Blog Posts from "The Swayze Express" - Gameriot.com

Customer Service Fail - WoW Too Complex?

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:09:01 -0500

A couple things to rant on here today on the Swayze Express. Maybe I should turn this into one of those dailies... what do you think Yiska?!

I've played WoW for a long time, and observed it change in virtually every way, but over the last day and a half one transition has been especially glaring. Let me explain - on Tuesday night, in a state of pure sickness-induced exhaustion, I took my hard earned Emblems of Triumph and marched to the vendor to buy the Furious chest - an enormous upgrade to Duraeas' Hateful chest as I struggle to replace outdated gear with limited Arena points. I buy the epic gems, the expensive +10 stats enchant, and proceed to delete my despised Hateful gear.

Except that, tired and sick as I was, I deleted the new one instead.

I was devastated, and within seconds had clicked on that little red question mark and begun my heartfelt plea for restoration. I submitted the ticket and waited. Then I waited a little more... eventually calling it a night and assuming it would be there when I woke up to enjoy my sick day. And, as those of you who have been playing for the last 6 months are aware, I was wrong. In fact I played all day, and after 24 hours I was informed my ticket would be answered soon. Or more specifically, in 1 hr 55 minutes. That was when I entered a temporal anomaly the likes of which not even JLP has seen! I know you think I'm crazy, but I assure you it's true. For every minute that passed on that little ticket, no less than two minutes passed in the physical world. It was exhilarating! And then, after approximately 25 hours, my item was returned.

Now the GM was polite to be sure. The item was restored and - contrary to my expectations - gemmed and enchanted. But why did this simple restoration take so long? I am aware that most tickets are opened by idiots and incompetents, and being neither I don't submit them often, but I have needed to petition a number of the times over the years and never has this been the case. At release, when players were at their noobest, I remember getting a tell within 15 minutes. On the worst days, like patches, it was an hour. Even through Burning Crusade, while an hour was much more common, I never waited more than a few. Now I've learned that 24-48 hours is a fairly standard wait time.

But why? What has driven up wait times exponentially faster than subscriptions? I've read any number of things. Some suggest that more accounts are being hacked. Others suggest that GMs are able to deal with more problems now, though anecdotal evidence suggests they aren't able to help with much at all. One guy said that there are just more people asking stupid questions (though this seems statistically unlikely), and it could be any combination of these.

If I had to guess, I'd point my finger at all the features Blizzard has introduced and the room for error they've created, both technical and personal. The game has grown increasingly complex while the process through which the player is introduced to it hasn't changed. When I levelled my first Paladin there was no honor system or arena gear. There was no LFG system. No sockets or glyphs, heroics or badges, calendar, achievements or daily quests. No flying mounts, phasing... well you get the point. There were countless fewer features to become familiar with, and the few features which existed were introduced logically or through the manual. As ez-mode as this game may be, there is infinitely more to know than in your typical console game.

From what I gather, the GM department processes all requests and proceeds through them in a queue. Does anyone else see this as being stupid? Because from a logistics perspective it makes little sense. No self-respecting customer service company would operate like this - then again, what company would accept a 24 hour turnaround time on customer service requests? All I had to do was forgo a small bonus to stats for a few hours of honor grinding, but what about the players with issues that prevent them from playing altogether? While Blizzard's post-WoW customer service has never been exemplary, its only now really feeling like a secondary concern.

For starters, turn people away. I don't see why there can't be a screening person who can automatically forward a request that GMs can't assist with to more appropriate resources. This includes stupid questions. "The Game Master department regrets to inform you that they cannot assist with this matter. Please refer to WorldOfWarcraft.com to find an answer for this question. If you are unable to find the information you need, please try our player-driven forums!". Is a simple response that would require no more than 10 seconds of someone reading a petition and hitting a button, as opposed to a GM opening several minutes of dialogue. If I had to bet, I'd say that is better than leaving the ticket open until the player grows frustated enough to seek help elsewhere. Bottom line - priority for GM assistance should be given to issues only the GMs can assist with.

