In the comments to my last post, Klinger made a comment that really resonated with what I’ve been looking at lately.

Klinger said;

I loved EQ2’s combat system. The Heroic Finisher or Chains or whatever it was called.

I also truly adored the tradeskill system. You REALLY had to pay attention and if you did, you could make a regular cloak into something awesome. Also the fact that you had fully crafted armor sets at each 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc. level break was really neat.

EQ2 did a LOT of things right.

The things that killed them, though, were the HEAVY system requirements and the severe lack of community. I don’t know if it’s a SOE thing, but it doesn’t seem like the info on quests, items, or walkthroughs are as easy to get with EQ2 as it is with wow.

Think about it – what if wow didn’t have wowhead, thottbot, alakhazam, or any of the numerous blogs or class guide forums. EQ2 may have some of that stuff now, but even 2 years after it’s release, it had NOTHING on wow in terms of community.

WE made wow successful. Blizzard made a great game, I agree, but the community keeps it going and makes us want to play it for the last 6 years.

I agree with so many of his points, I just had to make a post out of it. :)

When deciding on playing an MMO other than WoW, there is more to consider than the game itself. There is also the community.

When you buy the World of Warcraft, you get access to the game that Blizzard designed and implemented.

On top of that, you also have available the work of thousands of WoW players, enthusiasts and fans who have researched, analyzed and in some cases gushed over the years the game has been out.

Some of the things available are clearly there because smart folks said to themselves, “11 Million players that want to know where the damn quest item is… that’s a lot of potential pagehits.”

Others exist out of pure enthusiasm and fun.

Can you imagine playing WoW without any player-created addons of any kind whatsoever? No custom UI, no Omen, no Recount, no Map mods or coordinate displays.

Heck, think about that. No coordinates addon, and no place to research where a quest item could be found with the coordinates listed for you.

No WoWhead database kept carefully maintained, and no awesome players that go to WoWhead to share their experiences with quests or items or where they were lucky enough to find something or how they managed to take down something tricky.

No writers with their own websites, just chatting away about their experiences playing different classes, and sharing tips on how to get the most out of them… or at least sharing commonly made mistakes to keep you from doing the same.

No fan driven news sites to help you know what’s going on, what to expect, what to be on the lookout for.

If it wasn’t for MMO Champion and WoWhead and Hunter bloggers and the players of the game sharing their experiences on those sites, I never would have known about the Spirit Bear pet available to Hunters to tame in the 3.2 patch, where he could be found, or had an addon that constantly scanned the area for a Unique critter Spirit Bear so I knew if he popped up.

Value added service.

Something no company can plan on providing on their own. There is simply no way a company can devote the resources, the hours, the money to come up with all the amazing things that you, the readers, provide to the community yourself. The skills that you each have on your own, researching or programming or testing or being enthusiastic and positive and sharing that energy, that you each provide on websites and in forums and blogs throughout the world.

Perhaps the MMO developer of the future, to try and capture some of the success of WoW, will have to devote serious thought on making it easy for a community to form.

Something beyond “We can haz official forums”.

Perhaps something on their official website that has a page listing instructions and resources for making your own fan blog, like a “How to get started on Blogspot or Wordpress.”

Or a plan to have Blue posters like Blizzard does that really are dedicated to answering intelligently asked questions and revealing plans and taking suggestions, whether they get seriously looked at or implemented or not.

Or a posted way to contact them if you are interested in creating your own mods, addons, or database program so as to get more info on database structure or programming rules.

The transparency of Blizzards’s addon functionality was one of the most amazing things ever during the first year, and the Macro section as well, just fantastic. And the players have taken it by storm.

There is something about being able to create your own custom experience that draws people in. Take a look at any collection of player UI screenshots, and tell me that all of those players could have had the same level of long term enjoyment if they were stuck with the default UI.

In fact, having addon creators in house, who had the responsibility to make addons that could customize the UI in various ways, provide options beyond the default… that’s not a bad idea either. Of course, if you write it, someone will demand customer support for it, but still.

Can you imagine the possibilities if there were an in-house addon development team that played the game during Beta, and when faced with different things that were annoying, could say, “I wish there were a tool for that… and if I wish it, someone else might too. Let’s write one for people to have, IF they want it.”

