I got a nice short email earlier today, in response to the “The Return of AnnCoulter” post.
I expected some responses, after all, politics is serious business. It really is, and emotions related to politics run very deep.
I’m certainly not going to be surprised about getting some kind of flaming arrow of indignation fired my way.
Good lord, the country I live in is damn near split down the middle, politically, so why would I think the readers of my blog all think like I do on anything?
Hell, I’d be SCARED if all of you shared my opinions on everything, because I’m freaking insane. You’re my therapy, so if you’ve got MY back, who the hell has YOURS?!?
I get this email, and I was bored this afternoon over my lunch hour, so what the heck. It’s apparently that time again, it’s been a few years since I did one of these posts, so I guess we’ll do it up right.
From: E=Mc
I don’t appreciate political bashing in with my wow fun.
Take care and have fun.
That’s it. That’s the email I got, in reply to the feedreader emailed “Return of AnnCoulter” post.
Simple, right? No swearing, no offensive language at all, spelling and grammar are correct. On the surface, it appears to be a nice, simple, intelligent email. These are usually considered telling points in an email, lending greater weight to someone’s opinion.
Unfortunately, where it fails is in maturity and sense.
Let’s say you are reading things on the internet, you’re browsing, surfing the web. Following links, reading blog posts in various places, WoW.com articles, whatever.
Along the way, you may encounter something you really like, and think that it would be nice to subscribe to their mailing list or to their blog feed, in the hopes that you’ll get to see similarly enjoyable writing delivered conveniently right into your mailbox in the future.
Suddenly, you do get another post by the same author delivered into your email box or in your feedreader, and this one shocks you. The author didn’t write another article on a topic similar to the last one. This time, he wrote about a subject you take very seriously, and in addition, you don’t like his attitude about it. You’re offended by this idiot. Hey, he may write the funny okay once in a while, but what the heck makes him think you care what he actually thinks about anything else? You thought you were signing up for one thing, and here you are getting something else entirely. This will not do.
So, what do you do then?
A mature individual may do many things, depending on how strong he or she feels about it. They may unsubscribe from that writer entirely, wanting to make sure they are never bothered by that kind of thing again. A total flush to prevent being further offended.
Or, the person may decide that, as irritating as that article was, the other posts were good enough, enjoyable enough, that they don’t want to miss out on any more in the future. They were irritated, but not so much that it outweighs the positives of the funny posts. So, they’ll simply “mark as read” or delete the offensive posts, and scan future posts quickly to weed them out and continue on, only reading the ones that sound interesting.
Those both seem like reasonable responses to me. People change, writing changes, and you never know when someone like me might just go off the deep end.
Why should you put up with it? With a ’subscribe by choice’ blog, like mine, it couldn’t be easier to flush the bad articles from your life, or the blog itself. You just unsubscribe and delete any links to the website, and don’t follow any links from anyone else, and you’ll never see that blog writer again for the rest of your life.
So, all that being said, where in all that do you fit in a situation where a person decides to email the writer with a brief two sentence message like that? What end does that serve?
I’ve given it a little thought, and while I can’t pretend to know what goes on in the mind of anyone else, I can speculate, and will.
What I would speculate is that such a person, when faced with an article that irritated them or made them unhappy, they could not simply take action of their own to protect themselves and leave it at that. No, they felt the need to take action to share their unhappiness, to spread it around.
The “If I’m not happy, why should anyone else be” mindset.
That’s just not an attitude I can respect.
I know that over time, misunderstandings can happen. Especially when people read posts about WoW and Bear tanking, and are directed here or linked here from WoW-only websites, and accordingly develop an expectation as to what the point of the blog is, what it is I do here, and what they are likely to see.
I’m going to do my best to clear the misunderstandings up.
My blog exists as a place for me to write what I want to write about, when I want to write about it, on any given day. I write whatever I may be inspired about at the moment. I write about my enthusiasms. I especially write about things that bother me. I frequently write what I think of are entertaining posts to cheer both myself up, and hopefully other people.
I do not limit myself to any particular topic. On the “About” page of my website, it says “BigBearButt offers his cranky opinions of a long time World of Warcraft casual feral druid about druid life, the WoW world, and everything.”
That last bit, where I say “everything”? That early bit, where I say “cranky”? Both of those are keywords for the content of this blog.
It’s my own personal website used as a means for my personal expression.
See, I don’t want to mislead you. If you think the blog posts wandering from topic to topic is a temporary situation, please don’t. When I do write about WoW, most often it’s from a Feral Druid Tank mindset. But I don’t limit myself to that, and if that’s the only reason why you’re here, well, you’re facing a lot of disappointment.
So, that’s the blog. That’s what you can expect in the future. Basically, the same old, same old that I’ve been doing here for years.
Now, I don’t want to be unkind. I might tend to think it’s simply an immature desire to lash out at someone that irritated them, but maybe there is an alternate reason why someone would mail me like that.
I know that there is a tendency for people to think that in any situation where they receive a service, they are a customer, and the opinions of a customer are always right and should be respected.
I know that, because of this philospohy, a lot of people feel that if they are not happy, it’s important for them to make their unhappiness known to the ‘management’. Sometimes it’s not for personal benefit, but to try and guide the management service towards better efforts in the future, or just a desire to nudge people to do what you want in the way you think they should, to mentor them when you feel they’ve gone off track.