Expanding the GM department is an obvious solution. It's also expensive and potentially difficult, so I won't get into it. But actual customer satisfaction does not go step for step with the departments output. A customer who can't play because of technical issues is more likely to be upset about an extra 24 hour wait than someone who is engaged in the longer process of account restoration. By putting all the tickets in one queue, the delay has been attributed equally to all concerns rather than proportional to their size. Changing how this works might not increase the rate at which issues are dealt with, but it will certainly create the perception of better service.

But mostly, these suggestions just would have got me my chest back faster

+1

Softcore Born!

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:44:21 -0400

The title is no typo, and if you're disappointed you ought to go watch some real porn.

In my last blog entry I dedicated some time to QQing about being unable to find a guild. I consider myself a focused, reasonably good and now reasonably casual player. I'm no longer intent on being on the cusp of progression, gear or ratings. At the same time, the upcoming release of Icecrown Citadel has me interested in progressing through the existing content before Cataclysm. And when I say I want to do it, I mean I want to go into the instances with a group of skilled players and clear them, then clear hard modes and earn all the rewards that come with doing so. I don't want to make a large, regular time commitment and I'm not willing to play with douchebags and incompetents. I want to raid with people I enjoy playing with.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I'm in a rare position. Most skilled players are intent on more "ambitious goals". I need players who care as much about progression and secondary rewards as they do about gear. Most of those who lay claim to the title of "Casual" are too casual to be relied upon for weekly raids. There are a myriad of obstacles in the way of my finding a suitable guild, not to mention that these are seldom the groups of players who are actively recruiting.

At the same time, I know I'm not alone in my position. I know that there are other, mature players out there who have been playing for years and have now taken a secondary interest in the game as it subsides to real-life interests. I know there are competent players who know how to play their classes but are turned off by the immaturity and drama of guilds. Many have "been there, done that", and even more are quickly realizing how much more fun the game can be when it isn't taken so seriously. But still, WoW is a social game and social games require cooperation. I have goals, and reaching them requires a guild.

The Creation of Softcore

So, unable to find a guild that meets these criteria, I've chosen to create one. A task seemingly beyond my organizational capabilities - but with the modest goals and right players, I am confident I'll find the support to achieve these mutual goals. And at this point I must encourage readers to consider the following in case what I've been saying here appeals to you.

is an Alliance guild on Shattered Hand. We're looking for skilled, experienced, and mature players who currently find themselves inclined toward a more casual playing style. We have modest goals - to progress through existing 10-man content, complete hard-modes and earn sexy mounts and titles. The anticipated raiding schedule is once a week, likely on Sunday beginning in the afternoon/early evening.

I have no room for bull****, egos or drama. I'm looking for mature players who have a genuine interest in seeing these reasonably simple instances while in the presence of good company. I don't expect a significant commitment beyond the limited raiding schedule. I anticipate we will organize 25-man raids with other guilds/PUGs on other days, but the ultimate rule will continue to be flexibility. I enjoy PvPing and I'd certainly encourage doing so within the guild. I'm very open to groups of RL friends looking to join together (people who have RL friends are less likely to be dicks than those who don't).

At this point, I am not too concerned with gear. It's reasonably easy to come by, and as long as you're committed to keeping up I'm glad to consider you. I'm more interested to see that you were a Gladiator back in S1/S2, or that you've been playing this class as your main since Vanilla. How you answer an application or respond to questions in-game is more important to me than a short term consideration like gear. We'll be starting in Ulduar where the gear requirements aren't really harsh. At the same time, as I'm targeting the skilled and experienced with this message, I expect efforts be made to keep gear up to date and properly gemmed/enchanted.

Getting Ulduar drakes, ToGC mounts and Icecrown titles is not a very ambitious goal, nor is it intended to be. It's somewhere in between what you can do with a PUG and needing to commit to a multi-day raiding schedule. I'm as concerned with playing amongst good company as I am with achieving these modest personal goals. So at this point I encourage those who are interested to consider getting in touch with me here. There is a website to follow shortly, but you can contact me on Duraeas in-game or send a message here if you're interested in being a part of this. I'm currently recruiting all classes/specs as we only consist of a Holy Paladin and Rogue (Sleek!). I intend on limiting recruitment based on our ability to field a consistent 10-man raid, but I'm always willing to consider a valuable addition.