Part of the joy of the game is having the basics there to enjoy, but also having tons of custom made tools to add… IF you want to.

I know that if I were spending millions developing an MMO, and had all that invested in it’s success, I would be doing everything I could to get buy-in from the players, encourage them to WANT to make the game their own and feel involved in it’s success.

Seriously, Blizzard has changed the nature of gaming by giving players the tools up front to be able to create macros and addons, and the players themselves took the reins further.

Any game developer owes it to themselves to take that into account. It’s not enough to be a product developer, create your MMO, have a website with a forum, and then release the game and sit back, expecting the players to do everything else.

Like it or not, expectations have changed. There will inevitably be comparisons.

I don’t think anyone will expect the community to be there overnight… but people WILL expect an MMO developer to be in partnership with the players, sharing information to some extent and actively helping people get started. The last thing any player is going to expect from an MMO developer is to be aloof and distant, isolated from player concerns, and silent.

Almost makes me wonder what crazed lunatic would willingly WANT to embark on creating an MMO as a business model.

Yes, I know, the post title is silly, and only vaguely relevant if you know who the Saints are. And I don’t mean St. Jude and St. Peter, either. I don’t think they play on the same team.

Hey, if you think it’s that easy to make fun new post titles for over a thousand posts…. you’re probably right, but I do the best I can with what I’ve got under the hood.

I have an amusing story to share with you. I think it illustrates a few telling things about what we can get used to, and what we expect to see, and how we can sometimes ignore things until confronted with the one when you expected the other. 

Now that I’ve vagued that up for you as much as I can, I’ma gonna tell a story.

Once, last night, on a server very, very close to home…

There I am, continuing my experiments in tanking comparisons.

I’ve been tanking on my Druid, followed by tanking on my Paladin, mostly in PUG situations and comparing the general feel between the two. A post on that might go up later today, more likely tomorrow.

This has, by necessity, required me to actually tank a lot with both characters. To run a lot of things. To test a variety of instance situations.

It’s been lots of fun.

Whenever possible, I prefer to only run with friends, but I wanted to run several things in the shortest possible time so as to really hammer home my impressions of the classes while they were fresh. Also, I was testing the ease with which strangers without restraint could pull aggro off of me. My friends are actually smart players, so they don’t do dat. To get idiots and out of control DPS meter chasing freaks, I had to resort to strangers. So, that means running purely random pugs.

I love Gnomeaggedon, and I’ve tried to follow the ‘be positive’ meme he started, but I’m just gonna have to warn you; there might be some mention of asshattish behavior on the way. Sorry, I know. 

I know!

Over the last week, I’ve run a few things.

I’ll make one observation, which I swear is relevant to the story.

One thing that I’ve noticed as a key difference between pugs and playing with friends, is that in pugs people whom I’ve never met before will announce what the group will do. Not ask what the rest of the group wants to do, or make a suggestion as to what they’d LIKE to do. Just flatly announce what will happen. ”We will be doing X on this run.”

I’ve noticed it mostly because I wasn’t used to that approach in groups of players before. It’s by no means unheard of, just not something I was used to seeing consistently myself, unless from the tank, and even then it would be about 50/50 phrased as ‘what we will do’ or ‘what I like to do’, which is a slightly gentler way of saying the same thing, but leaves you more open to counterpoint. 

I can’t speak for other people’s experiences, but to my mind it’s unusual behavior in a group environment among social equals for one person to dictate to the rest. It stands out as rude, an attempt to remove the power of choice of other people by putting yourself and your own needs first, and requiring an awkward confrontation if someone else has a different idea.

It’s a negotiation tactic used to control a discussion and get your own way. If you make a pre-emptive strike to state what WILL happen, rather than phrasing it as a request and asking for consensus or other competing suggestions, than what you have done is forced anyone that does NOT agree with you to have to confront you publicly, to challenge you, and to face the consequences of bringing conflict and potential drama.

For many people… not all, but many, the easier route will be to simply shut up, keep your head down, go along, get the run done and move on. Maybe put that person on ignore, maybe not.

