I’ll admit, when I first saw MMO Champion tweet about a stunning MoP Cross-Realm Zones revelation, my only response was, “What the hell is that? No, really, what? Why? And again, what?”

I could copy/paste the official text from Blizzard, but I think I can safely bottom-line this.

Leveling zones are empty. Capital cities are full. This is a problem.

If we combine servers, leveling zones would have more players and feel more populated, but the capitols would be crushed in bored max level characters, and you would never find a mailbox again.

So, we will leave capital cities and high-population areas alone on separate servers, but combine the populations in the leveling zones.

Why will we do this?

Time for a direct quote.

Cross-realm zones give us the capability to ensure that level-up zones retain a population size that feels more like the high level areas of the game, leading to a more fun play experience for characters of all levels.

Before I even get into my opinion on this or talk about it, I want to address that statement.

There is one HUGE assumption in that statement. The assumption is, a crowded level-up zone provides a ‘more fun play experience’ than a low population one.

Did anyone ask you if you liked having the mobs and quest drops in a zone all to yourself? Did I miss a poll? The zones aren’t empty even now, they’re just lightly populated. Their new cross-realm zones won’t add people that weren’t there before, it’s just going to take the people that were already there, and pile them in tighter.

Maybe Blizzard is correct in saying that it will be more fun, but that was a statement of fact. They will do this, and it will make the game more fun. Period. End of discussion, because a flat statement like that doesn’t leave any room for discussion, there was a fact, and they are acting on it. If you disagree, then you are opposed to more fun for other people, you meanie, you.

Moving on from semantics, I’d like to talk about this concept like an adult for a few minutes.

I know it’s a stretch, work with me here.

What Blizzard has been coding and testing is a fact. They already had the idea, discussed it, committed resources to it, and have apparently gotten to the implementation stage for the big reveal.

But what made them think of it in the first place?

What I’m wondering is, what was the original intent. What benefits were intended to be gained, and who is going to reap them?

The normal image of a dev workshop is of a group of people tossing out ideas on improvements to the game. The goal of such an imaged gathering is to focus on new ideas that would please the existing customer, and retain them.

This could have come out of such a gathering, but there is another possibility that occurs to me.

They could have been having a meeting to discuss what they could do to try and retain the new players on a free trial account.

Any benefit to long term players who are already at max level would be incidental. We’ve already been through the zones, we’ve reached max level, we are at end game. We likely are in guilds, have friends, can get Heirlooms, and don’t need to group to complete quests in zones that had group quests and encounters nerfed.

It’s a subtle distinction, but this feels like a move intended to address the question, “How do we try and MAKE the world feel vital and alive to new players, when the existing players are all in capital cities?”

I’m going to take a moment to use a real world example to explain why I think this, and why I think it’s a very smart move.

Do you ever watch cooking shows? The ones where Gordon Ramsey goes to some failing restaraunt to tell them why they’re bollix? Or nightclub scenes?

One of the pieces of advice I’ve found fascinating, since I can test it myself when out and about, is to confine the space for the number of guests you’ve got, through things like moveable wall sections or dividers.

By keeping the space cramped, by pushing people close together but not too close, you build an artificial feeling of intimacy, of vitality.

Instead of large, echoing empty spaces that leave the area feeling like a lifeless void sucking all the music out of the room, you cram ‘em all together, bumping into each other and chatting and hearing other people having a good time, noise and movement and energy, vitality.

People enter that kind of environment and feel that they’ve made a good choice; just look at all these other people that are having a great time, I made a wise decision to come here and have a good time too.

The idea is, you can have tons of space, but don’t open it up until the place is really jammed to capacity. People getting crunched in is better for overall business than a few people upset that they feel overcrowded.

That’s why I think that this came mainly from think-tank discussions on how to entice and retain new players, not from a discussion on how to improve the game for the existing playerbase as a whole.