Whatever the case, it doesn’t apply here. You are not my customers. You do not pay me money.
Our contract, such as it is, is that I will continue to write what I want to write, and I will continue to post it publicly for anyone who wants to spend some of their time reading it.
I pledge to myself that I will do my best to stay true to myself, and to write my honest thoughts and opinions and research.
Your end of the contract is that you read it whenever you feel like it or not, as you choose. Whether you walk away amused or irritated or bored, it’s all your decision. But if you do choose to comment, you do so in a mature way, sharing your honest thoughts and opinions, being considerate of others, and if it’s within your power, helpful in your suggestions.
Further, and I do think this is something that is implied but may not be readily apparent, if you have really strong feelings you want to share in great detail, especially ones that are in direct contradiction of everything I ever say, then you go make your own blog and write your own posts there. You don’t just try and hijack mine every time I write anything.
You may be my friends, you may be people that have been visiting only once or have been here for years commenting frequently and becoming folks near and dear to my heart, like Dechion, Katt and Tesh, but you”re not my customers.
I pay for the website hosting, and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never asked any of you to rush out and fund my purchase of anything. I certainly don’t recall trying to push for people to buy items from the blog store so I can get some cash.
I don’t even host ads, despite a lot of emails wanting me to, so I don’t receive money from passive pagehits. I’ve always felt ads would have been unsightly.
See, I don’t do this for money, If I wanted money, hell, I’d still write for WoW.com and I’d have closed this blog a long time ago. Life isn’t all about making money. There’s nothing wrong with making money, and there’s nothing wrong about websites having banner ads.
But not being a money making enterprise leaves me ethically and morally free to say what I’m saying right now, which is that I don’t owe anyone a damn thing in what I write or how I write it.
I write for fun, I write for myself, and I write for the amusement and enjoyment of you, my friends. I also continue to try to provide a place to share ideas and suggestions and tips for people starting out tanking, to help get their feet wet and feel confident.
When people do spend money on the blog store, I don’t even keep that. So far, it’s all gone right back into buying shirts or buttons I’ve given away to readers, either at local Meet the Bear events or through website contests.
I’ll never be a Penny Arcade making money with this stuff; it’s not what I aspire to.
I’m always happy to discuss what part of my opinion may have upset you in private, as long as you’re interested in talking about it via email, and not just in lecturing me. If you want a reasoned discussion, hey, I’m your Bear. Close your mind, and I close MY browser.
Where I simply shake my head in laughter is if you read something I wrote that you didn’t like because I wrote about a topic you don’t want to have to see on a “WoW blog”, and then you email me to tell me so.
I don’t care. Click “unsubscribe” and move on with your life, don’t bother me with your sillyness.
Am I supposed to go, “Oh my, I stepped over the bounds of a WoW blog and delved fleetingly in the deep waters of the political spectrum, and my readers have made their wishes known; henceforth, I shall restrict myself to good, wholesome WoW related blog posts so as not to offend.”
No, it doesn’t do that.
I write what I write that I really think and feel. You may love me, hate me, or say ‘meh’, but at least you know it’s me.
If I am really thinking about something a lot and being bothered by it, I’m not going to censor myself, when talking about it and getting it off my chest really does make me feel better. That’s one of the best things about having a blog; to write what I really think and get it off my chest.
I may hold myself to a personal standard in my writing, and I may do my best to hold to that standard, but I do not OWE any reader anything. I don’t answer to you, I answer to my own conscience.
In return, you do not owe ME anything. :) Ain’t I nice? This is finally one thing in your life where you know that no bill will come due.
If you don’t like what I say or how I say it, you don’t have to just endure it. Heck no. You always, ALWAYS have the power to exercise your freedom of choice and remove me from your feedreader and from your life. I’m just one more idiot in a world full of them, writing BS on a blog.
Where we have the divide, is that your freedom of choice does not include a right to attempt to inhibit or discourage my exercising of my freedom of speech and freedom of personal expression on the blog I pay to maintain.
If and when you don’t like what I say on any given day, you have the power. Just unsubscribe, and never come back. Don’t subject yourself to what you find offensive. Be a mature individual, and just close the browser to me.
Just, whatever you do, please don’t bother taking that further step to email me just to tell me you didn’t like my going off WoW topics, or talking politics or whatever. I’m not going to censure myself to make you happy, or apologize for speaking my mind here in my house.
Welcome to another edition of the rambling bear. Will this be a Bearwall?
Let’s find out together!
Since my Rogue dinged 80 last week, I’ve run quite a few Heroic instances to get geared up.
Why am I getting geared up? Honestly, I have no idea. It’s one of those unexplainable urges, perhaps related to the drive to collect. Even though I have no intention if ever raiding with the Rogue, I still feel an urge to study gear upgrades, plan acquisitions, and do runs to improve my stats. I don’t know where the urge comes from, but there it is.
