking at a computer screen and hoping for salvation from a virtual world."
If you think it will sound trite it's because it is trite...and unnecessary. One thing I've discovered in my lifetime and experiences is the gross danger in making broad sweeping generalized statements that attempt to explain behavior of masses while completely ignoring individual circumstances.
"Read a book." I've read half a dozen in the last month, how's that for ya?
"Take up a hobby". I've got plenty of those and dedicate myself to them a little bit every week.
"Plant a real garden". I live in Vegas, we're not allowed to use water here.
"Walk a dog." I'd rather kick one, but that's just me.
"Spend some time with your family and friends." I have no friends. Actually, I spend more time with my wife and kids than with myself. I love my family and constantly do stuff with them and love every minute of it.
"Seek out the meaning of life." I'm religious, yes, and guess what...I believe I know what the meaning of life is. I'm working every day to be a better person to achieve that meaning in it's fullness. Check that one off the list as well.
"Get some perspective and open your eyes." This assumes that I have no perspective and am blind to all around me. Broad sweeping generalization here! I've lived in various countries around the world, speak different languages, have been educated in worldly and spiritual matters, am active in politics and strive to view issues from all sides. I am a contradiction to the arguments that Wolfshead has put forth.
I don't seek salvation from a virtual world, and I don't think that anyone else does either. Yet after all this I play WoW. Why? I have my reasons (First, Second, Third). I play it and most of the time I enjoy it. I don't claim to believe that it's the most graphically intense, sociallly pure, or most intelligent game I've ever played. In fact it does not lead the list in any category I can think of. But what it does have is a well-roundedness that I enjoy. It's good at a lot of things, much like myself. Maybe that's what I like about it.
I'm not sure what Wolfshead or any other who agrees with him wants out of a game. Or maybe they realize that video games are more trivial than any other activity life has to offer and therefore it should be avoided at all costs. I sure hope they don't watch TV, I can't think of anything less productive than that.
Oh, and one more thing (less wow related). Here is a quote again from the same article:
"There’s an old saying that goes like this: people get the government they deserve. This same logic applies to MMOs: players get the MMO they deserve because ultimately we vote with our dollars."
"People get the government they deserve." Wow, I mean, wow. This isn't offensive or anything, is it? Let's not mix politics with video games too much, the comparisons aren't fair or accurate and won't do anyone credit to make such comparisons. But given that he went there, so will I (with a bit of sarcasm, so please indulge me).
Here are a list of people that would definately agree with that:
Jews living in Germany during the 20's, 30's and 40's.
Chinese people of today and many generations past under the reign on Communism.
Cubans under the dictatorship of Castro.
Russians under the rule of Stalin.
The people of the old Czechoslovakia who were rounded up and murdered simply because their GOVERNMENT decided that they weren't of sufficient human worth. Yep, this is a good one too.
Yeah, these people most certainly enjoyed having freedom of everything usurped and having mass genocide made upon them. I do not swear, as a personal rule, but if anything would ever make me cry out profanities it would be a statement that attempted to prove that people DESERVE the government they get. This is a gross example of over-generalizing and even worse, outright stupidity and insensitivity.
I would assert that nobody listen to a person who could make a claim without thinking of the consequences of such statement. But it was said, and poorly done so.
Back to the issue of MMO's in general, and WoW in particular. I still enjoy it, mainly becuase I make a point of taking time to do things and play in ways that is fun for me despite what anyone else says about it. It's my life, and this is something, just one thing that I do to have fun. When it stops being fun I'll stop, case closed. Frankly, I don't care much what innovation there is or isn't, I have no expectations so I have no way of being let down. But to say that one company is to blame seems to slight the intelligence, creativity, and spirit of everyone else in the world who is attempting to make a better MMO, a better community, a better place for everyone to play.