I’m fine with it, I think it’s a good idea. I get that they have long had technology that increases spawn rates based on use… lots of people mining nodes increases spawn rates, that sort of thing. I’m not worried that, after fine tuning, we’re going to have a worse time trying to complete quests competing for drops. I LIKE having people in zones to bump into.

I think it’s a very nice improvement, and I love that the way it’s being implemented, when added to Real ID, means you can have friends leveling alts together and questing together even when they are on two different servers. That freaking rocks.

My point to bring this up, is simply to point out that aside from what is developed and goes live is the question, “Why might they have come up and invested time and money in this?”

That is always a good question to ask. It reveals what a game developer feels is an issue important enough to spend some real money to address.

You can say all sorts of things, but I like the glimpse I think this gives us of what they are worried about…. and what kind of action they’re going to take.

I won’t say I love it just yet, until I get a chance to try it live, but I’m one of those that likes to feel as if I’m part of a living, breathing, vital game world full of people having fun.

With most everyone playing max level characters, server population being what it is means that yes, there are tons of people playing alts… but they are the minority on any given server. By bringing them all together, why, I get to play with others instead of being all alone.

I bet the PvP servers are going to have a blast.

The best thing, the very best thing to me is maybe this will stop Blizzard from their repeated attempts to FORCE max level characters to spend time in low level zones to give a false sense of vitality in areas low level character inhabit.

The games played with removing portals, adding portals, moving portals around, forcing us to go through the Dark Portal to get to Shatt, to take the boat to get to Northrend, to keep us flying and riding around, to design professions that force us to fly all over the world back and forth through leveling zones for dig sites…

Please, stop trying to shoehorn forced zone populations. Let it stop.

Connect the servers up like this, let all the people actually interested in playing in a zone together BE in a zone together, and the World… will be a happy place.

*bonus game… how many assumptions did I make in my analysis? See how many you can count!

Meaning is personal.

I’d like you to think about something, just for a few minutes.

When you see or hear or read something, or feel it through your fingers, or measure it in the beats of your heart, connections happen in your mind. Your self.

You take the new, add it to the old, and stir.

What comes out of your mouth, what understanding you gain, CANNOT be untouched by all that you were and are.

Everything new you experience, you bring it within yourself, blend it with everything else you have experienced in your life, and from this new combination comes your new feelings and understanding on what it all means.

Meaning is not absolute. The meaning you get is dependent on everything else about you that makes you… you.

I say this, to ask that, the next time you see or hear or read something and you feel offended, outraged, hurt, pissed or just ready to lash out and hurt someone because of the bad feelings inside you… take a moment, just a moment, and make sure that you are righteously pissed at the right person, for the right reasons.

Just do a gut check that you’re going to tee off and unleash hell on the right person, for the right reasons, without adding your own prejudices and fears and hatreds and feelings based on what other completely unrelated people did to you sometime in the past.

Don’t bottle up what you feel… but make sure your target deserves it before you unleash.

If you take that moment, that deep breath, that gut check, and the person or thing or issue in your opinion still deserves the fury of a thousand exploding stars be heaped upon it…

Have fun. Vent and be free.

If you choose to take any feelings of rage or offense and lash out immediately and put the pressure on other people for them to change to make you feel better…

Well, I take what I see, hear and feel, and I bring it inside too. I blend it in with everything I have experienced in my life, and I come to my own conclusions.

If someone comes all across as an asshat, instead of venting all the time I tend to just ignore that person or write them out of my life from that point on, so the result tends to be pretty peaceful.

To me, life is too short and time too precious to waste either.

 

I had a few emails from the guild leader for Shining Star Crusaders concerning the issues I brought up in a blog post about Dalra, at that time a member of their guild.

The first email was simply a request to remove any reference to Shining Star Crusaders from the blog post, the second email came 7 minutes later as follows;

Hello,

I have no idea who you are, nor do I care particularly. I do care that you have defamed my entire guild with your prattle regarding a player that is NO LONGER in this guild. This person was a member all of a big 4 days!