As I ran all of these Heroics as a low gearscore Rogue climbing the DPS ladder, I ran into what I’m hoping is just a really, really bad run of idiot tanks. Just, “holy crap you morons have no business tanking” kind of tanks.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t have any problems with the behavior of any of the DPS in the runs. Nobody I’ve run with has behaved poorly, or even talked except for saying hi. When things get really bad, it seems like the modern response that has evolved is to just drop group without warning if you’re not happy. No bitching, no recriminations, just ‘poof!’ gone.
On the other hand, and yes I stick with the runs no matter how bad they get out of some kind of sick fascination with these train wrecks, I’ve seen some of the worst tanking I could imagine.
In one case, and I’m not lying, I told a 5450 Gearscore Paladin tank in Heroic Pit of Saron that if he wanted to learn how to tank for the very first time ever, he needed to pick a non-Heroic. Then I joined the other three people that had already dropped group without warning after the third time the healer died from mobs that were never grabbed by the tank… before we ever reached the first boss. That last Dragon trash mob pull was just too much for the group, they all dropped while I stayed long enough to be rude. I’m sorry, if you’ve played long enough to get that kind of gear for your tanking set, and you’re THAT bad, you’ve got issues. Run a normal, for the love of pete. There is a limit to how many mobs a Priest can solo while you go running ahead ignoring everything behind you pull after pull.
As an aside, I am maximizing my “Tricks of the Trade + get on the Healer’s mobs” technique. I find myself using it SO often.
In some ways, I suspect I’m reaping instance karma earned from my “…then you might be a bad tank” post.
Okay, in the interests of fairness, I did have a run with one healer asshat… he didn’t actually say anything bad, but we were doing Heroic Halls of Stone, and everything was going very smoothly, even though we had a very low gearscore Warrior tank. The tank was doing a great job, holding aggro, managing mobs, etc. His gear was just starting out so he was squishier than, say, an ICC tank. But he was doing a great job. I was shocked. Healer was never run ragged out of mana, never too hard to heal, just a little squishier than an ICC tank.
Perhaps it was this squishiness that annoyed the healer, the need for him to actually do something for a change, because when Brann was triggered for the fight against waves of mobs, the Healer dropped group the millisecond Brann was activated, dropped without a word, I guess in the hopes that without a healer the waves would steamroll us.
Fortunately, we got another healer before we even saw the first wave, and we finished the entire run smooth as silk. So, the healer succeeded in doing nothing more than costing himself some Emblems and a deserter debuff, but, oh well. The things some people do, right?
On the other hand, I was in a Heroic Pit of Saron run with a group, and everyone but me was really well geared, run went smooth as silk, and when the crossbow dropped from Krick and Ick, I randomed because there was a Hunter in the group. Hunter ended up winning it on a random, and I whispered him that if he wasn’t going to actually use it, I’d buy it off him for 30 gold.
He gave me the crossbow, refused the gold, and ended up he’s on my server, and has a Rogue raiding in ICC himself, offered some spec advice, gear advice, and has a Leatherworker with leather ICC patterns that he lined to me offering to craft them if I wanted them someday.
Go figure, right? One day you can get runs with people that actively try to drop group at the worst possible moment to screw the other strangers for no reason I can see, and the next you run into someone that just goes out of their way to be nice and helpful, says “Put me on your friends list, if you’ve ever got any questions or could use a tank to run you into HHoR for the offhand Rogue sword, just let me know. My alt is a tank, geared well enough to handle HHoR. I might be able to get some friends of mine to go in with us, too.”
It’s thinking about all this, the core issue of player behavior, the good, the bad and what can be done about it, that brought me to the next train of thought.
I’m always suspicious of comparisons and metaphors and similies, and basically anything that tries to make a point by comparing two different things. Whenever you start out thinking of one thing, when you switch to the other you bring along your own baggage. You’ve got preconceived ideas of what the first thing is, and you apply some of those to imagining the second one.
Still, we do it all the time. Someone tells us they ate in a Hardees, and we ask what that is, if they tell us it’s like a McDonalds, that gives us some vague frame of reference. We’ll picture the typical McDonalds layout, food, speed, cleanliness, price point etc, and figure a Hardees is somewhat like all of those.
Maybe some time later you actually see a Hardees, step inside and order a meal. When it comes, maybe you’re surprised because the food is more expensive than you expected, or slower than you expected, or fresher or more upscale, whatever. The point is, after you make those initial comparisons in your head, you’re going to be ramming up against your preconceived ideas when you encounter the actual thing.
You start off with a frame of reference, and that informs your thought to some extent ever after.
So, the behavior of players in WoW, and what to do about it? What can be done about it?
When I think of World of Warcraft, I think of it using the same frame of reference as I did when I started planning to purchase it; a video game set in a fantasy world similar to other first person perspective video games, with the addition of a multiplayer aspect.
That perspective works up to a point, right? It’s a video game, ostensibly for fun, and you can play it as one, and there are also other people in it you can choose to hang out with.
I think it breaks down in the fine details. I further think there’s a frame of reference that does work better.
One of the most consistent long term problems players have are related to the behavior of others. Our unhappiness when other players’ actions and behavior and attitude affect our own gameplay experience in a negative way.
Who do we ultimately hold responsible for doing something about player behavior?
The other player? No, we acknowledge the existence of asshats, and we frequently note the stark truth of the John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. We pretty much just say to each other, “yep, Asshats are asshats. Would they pull that shit in person? Nope. Chickenshit little pricks. They’ve finally found a home.”