Let's give encouragement to those who want to have a better game AND are doing something about it. They are out there and they're working hard (unless, of course, you believe Blizzard is paying them to NOT innovate). Do what you want, don't do what you don't, but don't be trite is all I have say for now.
I didn't think leaving a comment would allow me to express all my thoughts that wouldn't have her deleting it due to its length, so I'm saying what I think right here. So listen up.
You can check out the article that got Larisa going, and consequently me as well. There is talk about lack of evolution or innovation. Let me quote Wolfshead here so I get it right:
"The only explanation I can fathom for the lack of evolution in the genre is that Blizzard is purposely withholding all of their innovations for their upcoming next gen MMO..."
Let me get this straight, Blizzard is to blame for thousands of other people not being innovative? That would assume that other game developers are paid by Blizzard to not innovate, not yet anyway. This argument assumes that Blizzard is so powerful they control the budgets and development of the entire industry.
I am lucky enough to live in America, and even more fortunate to live on planet Earth (not that I'd have much of a future on Venus or Mars or something). But in my country and in our world there are many intelligent, ambitious, creative, and innovative people who seek to maximize their talentsa, abilities, and sometimes their profit margins to create competitive products and services. There are a few industries where people are paid to be unproductive, the US Governemnt pays farmers to not farm too much (Don't believe me? Research it yourself and find out that I'm telling the truth).
Sorry, I digress.
MMO industry is not the farming industry, other MMO companies are not paid to not innovate, and to claim that one company holds the strings on the release of all innovation is ridiculous at best.
I haven't been around 11 years, more like 1 and 1/2. I've seen clearly the stangant nature of a new level 80 having to spam run heroics to gear up, day after day after day...but that's not the whole game. It's true that you can't do any/everything you want in a game, all games have rules and limitations and we live and play these games with that foreknowledge. It then is in our hands whether to pursue entertainment in this manner knowing that inherent to any game will be limitations of some sort. Innovation, although limitless, still must find joy within the bounds of certain laws.
As part of Wolfshead's concluding statement he relates the following:
"What I’m going to say will sound trite but it needs to be said: read a book, take up a hobby, plant a real garden, walk a dog, spend some time with your family and friends, seek out the meaning of life. Get some perspective and open your eyes. At least for me, maybe I need to realize that there’s more to this life than looking at a computer screen and hoping for salvation from a virtual world."
If you think it will sound trite it's because it is trite...and unnecessary. One thing I've discovered in my lifetime and experiences is the gross danger in making broad sweeping generalized statements that attempt to explain behavior of masses while completely ignoring individual circumstances.
"Read a book." I've read half a dozen in the last month, how's that for ya?
"Take up a hobby". I've got plenty of those and dedicate myself to them a little bit every week.
"Plant a real garden". I live in Vegas, we're not allowed to use water here.
"Walk a dog." I'd rather kick one, but that's just me.
"Spend some time with your family and friends." I have no friends. Actually, I spend more time with my wife and kids than with myself. I love my family and constantly do stuff with them and love every minute of it.
"Seek out the meaning of life." I'm religious, yes, and guess what...I believe I know what the meaning of life is. I'm working every day to be a better person to achieve that meaning in it's fullness. Check that one off the list as well.
"Get some perspective and open your eyes." This assumes that I have no perspective and am blind to all around me. Broad sweeping generalization here! I've lived in various countries around the world, speak different languages, have been educated in worldly and spiritual matters, am active in politics and strive to view issues from all sides. I am a contradiction to the arguments that Wolfshead has put forth.
I don't seek salvation from a virtual world, and I don't think that anyone else does either. Yet after all this I play WoW. Why? I have my reasons (First, Second, Third). I play it and most of the time I enjoy it. I don't claim to believe that it's the most graphically intense, sociallly pure, or most intelligent game I've ever played. In fact it does not lead the list in any category I can think of. But what it does have is a well-roundedness that I enjoy. It's good at a lot of things, much like myself. Maybe that's what I like about it.