Talk about the individual player all you want, leave the guild out of it. But then it Is quite obvious you like the sound of your own words and don’t care about the honest and sincere and decent people in Shining Star Crusaders.

I would appreciate your removing the name of my guild from your blog.

Thank you,
Sharazam-Guild Master

Now, of course I understand the concern the guild leadership has over some moron writing a blog post talking about the behavior of one of their members in a public fashion. Especially one like me, that prattles on and on. It’s a fair cop.

I’ve checked, confirmed no player named Dalra is currently in the guild mentioned, and I have added an update to that effect on the blog post.

I’m even writing this separate blog post, and I’m making sure I let everyone know that the guild leader of Shining Star Crusaders says that Dalra is not now a member, and I am assuming that the implication is that Dalra’s behavior does not represent the type of community Shining Star Crusaders has formed.

Please, and I really mean this, please do not bother any member of Shining Star Crusaders about Dalra. It’s over, it’s done, none of the members of that guild had any part in what Dalra did. 

What I’m not going to do is edit the post to remove the name of the guild Dalra was a part of when the player acted as they did. They did what they did, in public, with the guild name shown that they were a part of, got busted in public, and that’s all there is to it.

It’s unfortunate that really good people may now feel that they as a guild are tarred with the same brush as an outright asshat. I still don’t know anything at all about the guild, except for Dalra and of course for the letter I’ve received, but I know how I would feel if someone who stood against everything MY guild stood for was portrayed as being representative of my guild. I’d be pissed off and hurt.

But I’m still not changing history or rewriting the blog post to pretend that Dalra was unaffiliated when they took the actions they did.

The reason I’m leaving the name in and bringing this up, is to ask a question I honestly want to know the answer to.

To what extent are guild officers responsible for the behavior of their members?

When I was a guild leader with Cassie, one of our worries was the behavior of guild members towards others while wearing the guild name. We as officers felt responsible, NOT for the actions of those wearing the guild name, but for the continued presence of those people within the guild after they had done something.

It happened a few times, and back then discussing it with other guild leaders it was clear no guild is immune to it. A member would do something in public, and it would be reported back. The way we handled it was investigate, apologize to those outside the guild who were affected, and then take apropriate action up to and including temination.

Every player acts as he or she deems fit. Whether angels or asshats, they do what they choose to do, and so long as they pays their money the same as everyone else, and abides by Blizzards’ Terms and Conditions, so be it.

What a guild leader does have control over is whether people who behave in certain ways are allowed to retain membership. Any guild has the right to refuse admittance on any grounds they so choose, including inappropriate behavior.

But that’s not fact. It’s not law. It’s just my own personal opinion on how things should be done and how I tried to do it, and damnit, maybe I’m wrong.

So I’m putting it to you, and I really do want to know.

Is it fair to name the guild a player is a member of, when that player is caught red-handed in the intentional griefing of others?

To name the guild is to associate the other members of that guild with the behavior of the player.

Maybe the guild did everything right. Application process, trial runs to see how the player acts and plays, discussion on vent to get a feel for who they are before invitation. In the guild group, where there are known consequences for bad behavior, namely getting booted and not getting to raid, maybe the player is on their best behavior. They make an effort to keep up appearances.

Then in what they thought was a totally anonymous situation, they cut loose with what I would call their true colors, and there were unintended consequences because there is no anonymity on the internet. Maybe it cost them a paid name change to regain that anonymity, maybe they revel in the notoriety, whatever.

Have the expectations of decent behavior in and out of a guild changed? Do guilds no longer worry or concern themselves with the actions of their members outside of guild activities? Do they not expect to be held accountable when their members act out?