Paladin, How Far You've Come!; A Triumphant Return Pt. 2

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:32:43 -0400

for Paladins!

Oh, Sweet Arathi

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:20:49 -0400

In modern business it is not uncommon for firms to take parts of their operation and outsource these functions to other firms more capable of handling them. This is done with specialized areas of the business that the initial firm considers secondary. My school is a great example - all the food services are taken care of by a national-scale company because the University isn't in the business of offering food, they're in the business of providing an education".

I think it's time for Blizzard to take a second look at their recent Battleground offering and consider a similar course of action.

During my first few games of Isle of Conquest, I had no idea what the **** was going on. Further game play revealed it to be a mash-up of Wintergrasp siege, Arathi Basin node control, and Alterac ally boss-slaying. Even further game play revealed... well, I'm not there yet because the BG was terrible and mostly involved running around the map mounted in the hopes that other people are actually going to do what you are. The fact that these marks are required for the turn-in quest actually makes me wish this damned BG wasn't in the the game at all. But come to think of it, Blizzard's recent track record in this department isn't much better. As soon as the novelty of vehicular combat wore off, Strand of the Ancients became a frustrating exercise in self-motivation. My notion of PvP has less to do with catapults/walls, and more to do with actually combating other players.

And remember Eye of the Storm? When TBC first came out, I don't recall a single person in my guild, on my friend's list, or amongst my RL buddies saying "Wow, this map sure is fun!". What I do recall is a *****-fest, with both the symptoms and regularity of PMS, once a month when it turned out to be a certain holiday weekend. These three BGs represent all of Blizzard's offerings in the last 4 years - is this really the best they can do? There is only one reason I have been able to farm honour season after season. One map of familiar terrain that I know many among you share my affinity for, and that holds a special place in my heart.

A Triumphant Return

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:15:55 -0400

Destitute and alone.

In the four years of playing WoW leading up to my temporary retirement in February, I've never found myself in this position. A slight exaggeration? Perhaps, but in all practicality the situation is the same. I've always been a player on the cusp of greatness - unsatisfied with mere mediocrity. That is, I've always been at the forefront of whatever aspect of the game I find myself enjoying at the given time. As part of a leading raiding guild, my pre-BC gear was always top notch. Throughout the first expansion, I was always competitive in this respect when it came to PvP while maintaining sufficient PvE capacity to pitch in on the latest raid dungeon.

Shortly after the release of Wrath I grew bored of the game and quit. Seven months later I found myself with too much free time. I reclaimed my account only to find my character unscathed but on another server. With my old guild disbanded and RL friends having quit, I (on a whim) elected to try a faction change. So here I am, Duraeas of Shattered Hand, on a new server without a friend in the world. And let me tell you - life is tough.

It used to be easy. Before if I wanted to start an Arena team I sent a few tells, jumped on a vent server or two, and wound up playing with the server's better players. Now I find myself needing to link my Netherdrakes to prove that I'm not the 1500 player my Hateful/Deadly gear would lead one to believe. And still, on a server with as terrible a PvP community as Shattered Hand, finding teammates is impossible. It would help if I could get into a half decent guild, but this too is impossible. A quick check via some "gear score" mod reveals that I do not belong in those instances reserved for WoW's elite PvE few (ie: ToC 10-man easymode)! Forget the fact that I could outheal the vast majority of Paladins averaging 13 ilvls higher than myself, I'm still turned away even by PUGs.

I've never been a casual faced with the challenge of existing in a world of the hardcore. And I'm coming to realize that catch up is not a fun game. It's frustrating to not have access to Relentless gear without first grinding lower tiered gear, and equally frustrating to waste time farming PvE gear just to gain access to instances I'm confident I could wtfpwn anyway. I once derided the casual-friendly mechanics introduced by Blizzard to help people overcome the same hurdles I face now. It's interesting how perception changes on the other side of the fence - how happy was I to get Relentless gloves in VoA? Or be in a position to buy my Deadly pants with Badges? My experience of reintegrating into the World of Warcraft has led me to make some very astute observations.