I don’t want to give the impression that I think being assertive is evil, or that telling people what you expect them to do is wrong. Not at all, I’m not some head in the clouds idiot. If you have someone over you in a position of authority, or you are someone who has the responsibility of seeing to it that things get done, then this is normal and welcome. Having someone responsible in charge providing clear direction, assigning tasks, or setting work priorities gets things done. They may be the wrong things if he or she isn’t open to learning and listening to the opinions and experience of everyone that is part of their team, but it gets things done. 

What I’m saying is that, in my opinion, when you’ve got a group of strangers who are all there for the same purpose, are there by their own consent to work together and offer their contributions to the groups’ success, and you have one person start tossing orders around and making unilateral decisions, it’s bullshit. Your mileage may vary. :) 

Okay, so there I am, running things on my Paladin. I’ve had a lot of fun runs, solid learning experiences, good times. Quite a bit of stress, but my studies and research are paying off. I’m using a Talent spec, Seal of Command and Retribution Aura along with Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous to optimise 5 person instance threat generation.

A word about that. I ain’t a Paladin tank expert. If you would like to learn more from actual experts about Paladin tanking, I direct you to Ardent Defender, Blessing of Kings, Honor’s Code, Righteous Defense, and Tankadin.com (my apologies to those I missed – Paladin tanks have a big blog community).

However, that being said… I am somewhat used to the concept of researching a class for myself, once in a while. I know what I wanted, to optimise heroic instance tanking and threat generation. I did heroic Halls of Reflection last night, and as they say about New York, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

I ran a few heroics with my friends Cal and Ely, as tank, heals, deeps. After each one, we dropped group to port out and then reformed to start the next one.

This time, after Utgardt Keep, I drop group, and Cal announces he has to go put some pants on.

I have to admit, Utgardt Keep speed run and guns are fun, but I know I’ve never had to go change my pants after running it. Still, best not to judge. (That’s a pally joke. Ha.)

So he’s off afk, and I go scurrying around farming some Titansteel mats since I want to have someone craft me the Saronite Swordbreaker plate tanking wrists, and I’m just 3 Titansteel Bars short.

After a bit, Cal says he’s back.

I queue up Looking for Dungeon, and as usual for a group with a tank, insta-form a group.

Boom! Halls of Stone loading screen forms.

I buff folks as usual, and right away the following pops up in Party chat;

• [player1]: We’re skipping the two optional bosses.
• [player2]: You pull as long as I’ve got mana.
• [player2]: I don’t run out of mana so you better not stop.
• [player1]: Let’s go, what u waiting for?

I pull the three dwarfs that like to pat near the portal entrance, we burn them down, and I’m thinking, “Wow, what if I wanted to do the two optional bosses? I can use the Emblems, myself. And what if *I* happen to be out of mana? Am I allowed to stop and drink? Do I need to raise my hand first and ask permission? Seig Heil!”

• [player3]: What are you standing there for, go!
• [player1]: Get moving, go, go!

Now, understand, the time sequence here is, 5 people appear in instance, I click the Pallypower buff button 5 times fast, then Avenger’s Shield the three dwarves and we burn ‘em down, then as I saw a third unfamiliar player name pop up in party chat, I paused for 1 second to actually LOOK at the names of who I was in group with, and what guilds they were from.

It almost takes longer to type that stuff out than I took to read the member names of who I was grouped with, and yet that’s how fast these were popping up.

What I was asking myself was, “How in the HELL did I end up with THREE asshats, when I joined group with TWO FRIENDS?!?”

Right about that time [player4] chimed in demanding I get my ass in gear.

That was when I realised the incredible mistake I had made.

I queued up in LFD without reforming party with Cal and Ely first.

Now, understand that I am actually IN VENT with Cal and Ely as this is happening. We’re chatting away, and I’m trailing off as it finally dawns on me that I’m all alone with these strange people, none of whom are guilded together, they are all spontaneously being making demands as I’m awakening to the concept that I didn’t intend to be available to join this group in the first place.

5 seconds have now elapsed without my moving, and as I let my friends in vent know just how incredibly dumb I’ve been, one of the pug group runs forward to pull the next group FOR me, to spur me on to action or something. 5 whole seconds! Omigawd, I know, right?