I have always acted based on my own expectations. I expect that a guild leader should be held accountable for the behavior of their members, regardless of how long they were a member of the guild. If the guild leader offered the invitation, then they were bringing that person into the guild, and giving the right to wear that guild name and represent it to the server as a whole. If they have concerns, then they take steps to be careful who they offer admittance to, and take action when problems happen.

Things change, communities move on, guilds stop being family and start being businesses making videos and getting sponsorships and working toward world firsts (and trying to steal each others’ raid ID to get those world or realm firsts). Maybe it’s no longer about wanting members that really are nice, and now it’s just trying to protect an image that is worth gold in recruiting other good players to your ranks.

What do you think? 

I really want to know.

These days, I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band, I’m not a grand poobah. I am thinking maybe with cross-server LFR and LFD, it’s time I changed my attitude, and take the side of Sharazam. I think she’s right, and I was wrong, and it’s become impossible in this cross-server game to be held accountable for what your players do. They can be freaking nutso bughouse freaks out there in LFR land, and a guild leader may never hear about it on their own home server unless they are really lucky.

As always, I am keeping my mind open, and I’d love to hear your take on it from your own personal experiences.

One of the problems with a naming and shaming post is that it can give a skewed impression of the game.

If I, or other vocal WoW bloggers like me, spend all our time bemoaning the wastrels and wankers, why, we can give the impression the game is nothing but a playground for pricks.

Not so. Not so at all!

I took the time to piss and moan about an intentional irritant in my last post, so let’s balance the scales by showcasing the positive; a PUG group of freaking fantastic players.

Normally, I don’t run too many heroics. I get the gear I want, I run LFR, I might do a few heroics if I want to max Valor for the week. That’s it.

That’s not how I’ve been running on my Priest this week. I’ve done LFR, and I’m now chain running heroics. I’m trying to amass Justice Points to buy the Merciless Gladiator’s Investiture from Area 52 (converting JP to Honor), and I’m trying to get the healing cloth shoulders from End Time.

Chain running as a Healer in heroics is… interesting. I’m not looking at the boss or the mobs nearly as much as I’m watching what the other players are doing, and I have seen some truly bad tanks and also some good tanks. I’ve also seen the usual range of good and bad DPS.

Overall, the groups tend to be all right. Nothing special, nothing terrible, just a group of disparate individuals without communication plowing through content like it’s a nine to five job.

Get in, “Hey George, how’s it going”, “Hi Frank, the usual, can’t complain”, punch the time clock and get pulling.

No real problems.

But just as you can occasionally get the really terrible group (or terrible intentional griefer), so too can the odds flip in your favor.

This morning, I got one of those incredible runs that reminds me why I play a multiplayer game in the first place.

Random Well of Eternity, mixed group of players, feral Druid tank…

It was beautiful.

Everyone did exactly what they were supposed to, in exactly the right way, at exactly the right time.

The four other players were just… professionals. They nailed it.

From perfect mob placement to interrupting and getting out of AoE and killing adds and the hand on the Queen, to killing the portal adds that block Tyrande from shooting arrows, to dealing with waves on Mannoroth, to staying out of Fel Firestorm.

Just… flawless victory.

And it’s not the kind of thing just having one great tank does, either. I was the healer, I could clearly see every DPS was getting out of the fire, was focusing on the right targets, was going all out with cooldowns, was acting together as if they were a well-oiled machine… but coming from different servers or guilds and talking as if strangers.

It made me yearn for the days when I ran heroics as part of an all-guild group that knew each other well. That special feeling of being part of a fine tuned clan, taking on all comers and just beating them with excellence and teamwork.

So if I can do a name and shame, I think I can also do a shout out.

Here’s to Halnt – Norgannon the tank, Tnuocsiv – Doomhammer, Rigby – Doomhammer and Carenza – Anvilmar.

Each and every one, a fantastic player, an outstanding group member, and a pleasure to run with.

Thank you for a great time. Your guilds are fortunate to have you out there showing what real class in a PUG is like. May the loot be with you, now… and always.