But we don’t hold them responsible. We don’t expect them to modify their own behavior. In fact, I think most of us have given up on them, and just wonder when the freight train of life is going to run their asses down. Sooner or later, bills come due.
No, we don’t hold the asshats responsible, we hold Blizzard responsible, and we petition Blizzard to return stolen loot, to report offensive behavior expecting them to take action against the other player, and we further expect Blizzard to find ways of blocking player behaviors from being able to affect our game experience in negative ways.
I think some folks even expect Blizzard to come up with ways, through game code and design, to force players to either play their characters well in a group, or be blocked from joining groups at all.
Blizzard, for their part, has their ToS and ToC, and they’ve also been experimenting with programmed methods of adding consequences to behavior.
Vote kicking, deserter debuff durations, streamlined spam reporting, reporting offensive behavior through trouble tickets, blocking players from being vote kicked from groups once a boss fight is engaged, etc.
Blizzard is actively developing and implementing methods of controlling player behavior using rewards and punishments.
What do we expect? We, as players of WoW that pay Blizzard our monthly fee, expect Blizzard to act in good faith to provide us with a safe, friendly environment to have fun. And damn, do people get loud and pissy if they think there’s more Blizzard could be doing.
We expect that when another player succeeds in affecting our gameplay in a really negative way, such as by stealing in-game goods from a guild bank, or by hacking an account, or by using language or behavior intended to offend, we can turn to Blizzard for some kind of resolution.
What we’ve all done together is fulfilled the prophecies of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson and scores of others, and made a reality of the concept of a virtual cybernetic government.
Wherever our meat body may reside, we have these new worlds to live in online. They are here, now, and there are several to choose from.
We pick and choose among them, what features they provide to their citizens, how much the taxes cost us if we choose to live there, what laws and customs we will have to abide by… what behaviors will or will not be tolerated, and how such behaviors will be policed.
Make no mistake, that’s what has happened. Those of us that play a persistant MMO are making choices as to where we live our virtual lives… and companies like Blizzard know this, and are studying methods of keeping their citizens happy.
Blizzard is the government of World of Warcraft. You can decide for yourself how to classify it, but they hold the power over their country, and they can decide what rules or laws they will put into place… and to what extent they will choose to enforce them, if at all.
What I find interesting when thinking of the game as a virtual world, is considering the steps Blizzard has already taken to try and control behavior, and how ably players find ways of bypassing them so as to still hurt others.
Blizzard doesn’t have jail, but they can cancel your account. In the middle ground, there are temporary bans, and there are forced name changes for reported offensive names. Those have been around for years.
But really, how recently did the drive to control behavior through in-game incentives and punishments begin?
Creating the LFG interface tool was an excellent step towards streamlining the matchmaking capabilities of the game… but was it also one of the first steps in trying to build in behavior controls?
I know that in Burning Crusade, people could choose to leave group, and I think you could boot someone from your group, but you couldn’t force them to leave the instance… and the instance wouldn’t let more than the predetermined max number of characters in at one time.
I recall one epic tale of a player in Shattered Halls that was treated offensively by the rest of his group, was somehow made to leave group so they could bring in a friend of theirs as a fifth right at the end, and he refused to leave the instance. He camped the instance refusing to leave for a long, long time… long enough that all of the trash he helped to kill respawned, so that the group would have to rekill everything if they wanted to do it with their buddy instead of him.
Somewhere after that Blizzard changed the game so that if you were in another group’s instance, it would boot you out automatically to the nearest graveyard; no more camping to prevent others from playing. No, they weren’t related, what was remarkable about that particular story was that for a change it was the rest of the group that abused the system, and the ability to camp the instance and prevent the fifth from zoning in that upheld justice, or something like that.
Was that Blizzards’ first real act of trying to program in morality, to paraphrase the old “you can’t legislate morality” saying?
Some players would ninja loot items, and then say that it was a mistake, and you could petition Blizzard if you wanted the item back, but they can’t trade it, sorry. Blizzard changed the game so you CAN trade items with other players that were in the instance with you.
Now vote kicking… modifications to the length ot the deserter debuff. Tracking of how often you initiate a vote kick, and adjustments programmed in to limit your ability to vote kick if you ‘overuse’ it. Overuse it? By who’s definition?
Why, Blizzard’s.
While we talk about video games and playing and stats and gear, Blizzard has been patiently assuming the responsibility of creating a system of laws and punishments (and rewards) for a virtual world, and they’re doing it with the pressure of keeping the majority of their taxpaying citizens as happy as possible, so that folks don’t emigrate to another virtual country.
They have other tools to keep people around as active and happy citizens, expanding the boundaries of the game world, new frontiers to explore, new horizons to discover, new opportunities of advancement and excitement.
Are the new Guild leveling rewards an attempt to get us to more effectively police ourselves, by giving lone wolves a tacit reward for playing well with others? Once you are enticed into joining a large guild in the hopes of gaining access to the best rewards, you then become subject to that guild’s rules, and face the consequences if you violate those rules and they find out.
How about the recent Real ID forum foofarah?
We keep talking about WoW as a game, but let’s call it what it really is; a virtual country that we have chosen to become citizens of, with Blizzard holding the reins of government.