I'm not convinced that making raid instances PUGGable is even all that beneficial to casuals. There seems to be a sharp decline in the number of guilds actively pursuing PvE endeavors. Gear, rather than skill, has become the sole determining factor in being able to participate in content. This benefits the bad player who keeps up to date with his gear, and punishes the skilled player who does not. Maybe most casuals fall into the former category, but this can't "be working as intended". Making this gear more accessible has also made ****ty players think they're better than they really are. This doesn't really impact the game... it's just really annoying.

In Blizzard's world, I play by Blizzard's rules. So I will continue to plug away. I hope to prove that an undergeared, semi-casual, unknown player can rise from badness and attain a position relative to other players that reflects his inherent ability, rather than reflecting how much time he puts in.

But as it stands now, I'm doubting it.

Killing WoW - The Investment

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:38:15 -0400

Self-serving preface: Play on Shattered Hand? Read the bottom!

I miss Vanilla WoW. I really do. Many of you didn't have the opportunity to play during this golden age of Warcraft, and I truly extend my deepest condolences. Though I can't help but think that someone looking back at the game during this period might pause and wonder what was so great about it. Was it the raid encounters? Absolutely not - my first runs in Blackwing Lair had me feeling as if I were role-playing an alpha tester. Was it class design? Please, a look at the old talent trees yields more laughs than a Dane Cook joke in a room full of Bros. The PvP system was miserable and professions had even less depth than they do no.

No, what made Vanilla great was much more intangible. There was a feeling of immersion within the game world that Blizzard has largely lost. We're now at the cusp of losing the last vestiges of this sensation.

I have two Paladins, one Dwarf and one Blood Elf. There were many differences in leveling the two of them. Some are apparent - the time required, the changes in class design, the obvious difference between leveling as Horde and Alliance. Some are less apparent, but one in particular stands out - the investment. You see the investment in leveling my Dwarf Paladin was not only in creating a Paladin, it was creating a Paladin on the specific server I chose. There was a sense of permanence. As my Paladin was tied to that one server, so were my actions. My accomplishments were relative only to those around me. The existing guilds needed only be concerned with the players currently on the server. There was a legitimate reason to get to know those on your realm because ultimately they were the only players who could have any impact on you. My reputation was tied to my toon and my name.

I remember one particular player who ninja'd the then-rare Deathcharger mount off Baron Rivendare. It goes without saying that every player on the realm soon knew what he did, and he was as good as blacklisted from both guilds and PUGs alike. He eventually quit the game.

Then, shortly before the release of The Burning Crusade, Blizzard chose to introduce server transfers. I welcomed this feature just as I welcomed cross-server Battlegrounds. It, like so many other things in life, offered obvious and tangible gains alongside hidden and intangible losses. Whether you choose to switch servers is irrelevent - the moment you are no longer bound to your server the feeling is lost. Those around you are no longer as concerned with the community they're in and likewise are no longer concerned with you. The guilds on your server are free to search beyond it in search of new players. A negative repuation can be absolved by disappearing into the sea of a million players spead out across the other realms. In fact with the name change feature and the Barbershop, any player can start anew on the very server he was already on with the push of a few buttons.

Faction transfers are the last step in elimating any sort of ties your character had to the world he was created in. Once it goes through, creating your character will mean little more than choosing your class. Your toon will no longer be an extension of you within the game world, it will be an interchangeable interface with which you interact with the content Blizzard has provided. And the worst part of it is that I eagerly await it - I plan on transferring to Alliance as soon as the option is made available to me, even though I know it will kill what is left of classic WoW.

Shattered Hand - I just reclaimed my account only to learn that I had been transferred to Shattered Hand! If anyone Horde side has a solid guild I could join up with fire me a message/reply. Just looking to play casually for now and maybe do some 10-mans with people who don't suck!