I'm not sure what Wolfshead or any other who agrees with him wants out of a game. Or maybe they realize that video games are more trivial than any other activity life has to offer and therefore it should be avoided at all costs. I sure hope they don't watch TV, I can't think of anything less productive than that.
Oh, and one more thing (less wow related). Here is a quote again from the same article:
"There’s an old saying that goes like this: people get the government they deserve. This same logic applies to MMOs: players get the MMO they deserve because ultimately we vote with our dollars."
"People get the government they deserve." Wow, I mean, wow. This isn't offensive or anything, is it? Let's not mix politics with video games too much, the comparisons aren't fair or accurate and won't do anyone credit to make such comparisons. But given that he went there, so will I (with a bit of sarcasm, so please indulge me).
Here are a list of people that would definately agree with that:
Jews living in Germany during the 20's, 30's and 40's.
Chinese people of today and many generations past under the reign on Communism.
Cubans under the dictatorship of Castro.
Russians under the rule of Stalin.
The people of the old Czechoslovakia who were rounded up and murdered simply because their GOVERNMENT decided that they weren't of sufficient human worth. Yep, this is a good one too.
Yeah, these people most certainly enjoyed having freedom of everything usurped and having mass genocide made upon them. I do not swear, as a personal rule, but if anything would ever make me cry out profanities it would be a statement that attempted to prove that people DESERVE the government they get. This is a gross example of over-generalizing and even worse, outright stupidity and insensitivity.
I would assert that nobody listen to a person who could make a claim without thinking of the consequences of such statement. But it was said, and poorly done so.
Back to the issue of MMO's in general, and WoW in particular. I still enjoy it, mainly becuase I make a point of taking time to do things and play in ways that is fun for me despite what anyone else says about it. It's my life, and this is something, just one thing that I do to have fun. When it stops being fun I'll stop, case closed. Frankly, I don't care much what innovation there is or isn't, I have no expectations so I have no way of being let down. But to say that one company is to blame seems to slight the intelligence, creativity, and spirit of everyone else in the world who is attempting to make a better MMO, a better community, a better place for everyone to play.
Let's give encouragement to those who want to have a better game AND are doing something about it. They are out there and they're working hard (unless, of course, you believe Blizzard is paying them to NOT innovate). Do what you want, don't do what you don't, but don't be trite is all I have say for now.
Monday, February 22, 2010
The Good and The Bad
With each patch, whether it's minor or major, I've noticed that there are many who cry foul and others who are willing to sing praises of joy. In this latest (patch 3.3.3) I've noticed a few things that can be seen as both good and bad.
Dungeon Finder Up/Downgrades
Patch notes: "The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes."
ALSO
"Players who use the Vote Kick option will now be prompted to provide a reason for kicking a party member. This reason will be presented to everyone in the party except for the person voted to be kicked."
What the patch notes fail to state is that you no longer have to wait 15 minutes before vote kicking somebody. When you zone in you can look at everyone and make a random, or calculated, choice to vote kick a party member right away. But first the debuff.
I like that the deserter debuff is 30 min. Longer is good, it makes those tanks think twice before dropping from group as soon as they zone in and realize they are in the Occulus for the 93rd time. I still think that people should be given the Deserter title that can't be removed for 24 hours. Psychologists tell us that people are happier when they make committments, so if you queue in the LFD tool make a committment to it. If you plan on going AFK or a taco bell run, take yourself out of the Random Dungeon Finder queue, please. If you're afraid of getting put into the Occulus, queue up for a specific dungeon and take fewer rewards. Even though I like the 30 min debuff, it should still be longer. If you accept the fact that your dungeon will be random, you also need to accept whichever dungeon you're thrown into.