Heads up new readers…. it’s that time again.

I feel like starting some shit.

If you’re new, buckle up, you’re probably going to see a side to the Bear that only comes out to play when I’ve had good coffee instead of the cheap crap.

Notice I didn’t apologize. You’ve been warned.

There are a lot of great MMOs out these days, and many of them are going free to play, for a given value of what is “free” for you to actually “play”.

There are lots of new ones coming soon that look great.

Excited? I know I am! I love to see new ideas conceptualized and made real for our gaming enjoyment.

We are living in exciting times. DAMN! Isn’t this great?

Every time someone sells an idea and brings it out, we win. Maybe some don’t reach their hype, maybe some blow past all expectations. We still win either way, because our dollar is a force to be reckoned with and pandered to.

People want our money. And to get it, they are trying to figure out what we like, and they make us shiny things.

Take movies.

Do you know what we would have done if someone dropped one of these modern Marvel superhero movies on us in the eighties?

Just look at this. I am actually having minor difficulty in tracing back all the damn good movies that will feed directly into this summers The Avengers, so I can have the entire range of them ready to watch. And how many of them are just so damn good? Captain America, Iron Man 1 and 2, Thor (god, I love the Thor movie), The Incredible Hulk (the Edward Norton one), and we’re not even including any of the Spider-Man films, X-Men (I love the Wolverine movie), the new Fantastic Four films, etc, etc.

Maybe you loved some, maybe you hated some, but holy shit.

We live in strange days when someone can make a film as kick ass as The Incredible Hulk (the Edward Norton one), and it vanishes without notice. My generation had Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk for five minutes in an episode and 55 with Bill Bixby looking depressed, and we convinced ourselves we were happy with that, it was all good. Secretly, we cried ourselves to sleep with dreams of a giant green monster smashing combat gunships out of the sky and smashing the shit out of an Abrahms.

New things are great, and what we pay our money on paves the way for the next awesome thing they make for us to spend our money on, and bless them for it.

I dreamed of a tricorder when I was a kid, and did YOU see smartphones the way they are now even five years ago? Yeah, you who dropped $400 on one of those flip phones 5 years ago, I’m talking to you. Sucker.

About ten years ago, I was excited because I had a two way text pager with keyboard, and my wife could login to a website on her computer to send a text page directly to my pager. And I could type a reply back. From my pager. This was awesome technology… for about 6 months.

I welcome all the new MMOs coming our way.

I welcome the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, I welcome the upcoming Guild Wars 2 MMO, and I wish we could have serious Babylon 5 and Buffyverse MMOs. Bring them on.

The more the merrier, damn it.

But here’s the thing.

I play World of Warcraft. That’s what I do.

I try other games, I even buy other games, I bought Kingdoms of Amalur and I love it.

But World of Warcraft, I always come back to you. You are my one true gaming love. I have played you for almost the entire life of my son. I have written about you with enthusiasm, I have had highs, and I have had some incredible lows. I have had my guts torn apart by people I have met in this game that I trusted, and I have had my life enriched by the relationships and friends I have been fortunate enough to make.

This is the game I play. I played it yesterday, I played it today, and you know what? Forecasted chance of WoW tomorrow approaches about 100%.

Death, taxes, I play WoW.

Now, we all joke about this, it’s a concept as old as time, but here it is.

Playing World of Warcraft is just like being in a relationship.

People used to talk all the time about “WoW widows”, and how a persons obsession with WoW could consume their lives and cause their real life marriages to break up, and other things, and I’m sure they are all true.

That some of us, myself among them, feel that an addictive personality that is trying to retreat from a reality (or a real life relationship) they don’t want to face might have chosen any vehicle for escape, be it World of Warcraft, alcohol, rock music, an affair, knitting or spending all their time in sports bars with the buds is besides the point.

The concept of World of Warcraft as a relationship has been around for a long time.

But here is where it gets tricky.

I am married to WoW.