I know it’s not a new idea, it’s decades old. But I do think that it’s interesting how different some of Blizzard’s decisions and game designs can look when you change your point of reference away from a video game, and look at WoW as a persistent virtual country that we can all choose to join or not.
This is what we are, my friends. We are all potential citizens of the virtual, with our passports held tightly in our hands. We have the freedom of touring all the worlds of the nether, seeing what each is like, what laws of physics rule these realms, how pretty they may be, what there is to do while we vacation there.
We may even find some that we really like, and may think about making our home there.
Why are the various virtual countries so eager to extend us a warm welcome, all smiles at the immigration offices?
Why, in the hopes that we’ll become tax paying citizens, of course.
As a potential citizen, when we make our decision, part of that decision should be asking ourselves, what are the laws like here? How well are they enforced, if at all? If the other citizens are violent or antisocial, if someone in the game targets me hoping to ruin my virtual life or steal my property, what recourse do I have? How hard is it in this country for others to infringe on my own gameplay, my freedom, my right to property?
I know that I loved reading Neuromancer, and Snow Crash, and so many other books in the cyberpunk genre, but when I thought of those ideas of virtual worlds, I always expected it to come some time in the future.
Many of those worlds painted the future cyberspace as a place where what race, sex, color or age you are would be immaterial; the future cyberspace would be built on a foundation of enlightened utopia, where the quality of your ideas would be all that mattered, and by definition, if you could GET into cyberspace, you would somehow be too intelligent, enlightened and sophisticated to be an ignorant bigot or irritating little prick.
Well, the future is now.
Today, I am a proud and happy citizen of World of Warcraft, and I log in each time, passport in hand, taxes all paid up.
And I encounter the reality of my fellow citizens… ah, well. So much for enlightened intellectualism and the abolition of bigotry and hatred.
Anyone for some [anal] trade chat? /sigh.
When I log into WoW, I’m also eagerly reading about other countries that are being founded even as we speak, countries whose borders are due to open in the months and years ahead.
I look forward to learnig more about those worlds, and perhaps touring them myself.
Are the developers that design those worlds realise that they are the architects, each in their own way, of their own constitutions? Do they plan carefully what laws they will have in place, what measures they will take to enforce them, and what the consequences of those decisions can mean for their long term future?
Star Wars: The Old Republic is coming soon… I was fascinated with the design of the graphics, the announcements of races and classes, and gameplay videos. Now I find myself wondering what the interaction between players will be like, and what limits, if any, will be placed between them?
We’ve long moved past the time when having a profanity filter or a character name approval process is enough for a game to claim to be responsible.
Am I the only one that wishes Massively.com would add a regular column looking into the actual mechanics of controlling character interaction in MMOs, of programming in morality or of policing behavior, and start comparing what is implemented in games due to come out soon? I know that I for one would be fascinated to read it.
Look, have you SEEN the damn video trailer for DC Universe Online?
I honestly want to know, in looking at this trailer, in looking at the Starcraft II trailer from the last post, dear lord why can’t that insane level of quality actually make it into a real movie?
Why do we keep getting TV show mass produced cartoon crap released as actual movies? Why, lord?
I see that trailer above for DC Universe, and I think about the crap animation in the most recent DC animated movie I saw, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and it makes me want to scream in frustration.
If you’re going to leave the half hour TV show episode realm and venture into the bright lights of movie making, for crap’s sake, BRING YOUR “A” GAME!!
Iron Man: Armored Adventures was a style I really, really enjoyed. I thought I could live with that as my new standard for enjoyable, smooth animation.
No. Hell no. If they want to make a movie costing millions that we’re going to pay our hard earned money to see (I know our family drops $35+ on a single movie going experience) how about stepping up and making something somewhere remotely close to the level of quality in the game trailer above?
Am I crazy? Did that 6 minutes of footage above really cost them so many millions that another 124 minutes would cripple the world’s economy?
During this weeks downtime, good old Gnomeaggedon had a wonderful post, where he praised Blizzard’s communication skills. You know what the contraction for “good old” is, right? Go’ld!
He frequently has wonderful posts, he is pure go’ld, I’m just mentioning that one because it’s relevant to what I’m going to be talking about.
Oh, and Gnomer, you been threatening me with a rant against one of my PvP related posts for months now. Wassup? Bring it, shorty!
Ahem.
So yeah, Gnomer was very impressed with Blizzard’s communication skills during the recent downtime.
Since he was nice and considerate, that must mean I gotta be contrary and cranky, right?
Sure, Blizzard had some great communication. Well played.
But how about that communication the week before?
You know, the Twitter Developer Chat communication?
Yeah, THAT communication.
I’m very happy whenever Blizzard passes on information to us concerning their plans, and the intent behind them. Most companies restrict themselves to lawyer-approved press releases that are so sanitized you can’t see controversy in them unless you really twist your inner lens ALL out of focus.
Blizzard doesn’t do that. They talk to us. The developers as well as the community moderators. So please, keep in mind that when I do bitch, it’s with a healthy appreciation that at least we have some idea of what they’ve got going on.
I’d rather be told something I don’t like, and have it be the truth, than to be told nothing at all.