Disclaimer: I have only voted to kick somebody 4 or 5 times. Each time it was because somebody kept DC-ing multiple times. I've heard stories of people kicking others because their gear wasn't ICC level, but I've never experienced it. I think most people are reasonable creatures when it comes to pugging dungeons nowadays. But I suppose it will be nice to make somebody state the REASON to the whole group why they are being a jerk before they get away with it. For all sensible and understanding people, this feature will not mean a whole lot and therefore is neither good nor bad.
The biggest issue, however, is one that is not stated in the patch notes (yet). "Now I can kick you as soon as you zone in and I see your gear sucks." Nice. Another way of saying this is "now I can kick you before 15 mintues are up because you are our healer and you were DC'd from the start and we all would like to get on with the dungeon please." This feature will be both a blessing and a curse, depending on who is wielding the power of the vote kick. Some will say it's good, others will say it's bad, but the truth is it is both. Like I said, most random dungeon finder pugs are filled with people who range from good to "not quite a jerk but a little annoying...I know I have to gogogo, shut up already." This tool will be abused by the jerk, the selfish, the arrogant and the elitist. If I ever get kicked from a dungeon with this kind of person, fine. I can wait 15 minutes and chances are I'll find a pretty good group on the other side.
Professions
Cooldowns are being removed for various tasks. Titansteel, Moonshroud, Spellweave, Ebonweave. For me, this is good. I like putting up more than one titansteel bar on the AH at once, but hate having to wait a week to make all the gold from it. Now I can make and post multiple per day, increasing my gold intake significantly. That is, of course, if I'm able to find enough titanium nodes while mining. Add to this the fact that I can turn in my frozen orbs for Eternals, it will make the titansteel creation process that much more fluid.
The bad? This may very well lower the price of titansteel as a massive shift in the supply curve will shift the equalibrium price. So in the end volume will increase but income per bar sold will decrease. But will I profit? That is yet to be analyzed. I may find that I still profit even though I sell more at a lower price. As anything in economics, you can guess but you'll never know for sure until it happens.
Auras
My Shaman found this one very interesting, it seems that there will be a few buffs that procced off crits that will now be permanent auras (see links to wowwiki below). (Note only the portion of the buff that affects the party/raid will be an aura):
Mage: Arcane Empowerment
Shaman (Elemental): Elemental Oath
Shaman (Enhancement): Unleashed Rage
Warrior: Rampage
Remember, some of these auras won't stack with similar auras provided by other classes, but it's still a nice passive benefit for these classes. Is it making things too simple? Maybe. Is simple always bad? No, sometimes simplicity means that you can focus on other things to make you a better player or better analyze a potential raid group makeup.
These are just a few of the things in the most recent patch notes. So whether you are somebody who tends to see the positive or negative in patch notes, this patch is just perfect for you.
Dungeon Finder Up/Downgrades
Patch notes: "The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes."
ALSO
"Players who use the Vote Kick option will now be prompted to provide a reason for kicking a party member. This reason will be presented to everyone in the party except for the person voted to be kicked."
What the patch notes fail to state is that you no longer have to wait 15 minutes before vote kicking somebody. When you zone in you can look at everyone and make a random, or calculated, choice to vote kick a party member right away. But first the debuff.
I like that the deserter debuff is 30 min. Longer is good, it makes those tanks think twice before dropping from group as soon as they zone in and realize they are in the Occulus for the 93rd time. I still think that people should be given the Deserter title that can't be removed for 24 hours. Psychologists tell us that people are happier when they make committments, so if you queue in the LFD tool make a committment to it. If you plan on going AFK or a taco bell run, take yourself out of the Random Dungeon Finder queue, please. If you're afraid of getting put into the Occulus, queue up for a specific dungeon and take fewer rewards. Even though I like the 30 min debuff, it should still be longer. If you accept the fact that your dungeon will be random, you also need to accept whichever dungeon you're thrown into.