Well, that makes things easy for me. Incredibly easy. Every single one of the four players has shown the patience of a Mayfly, has been rude and demanding. I have two friends waiting to play with me, and I joined these morons by mistake anyway. My bad.

I grab the group that they pulled, take aggro and control them getting burned down, then grab a stack of Mana Strudel from the mage table, announce “You guys are on your own, go find yourself another tank to order around” and leave party.

I then spent the next 15 minutes of my random lockup hopping around Dalaran chatting. Cal went fishing.

For the rest of the night, every time I ate a Conjured Mana Strudel, I fancied I could taste the tears of selfish QQ flavoring the pastry… and it tasted delicious.

The moral of this story is, if I had zoned in to find out I was a dumbass for queueing, and nobody had said anything, or if people had done the customary “Hi! How you doing?”, I would have apologised to Cal and Ely for screwing up, but I totally would have run the entire instance.

If even only one or two people there were rude, or pushy, or demanding, I would have stayed and made the best of it. And it’s not like a tank doesn’t have a veto. As the tank, if I decide to run down and kill Maiden and get an extra Emblem for 2 minutes work, who’s to stop me? Is the rest of the group REALLY going to go on strike if the tank wants to pull a group of mobs? They may bitch, piss and moan, but are they really going to leave?

But when I zone in, and I’m greeted with four asshats… where is the incentive to care if I leave? Why should I endure your crap? What’s my motivation to be your bitch?

I hope you take away from this story three things;

1. I’m a moron. (Big newsflash there, huh?)
2. If people are friendly, even if it’s not what you intended to do, having fun with friendly people is the best part of the game. Why not stay and give it your best shot?
3. You don’t have to be anybody’s bitch.

If you join a group and are treated with abuse… then leave, RIGHT THEN. You do not deserve anyone’s abuse, and you do NOT have to take it. Whether in real life or in a virtual world, if you are in an abusive situation, do not be a victim. Do not suffer in silence. If you do not wish to be in a confrontation, if you cannot bring yourself to speak up on your own behalf… then leave. 

You, and your time, are worth more than that.

I’d like to extend my own “welcome back” to Ratshag, on returning to the bloggage.

I’ts been a long, cold road without the flubbernumpers, and it’s nice to be able to look forward to more stories of their antics in the future.

My favorite has been Maurice, the Death Knight of Loooove, but I think it says a lot about Ratshag’s style that so many people HAVE their favorites in the first place. :)

Welcome back, buddy. I hope that the coming year brings hope, peace, and happiness to you and your family!

Here are a few Druid blogs that are just starting up, and I thought you might enjoy getting a foot in right at the start.

If you like what you see, why not give them some encouragement? I always say that we can never have enough Druid blogs…

Feral Instincts (just getting started!)

And Roguewind!

FYI, it’s really a Druid, but his name is Roguewind. Hey, if you’re curious how a Druid gets named Rogue, why not go ask?

Have fun, and enjoy adding more to your already overloaded feedreaders!

If you check out Dechion’s latest blog post, you’ll find a rant that, really… /sigh. /swoon.

You know, I used to do rants like that. Good ones, just letting the barking dogs in your skull loose to roam free for a bit.

Ahhh…. memories.

You can have a lot of fun, letting it all hang out like that.

Dechion, I wanted to share with you my new response, macroed, for when someone is an elitist asshat.

I pulled it straight from the video I watched on Leafshine’s recent blog post, Guild Application.

It’s very simple.

“Oh yeah? Well I’ve got something YOU don’t have! My collectors edition Sparkle Pony. Because it sparkles.”

In other news… I’ve seen mention on a few blogs now, and in chat in the guild, about how sick people are of elitist whiny snob bloggers.

Umm… I don’t know who you’re talking about, because… I don’t have anyone in my feedreader that has said anything like that.

Which I suppose lets folks know two things.

• One, if you blog like that… I don’t bother reading your shit.
• And two… if I blog like that, nobody tells me. :)

In other news, for more tanky goodness, why not go check out another blog about Druid tankyness, Bear in the Purple Hat?

And as long as I’m mentioning good tanky blogs…

• A Bear in the Trees
• Can Tank Will Travel
• My favorite Boomkin tank Kattrinsaa
• The Wayward Influence (hey, there’s Bear tanking goodness in there!)