Embracing the Cataclysm

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:20:01 -0400

World of Warcraft is getting old.

Correction: World of Warcraft is old. In just a few months, it will be celebrating its 5th anniversary. It seems like only yesterday I first hit that character creation button and began exploring the vast continents of Azeroth and Kalimdor. With 40 zones between the two there was plenty to explore... but the lack of end-game content had my fellow players and I fiending for an expansion well before The Burning Crusade was released.

But as the existing zones were rendered largely obsolete, the game seemed to feel smaller. As if with the introduction of Outland you were being stuck into a small corner of the game world. It, along with WotLK, was a batch of content stacked on top of what was already there - separate rather than integrated. By expanding the game in this fashion, Blizzard failed to create the experience of playing in an ever-changing environment. After all the events and encounters that transpired over the last 5 years of WoW, should the original continents look (and operate) almost identical to how they did when you first hit that button?

This "stacking" of content that I speak of goes beyond the zones themselves. I wrote an article months ago as I lost interest and quit the game about how in WotLK Blizzard failed to change how we fundamentally played WoW. While TBC at least introduced the Arena system, WotLK simply added new features and more of what we already had. I was not surprised when I grew tired of the game within the first few months. The game did not need new content - it needed a facelift. Instead, Blizzard chose to take the safe route. Yes, safe. Like all humans, WoW players are adverse to change (perhaps even moreso). Even the slightest alteration brings about cries of ______ from the WoW community - regardless of its impact. For better or for worse, we are drawn to familiarity. An expansion that builds upon, but doesn't change, the status quo is a sure thing for Blizzard. On the other hand, an expansion that shakes this up is destined to be met with some opposition.

Detroit vs. Pittsburgh

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:20:31 -0400

The Epic Flop 5/22/09 - Star Trek and Gay Mexican Lovers

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:31:23 -0400
In the absence of an Epic Drop, I've decided to make my own! If you frequent Digg, this probably isn't worth your time. for Rachel Bilson and hockey!

Should our governments continue in their quest for human rights? This guy thinks we should leave it up to the free markets. While I think he's right that the market punishes discrimination by denying businesses valuable employees and customers, I'm not sure abolishing the commission would work as the market doesn't care about non-commercial ventures.

The major labels are up to their usual business, this time in Spain suing a company that creates filesharing software. This is Napster with a twist - the local lobbying group is trying its American tactics in a country that has repeatedly said filesharing is a-okay.  The authors

Meghan is great and all, but Rachel is still my favourite.
defense is that he created a program designed to transfer files as efficiently as possible, end of story.

This story would have been in Slap's drop anyway, it kind of speaks for itself. The conservative of this Texas town has resigned and left for Mexico. Why? To fight for the citizenship of his illegal Mexican male lover! I don't care at all that he's gay, but the irony here is amazing!

Mr. Abrams confronts some fan questions over at MTV. I liked the Star Trek, and I think anyone who didn't wasn't going to be pleased anyway. The time-warp seems like a cop-out, but a neccessary one.

And for your video... Evgeni Malkin's beautiful goal against Carolina last night earning him his first playoff hat trick.

Pee-Vee-Eee Gear... Again?!

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:54:41 -0400
"Is there a reason to raid anymore?" Serennia asks in a recent blog.

I don't play WoW anymore, but when I actively blogged and did play I wrote all kinds of articles that never made it to 'publish'. Maybe the idea was stupid and conceived while I was still half asleep, or maybe I just got bored half-way through and had another idea. Either way, rarely did I get back to them. Current boredom, however, has driven me to an old piece reflecting Blizzard's constant balancing of PvE gear's impact on PvP.

Five Things I Prefer to Playing WoW

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:11:36 -0400

I probably shouldn't have bought the expansion. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I have to admit... I almost enjoyed leveling up. Hell, I even enjoyed my first run through each of the new instances. But by the time we started disenchanting half of the drops in Naxxramas, I myself was becoming disenchanted. It wasn't the easy PvE content or the state of PvP, it was a game that grew stale long before I had stopped playing it.