Disclaimer: I have only voted to kick somebody 4 or 5 times. Each time it was because somebody kept DC-ing multiple times. I've heard stories of people kicking others because their gear wasn't ICC level, but I've never experienced it. I think most people are reasonable creatures when it comes to pugging dungeons nowadays. But I suppose it will be nice to make somebody state the REASON to the whole group why they are being a jerk before they get away with it. For all sensible and understanding people, this feature will not mean a whole lot and therefore is neither good nor bad.
The biggest issue, however, is one that is not stated in the patch notes (yet). "Now I can kick you as soon as you zone in and I see your gear sucks." Nice. Another way of saying this is "now I can kick you before 15 mintues are up because you are our healer and you were DC'd from the start and we all would like to get on with the dungeon please." This feature will be both a blessing and a curse, depending on who is wielding the power of the vote kick. Some will say it's good, others will say it's bad, but the truth is it is both. Like I said, most random dungeon finder pugs are filled with people who range from good to "not quite a jerk but a little annoying...I know I have to gogogo, shut up already." This tool will be abused by the jerk, the selfish, the arrogant and the elitist. If I ever get kicked from a dungeon with this kind of person, fine. I can wait 15 minutes and chances are I'll find a pretty good group on the other side.
Professions
Cooldowns are being removed for various tasks. Titansteel, Moonshroud, Spellweave, Ebonweave. For me, this is good. I like putting up more than one titansteel bar on the AH at once, but hate having to wait a week to make all the gold from it. Now I can make and post multiple per day, increasing my gold intake significantly. That is, of course, if I'm able to find enough titanium nodes while mining. Add to this the fact that I can turn in my frozen orbs for Eternals, it will make the titansteel creation process that much more fluid.
The bad? This may very well lower the price of titansteel as a massive shift in the supply curve will shift the equalibrium price. So in the end volume will increase but income per bar sold will decrease. But will I profit? That is yet to be analyzed. I may find that I still profit even though I sell more at a lower price. As anything in economics, you can guess but you'll never know for sure until it happens.
Auras
My Shaman found this one very interesting, it seems that there will be a few buffs that procced off crits that will now be permanent auras (see links to wowwiki below). (Note only the portion of the buff that affects the party/raid will be an aura):
Mage: Arcane Empowerment
Shaman (Elemental): Elemental Oath
Shaman (Enhancement): Unleashed Rage
Warrior: Rampage
Remember, some of these auras won't stack with similar auras provided by other classes, but it's still a nice passive benefit for these classes. Is it making things too simple? Maybe. Is simple always bad? No, sometimes simplicity means that you can focus on other things to make you a better player or better analyze a potential raid group makeup.
These are just a few of the things in the most recent patch notes. So whether you are somebody who tends to see the positive or negative in patch notes, this patch is just perfect for you.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Theory of Relativity
Or Relativity, actaully refers to two of Albert Einstein's theories, namely "Special Relativity" and "General Relativity". Don't worry, I have no intention in discussing either theory or even delve into the Principle of Relativity. What I can say absolutely is that none of these principles/theories mean the following:
"Theory of Relativity means that upon further study of subject X, the other professor on the project has achieved different conclusions than myself and therefore we agree that there is no absolute truth, but the truth is relative, depending on how you look at it."
Only a really, really stupid person thinks anything like this. And when I say stupid, I mean truly deficient in mental acuity. Having said that, the term "Relativity" has profound impacts on cultural and social structures and is played out in our homes, place of work, churches and even in the games we play.
Some love goes out to Tobold and his post on Rise of the Leet King. The words Hard vs Easy must be, if we are to understand each other, and I hate to go here, RELATIVE. I hope that you will agree with this assumption. For proof of the assumption I relate my own experiences.
I am an accountant and love to work with Excel. The people I work with have no idea what a spreadsheet is or does, let alone how to write a macro. That's not to say that they are not intelligent people or do not have the capacity to learn what I know, I beleive they are smart and can do it given time and practice. But what is easy for me is hard for them, thus the proof that Hard and Easy are relative terms.