Moving on to the Twitter Developer Chat, the subject of class specific quests was brought up. Will Cataclysm have them?
The bare bones answer is, yes. There will be class quests at 20, and another at 50. Or something like that. This is good news, correct? There will be something for each class.
However, the value-added answer was that there will not be, and by implication never be, extensive class-specific quests because it is too expensive for the developers to program into the game.
Why is it considered too expensive? Let’s think about it for a moment.
The amount of time spent on quests for that one class could be better spent on quests that all classes could complete. The decision has to be made, create content all classes will see, or content only one class will see, using a certain finite amount of resources.
Or, to try and clarify Blizzard’s position for us, plucking numbers from thin air, if a programmer costs $30 an hour, it takes 1 hour to design a quest and implement the programming, and 100 hours of programming time ($3000) is budgeted for new quest content, then which is a more valuable use of that $3000? 100 quests for everyone, or 10 quests for each class?
That’s the position Blizzard holds. That it is too expensive in terms of allocated resources to program content exclusively for one class that nobody else will see.
In terms of project management and budget resource allocation, it’s very convincing logic. Especially when budgeting the resources required to completely revamp the existing Azerothian world experience.
In terms of the game design of an MMO, however, especially for an MMO with an extremely aging demographic, I don’t think it’s solid foreward planning.
In fact, I think it’s damn shortsighted.
My biggest objection to that logic? The concept, at this stage in the game, that content designed for only one character class will only be seen by a small segment of the players.
Are there still any players of over two years experience in this game that have created one character, and stuck to it, never experiencing anything else?
No. Most players play one main character, and then they start a new one for a new experience in the same game.
Having made that point, let’s back up a little.
As a developer, you have a decision to make.
Allocate resources to either attract new customers, or allocate them to retain existing customers.
Or both.
I think Cataclysm is a brilliant plan for accomplishing both.
Existing customers get brand new leveling experiences within a familiar setting. I personally think that there is a lot of evidence that people LOVE being surrounded by familiar settings with a fresh new little tweak.
Anyone else love long series of books, TV shows or movies, where the scenery may change, and the plot may be different, but the major characters and genre stay the same?
No, I didn’t think so. Oh no, once an episode or book comes out, there’s never a demand for a sequal.
For existing customers, Cataclysm lets us continue to play in a world with familiar rules, settings, and structure… but the rules are just a little different now, and the places are a little changed now, and the quests are a little different now, and even the locations where Herbs and Ore spawn will be a little different now. And you can fly!
Small adjustments, but overall a comfortable feeling of being at home. It’s just like having a new couch and loveseat, and a 44″ HDTV added to the experience.
For brand new customers, the advertising will entice them by saying, “You never tried WoW before, because you were worried that everyone else already knew everything, and you’d be the noob. But now’s your chance to get in at the beginning, and learn the World of Warcraft alongside everyone else. The rules are new, the world is fresh, and there are brand new races and starting areas to try. There has never been a better opportunity to explore World of Warcraft all over again… for the very first time.”
Okay, so Cataclysm brings something for both existing and new customers.
For the existing customers, though… we’ve all been here before. I for one feel like I can predict the future based on past experiences.
Right now I have every character slot filled. I have had for months.
If I want to experience the new leveling world, there are three possibilities for me;
I delete existing characters I love.
I start up fresh on a new server.
Blizzard lets us have more character slots per server.
What if all my friends are on my server? Then if Blizzard doesn’t open up more character slots, somebody has to get the axe.
If the game was only a year old, or even two years old, that wouldn’t be such an unreasonable expectation. Right?
But as a long term customer of over four years, I don’t think I’m unusual in having almost every slot filled with a character I like, and in which I have invested my time to develop, train and bond with. .
Does that sound super geeky? Bonding with a character in a video game? Of course it does. Anyone that doesn’t share certain geeky video game role playing characteristics with me is even now firing up the comment page to scream “It’s just a video game, get a grip!”
That’s fine, you don’t get it, and perhaps that means you represent the sane point of view.
I can only say that when I look at my level 73 Shadow Priest with maxed Jewelcrafting and Tailoring, I know that I may not feel like playing the character because I don’t currently enjoy her playstyle, but I have too many memories tied up in playing that character with friends. Great times with Legatum Ignavis in Karazhan, uber time spent PvPing in Alterac Valley with my wife to get the awesome PvP epic gavel (which she still carries), even time spent training Jewelcrafting that I just don’t want to lose by deleting her, even though I don’t intend playing her any time soon.
To paraphrase Roy Batty, “All those moments would be lost in time… like tears in the rain.”
Cut down to it, if I want to hang with all my friends, and they don’t feel like server changing, then I have to kill a long time friend. Digital or not, it’s not cool. I’d much prefer to allow the character to remain, perhaps not logged in by me, but I can imagine at the loading screen that my Priest is out there in Azeroth, somewhere, sipping ale at the Pink Pigtail Inn and sharing stories of Mind Flaying some poor Rogue in Alterac Valley back in the day. Just waiting in pleasant retirement until the day her old friend wants to melt faces once again.
So, technically, limited replay value in the leveling experience, yes? Us oldtimers don’t have tons of empty slots to fill up.