So why the FUCK is it that some people can’t seem to grasp that I can still find WoW interesting, exciting and enjoyable?

I’m married to a wonderful woman in real life. She is simply amazing. No, really, you have no idea. She IS that good. She’s a freaking badass killer angel and you do not deserve to have her DPS in your raid, she is so awesome. Plus, she does taxes, raises children, works five jobs all hours of the day and still manages to kick my ass in You Don’t Know Jack.

Now, I have to ask you.

I’ve been married to this amazing woman for over ten years. I have come to know her very well. She still has the capacity to surprise me, and she is still endlessly exciting to me, and yet we fit together so well. I know her moods, her attitudes, her outlook on life. We are a team, and she is my best friend.

So, do you people come by the blog and wonder why I haven’t gotten bored with her and dumped her for something more interesting because by now we must have run out of things to say to each other?

And yet, I’ve played WoW for fewer years than I’ve been married to my wife. It has grown as we have, expanded (my wife, let me point out, has not expanded over the years in any way except emotionally. My butt has, but she most emphatically has not. )

So, can you please finally grasp the simple concept that some of us HAVE THE CAPACITY TO BE HAPPY IN A COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP AND DON’T NEED TO DUMP OUR CURRENT LOVE WHEN A HOT NEW MODEL COMES ALONG BECAUSE ITS SHINY AND NEW.

I love my wife, can’t imagine a world without her. Just cannot do it.

I also love WoW. I love that, as long as I’ve been playing it, and as incredibly comfortable the knowledge I have of the game, it’s rules, the underpinnings of the gameplay and the vast world of lore gives me, I STILL find something new and fresh or changed and rediscovered all the time.

It’s the wonderful video game hobby that I know so well that still manages to surprise and delight me.

I love my wife far, far more than I will ever love a video game, even WoW. Let me make that clear. This is a comparison to make a point, not a comparison like they are emotionally equal in my life.

The point being, I have the capacity to enjoy being in a relationship.

I get asked, and I see comments all the time from people wondering “How is it that you’re not bored yet? Everyone else is bored, your creating that new alt is another sign that you’re bored, you’re supposed to be sick of WoW by now, how can you continue to play that tired old boring game?”

And I keep wondering to myself, “How is it that you can’t grasp the concept that someone may actually ENJOY playing a game that they have known for many years, have grown very familiar with, have developed years of wonderful memories with, have explored and grown so used to that logging in is like returning to visit an old friend that is still your best friend?”

And I still get to make new characters and discover NEW ways of playing this game! Un-be-lievable.

If you can’t conceive of how someone else can play the same game for years and years, if the very idea somehow offends you…

In the immortal words of Jeff Foxworthy, MAYBE THE PROBLEM IS YOU.

Please, play your other games. Have fun. I know you will like them, because they are damn good, and getting better all the time.

But please, stop acting as though I am the crazy one for still enjoying the game I’m playing.

Let’s just agree that we do not understand each other and leave it at that, okay? I won’t ram my game down your throat like it’s the one true game to tie and bind all the rest, and you don’t come here and act like every time I mention something irritating me in WoW that day that this is one more sign why the entire game sucks and only stupid people play it.

Deal?

I like trying other games myself, I’m always keeping an open mind, maybe the next great video game love of my life is out there waiting to be found. Maybe Cassie will try one, love it, and tempt me to come along and keep her company.

Maybe.

I really don’t think so, though.

Just like my relationship with my wife, I cannot imagine playing another video game in the same way that I have loved and still love playing WoW.

Someday, WoW will be shut down. Maybe even when Blizzards new MMO comes out.

And when that day comes, I will be one of those people you read about, 12,000 people left on one consolidated server on a 15 year MMO running an operating system that isn’t supported by Microsoft anymore, and you’re saying to yourself, “Wow, people still play that tired old game when all these new ones are out? Geez, what is wrong with them?”

And I’m good with that.