Back to Tobold. His post was humorous, but it brings up the issue of how hard or easy World of Warcraft is. The "word on the street" is that since WoTLK came out a little over a year ago things have become easier. Instances, Raids, Leveling (ty Heirloom items), professions, and I'm sure the list is longer but I just don't care to list everything.
Let's take just one example for now...why are instances easier? For one many of the new WoTLK dungeons are shorter and don't present the same levels of trash mobs that Vanilla or BC had. There's less need to CC due to more emphasis given to class AoE abilities that help burn down a group of trash rather than CC'ing them. And, lest I forget, the new emblem system allows a fresh 80 to jump right into T9 gear, making the scale of the dungeons to the player's gear an absolute joke. Even with all that, however, you still need people to do their jobs or the run will fail.
From my perspective I don't view things as hard or easy, I prefer to think of things that are either interesting to me or what I attribute value to (i.e. what I think is "worth" doing). Both of these things are insanely subjective and relative to other people's views. Whatever I think of playing the AH, it's only relative to other people's views on the subject. Neither is right or wrong, it's dependent on the value placed on that activity.
Again, for some, playing the AH is easy; due to addons or mental acuity, as for others it's more difficult (not good at math). But the question of hard or easy for me is usurped by the question of value. Do I value dungeons as a means of enjoying myself, no matter the level or relative difficulty? If I do then I don't care if I think they are easy, I will run instances anyway. The inverse is also true.
So hard or easy, I really don't care, it's all relative anyway.
"Theory of Relativity means that upon further study of subject X, the other professor on the project has achieved different conclusions than myself and therefore we agree that there is no absolute truth, but the truth is relative, depending on how you look at it."
Only a really, really stupid person thinks anything like this. And when I say stupid, I mean truly deficient in mental acuity. Having said that, the term "Relativity" has profound impacts on cultural and social structures and is played out in our homes, place of work, churches and even in the games we play.
Some love goes out to Tobold and his post on Rise of the Leet King. The words Hard vs Easy must be, if we are to understand each other, and I hate to go here, RELATIVE. I hope that you will agree with this assumption. For proof of the assumption I relate my own experiences.
I am an accountant and love to work with Excel. The people I work with have no idea what a spreadsheet is or does, let alone how to write a macro. That's not to say that they are not intelligent people or do not have the capacity to learn what I know, I beleive they are smart and can do it given time and practice. But what is easy for me is hard for them, thus the proof that Hard and Easy are relative terms.
Back to Tobold. His post was humorous, but it brings up the issue of how hard or easy World of Warcraft is. The "word on the street" is that since WoTLK came out a little over a year ago things have become easier. Instances, Raids, Leveling (ty Heirloom items), professions, and I'm sure the list is longer but I just don't care to list everything.
Let's take just one example for now...why are instances easier? For one many of the new WoTLK dungeons are shorter and don't present the same levels of trash mobs that Vanilla or BC had. There's less need to CC due to more emphasis given to class AoE abilities that help burn down a group of trash rather than CC'ing them. And, lest I forget, the new emblem system allows a fresh 80 to jump right into T9 gear, making the scale of the dungeons to the player's gear an absolute joke. Even with all that, however, you still need people to do their jobs or the run will fail.
From my perspective I don't view things as hard or easy, I prefer to think of things that are either interesting to me or what I attribute value to (i.e. what I think is "worth" doing). Both of these things are insanely subjective and relative to other people's views. Whatever I think of playing the AH, it's only relative to other people's views on the subject. Neither is right or wrong, it's dependent on the value placed on that activity.
Again, for some, playing the AH is easy; due to addons or mental acuity, as for others it's more difficult (not good at math). But the question of hard or easy for me is usurped by the question of value. Do I value dungeons as a means of enjoying myself, no matter the level or relative difficulty? If I do then I don't care if I think they are easy, I will run instances anyway. The inverse is also true.
So hard or easy, I really don't care, it's all relative anyway.
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