But that’s okay, let’s move past that and assume that most people will eventually fire up a character on another server to experience the changed world. Or delete people. OR, perhaps they’ll take their max level characters and go questing the old world from scratch. Hopefully, all quests will be reset so you can do it all over again from the beginning.
So you do that on one character. Leveling or questing content from 1 to 60.
And then you do it a second time.
What have we learned from 5 years of playing?
Doing the same quests on different characters year after year gets damn old.
We play multiple characters in the hopes of experiencing something new.
And you tell us that content for one class is too expensive because it wouldn’t be seen by enough people? REALLY?
Sure, if all you’re looking at is the next three months, you might be right. Are we really planning on the game only lasting three more months?
Inevitably you want to see the experience from the other faction. Why? Is it because they’ve got better classes? Not anymore. Is it because they’ve got races you like better than the ones you first picked? Probably not, what races you went with first are the ones you liked best. Except for folks that like the brand new races, and none of the others on that faction.
So why?
It’s to see new quests. To take part in new storylines. To experience something new and fresh.
Well, if there are no class specific quests or content, I mean real class content different from the rest, then what you have is playing a different class through the same old thing you’ve already seen five, ten, fifteen times.
If each class had it’s own rich content at some point, or a little thread that wound it’s way through all the levels that had some good story to it, that would to me add something special for the long term player. Something new that playing that class brought besides a new way to trigger a ranged or melee attack.
I’m not thinking of the next year. I’m not even thinking of the next two years. I’m thinking of where we are now, and how short sighted it feels to hear a developer say that class specific content is too expensive for the return on investment.
When World of Warcraft was originally being developed, going headfirst against Everquest II, they invested in their plan. They couldn’t know how it would turn out, so they brought their ‘A’ game and did the best they could to anticipate what would really attract and retain customers long term.
None of the magazines or news agencies at the time considered WoW to be the big thing that would dominate the world. Everquest II was regularly reported to be the stronger contender for next gen MMO, simply because of the experience and popularity of EQ1.
During that initial development, clearly somebody over at Blizzard thought about differentiating the class gameplay experience in ways other than just stats and playstyle.
Somebody clearly thought that investing resources into making each class leveling experience have something special, something new. Some reason to draw you into the 1 to 60 game all over again, and extend your subscription that bit longer.
They invested at that time in class specific content. Special quest chains to unlock class defining abilities. Rogue quest areas and Ravenholdt. Warrior chains for kick ass weapons. Level 50 class quests for items out of Sunken Temple.
It really does feel like one person had that vision, but spent more time with one class than another. Different classes have content implemented at different levels. In some cases, all the class chains consist of are “go here and do this” to get an item that would have been a decent upgrade. Others have big epic feeling chains that bring special mounts. Even the Hunter class had the raiding gear chain that brought the bow and quiver of awesomeness.
It doesn’t feel like the attention to the classes was balanced, but more like one person had a vision… and then in mid stream had their attention shifted, or their resources pulled, and nobody left shares that same vision going forward.
It’s too bad. I know that, having done it already, I don’t personally look forward to questing through everything for the third time and saying, “What now?”, knowing that the plan is for all classes to get the same basic experience.
When it comes to investing resources in improving the replay value of World of Warcraft, a game meant to be a subscription based long-term gaming experience… I just don’t agree with the idea that class specific content is “too expensive”.
Really, when it comes right down to it, I’d rather they had the opposite opinion; that investing in long term replayability at all levels of content be something they make a high priority.
I know that Blizzard has done a fantastic job on the Cataclysm content. I’ve seen the screenshots, I’ve read a few of the beta reports, and by all indications, one thing you cannot accuse Blizzard of is being cheap on developing new content or redesigning the game.
I guess what it boils down to is my objection to the game design philosophy lurking behind such statements. If you’re going to be a subscription based game, you’ve got to be keeping your eye on things that will improve replayability, and keep your customers in it for the long term.
Saying class specific content is “too expensive” feels, to me, to be back-asswards to that concept.
First, the news, for those that hadn’t seen it yet. Blizzard made an announcement that the Official WoW Forums would NOT, in fact, display real first and last names when their changes go live. Instead, there will be a persistant handle or nickname of some kind. The message was signed as coming directly from Mike Morhaime.
So.
I’ll admit to being a little stunned.
I’m not speechless, nor dumbfounded, or even amazed.
But I am stunned. With a little disappointment thrown in as well.
This is what I, personally, wanted, and it was all I wanted.
No bullshit rhetoric, no torches waved in the air, no pitchforks brandished with glee, no screaming “Burn the witch! Burn her!”
I just wanted what was, to me, a very poor decision modified to remove the requirement of publicly displaying your real legal first and last name in order to participate in an online gaming community.
Well, they did that.
Thanks!
See, that was me there. Thanking Blizzard.
Look, I’ll do it again.
Thanks!
I’m thanking Blizzard, because they had made a decision, publicly announced their decision, and then had to face the hard choice of choosing to stick to their decision come hell or high water and being accused of refusing to listen to the concerns of their subscribers, or changing their decision and inevitably getting accused of being wishy washy and lacking the courage to stick to their principles.
They chose to bend in the wind of subscriber discontent. They modified their stance. We will not be required to bring our real life into our escapist fantasy.
And, of course, they are now being ripped a new one for it.
Well, I knew that was coming, no matter what. Truly, no surprises there.
What disappoints me is how many people were willing, SO FAST, to take Blizzard’s final reaction to the public outcry, an outcry that saw over 1700 pages of “Hell No”, and actually turn it into a consiracy theory.
“They meant to do that the whole time. They just got a week of free Buzz. Look, they came out with crazy talk they never intended to carry through on, and then when they backed down they get what they always wanted in the first place, AND get to seem like they listen to customer complaints! This is what they intended from the beginning!”
I thought I was cynical, and I thought I was pretty clear on the “Corporations are in the business of making a profit for their shareholders” understanding of financial decisions.
And yet, I am still not so far gone that I can see the color of the sky of the planet upon which these people are standing. I can’t tell what the weather’s like there.
I wonder if there are rainbows. Rainbows are pretty. I like rainbows.
Blizzard made a partnership with Facebook. They planned on, and moved towards, social networking integration. And in pursueing that goal, they made an announcement that caused a backlash with an intensity the WoW community has never seen before. This was almost, not quite, but almost Star Wars Galaxies NGE level backlash. And it’s possible it could have built to that level if left unanswered.
Did you see that main Official WoW Forums thread? Did you see the WoW Ladies forum thread? Did you notice the number of comments on the MMO Champions thread about it, or on WoW.com, or the many blog posts in the blogging community about it?
There has been outrage before, and drama, and stupidity, but never in my experience in WoW did so many come out with such a clearly negative reaction in so short a time to anything else.
There was a solid minority of players happy with the change, and there were of course those that were delighted to see Blizzard do it, JUST for the sheer joy of expecting to see an internet disaster of biblical proportions rain locusts and fire down upon everyone involved, for their amusement. Those folks, of course, I noticed expected it to be a nightmare for all involved… they were just in favor of it for the drama watching enjoyment.
Alongside the conspiracy theorists, there are those lambasting Blizzard for having ”caved”.
“Caved”?
This is not a dad letting his grounded teen out of punishment early because he was tired of hearing the whining, “But daaaaad! my friends are all seeing Eclipse tonight, and I wannnna go toooooooo! Oh, and can I have $80 for a shirt at Hollisters first?”.
That’s what “caved” is. It’s giving in to the selfish, petty or inappropriate requests of the undeserving, out of a selfish desire to stop dealing with the bitching and complaints.
Do you really feel thats what Blizzard did? That they acted merely to shut us up because they were tired of the whining, and it was easier to give in than to stick to their principles?
Or even better, are you in the first group and really think that Blizzard WANTED to cause all this drama and controversy, for whatever reason, as some kind of plot, and this was all planned in advance?
I just…. wow.
If you do, if you really look inside yourself, and after trying to be objective about all this, you really feel in your heart that it was anything other than responding to thousands of players’ concerns expressed over three days, then please. I have a request.
Just leave me alone. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t.
If thats your stance, and that’s really the first reaction you’ve got instead of a simple “Hey Blizzard, thanks for paying attention to our concerns, I for one really appreciate such a clear, fast and unequivocal response”, if you’re really that negative, then just drop me from your feedreader.
I may get pissed on occasion and go off on a rant, but in my heart, I’m just not that negative.
I like playing WoW, I’m willing to pay a monthly fee for the game I’m getting, I’m willing to pay for the extra work that they put into the expansions, I’m very willing to buy an in-game pet if they give me a cute stuffed animal Horde batwing mount to go with it, and I’m happy to talk about the game and share stories and squee with glee over whatever comes down the road.
Sure, I get pissed at times. Sure I rant. I vent. I go off on great roaring tears. But I do so because I am so passionate in my love for the wonderful game of WoW, it’s depth, it’s vibrant vitality, the insane number of hours of pleasure it has brought me over the years.
I do it for the Internet Dragons. They deserve to get what’s coming to ‘em, and I’m just the one to bring it.
Sure, on this blog that picture up there has my real name on it. But this is a blog about my life in a video game, among other things, and here, as there, I do not like being called John. John is what they call me at work. John is what I hear being paged over the loudspeaker when, inevitably, there is yet another damn emergency that needs tending to.
Here, I’m the Big Bear Butt. I’m B^3. BBB. Triple B. And whatever other cute, funny, goofy variations you awesome folks come up with. And I am the BBB here, because this is not work. This is not my “serious” life. This is me having fun with other people I hope are as passionate about the game as I am, and who start out with that passion in their hearts as well.
Not negativity, and not piss-poor bitterness.
I’m glad I won’t have to be ‘John’ on the forums, if and when they change them. For me, I like keeping it unreal. No big deal otherwise, but thats just me. Far more than that, I am truly happy that so many people who wanted the choice of keeping their identity private, for personal as well as safety reasons, will no longer have that worry. Not at all.
I see that as nothing but positive. I don’t see shadows circling, getting ever closer. It’s just positive. We wanted to have the option of remaining unreal. We get it. Got it? Good!
I shouldn’t be disappointed. Nobody owes me a damn thing, and everyone has a perfect right to whatever opinion they’ve got. I have no reason, nor right, to have expected anything different.