If nothing else, the grind to 80 left my account with some residual value - quickly gobbled up by a nameless reseller. I am now $200 wealthier, and some sucker is probably $600 poorer. I should probably feel ripped off that my account is hardly worth more than the price of the game discs required to play it, but it's hard to feel the loss of that which has no value to you. Finally free of the shackles known as World of Warcraft, I find myself taking notice of how little enjoyment I actually derived from the game.

I mean really, I'm not sure if I played WoW from 2008 onwards because I enjoyed it or because I thought I enjoyed it. How many times did I play an extra few hours of Arena until 3:30 in the morning, only to end up with the same rating and far less sleep than I needed? How many times did I resort to pulling the power out of my router and claiming no internet as an easy excuse to go out (sad yes, but not as sad as the guild officers who don't consider "I need to get laid tonight" as a valid excuse)? For years I've weighed the fun of WoW against the 'work' involved, and failed to calculate the fun that could otherwise be had doing other things.

And so, in WoW's absence, I've discovered a number of activities that I never knew could bring me more enjoyment than WoW.

Socializing leads to drugs, alcohol and sex which are quite agreeably awesome. I was one of those players who thought he wasn't missing out on anything by playing WoW. I adhered to a principle - if someone calls me up, and I'd otherwise be playing WoW, I'd go out. Of course, this principle in no way holds me responsible for initiating social contact. Since quitting, I've spent at least twice as much free time out of the house and in the real world.

What do you give up? Being cooler than people IRL is certainly more satisfying than beating people in Arena, and spending hours on progression trying to take down a dragon is no different than going to the bar and trying to take down a hot blonde.

And let me tell you, there are some rewards much better than Tier 8.

Catering to the Hardcore: Blizzard, Money and the Future

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:03:56 -0400
World of Warcraft is an interesting phenomenon. Even as a retired player, I have my fair share of interaction with the game between friends and frequenting of this Gameriot site. The one thing that puzzle's me most is how Blizzard hasn't balanced the game yet, because every player knows how. I mean seriously. Find someone on Gameriot, a real life friend, a guildmate on vent, or even a player in trade chat - these individuals all know exactly how to fix and perfect World of Warcraft. From balance to game design, the answers are in the heads of these very people.

At least they think they are, but the rational among us know better. We know that good and bad are subjective, and that even balance has a degree of subjectivity. Gameplay geared towards the casual player is not necessarily worse than that geared towards the hardcore, except in the mind of the latter. The irrational in the community (read: the vast majority) deplore game design and call Blizzard on selling out. Why? Because money is objective. In game design, a world of subjectivity, the only quantifiable motivator for Blizzard's decision making is financial.

I think catering to the casual base is a mistake. Not because I'm a hardcore player. Not because I think Blizzard owe's their core demographic. Not even because I think casuals are dirty, greasy mustard tigers who exist solely to suck away my dev time. Rather, I question the direction on the same premise used by critics as justification for casual content - money. The common philosophy is that we all pay $15 a month - there are more of them than there are of us, thus it is more profitable. But is it really? Though there is far more to the breakdown of WoW's playerbase than this blog suggests, there are two really key demographics we're dealing with (those who fall in between are easily satisfied).

Core Customer - The core customer heard about WoW when it was initially announced. They followed the game through it's development, bought it immediately upon release, and played for a long time. I consider myself a core customer, having played from release until the new year.

Casual Customer - The casual started playing more recently and has little past experience with Blizzard games, or MMOs in general. Essentially the new customer base that Blizzard appears to be marketing/developing for.

We may pay the same box price and subscription fees, but we're very different customers in terms of profitability. Whereas the core customers learn about the product and spread it around themselves by word of mouth, the casual customer is reached through promotional endeavors and a very pricey multinational television advertising campaign. Of those customers who try the product only a select few will actually continue to use it, not because of the quality of the product but because of the nature of WoW's increasing subscription base:

Blizzard is not growing by expanding their market share, they are expanding the market.

And when when doing so, one must understand that eventually you finish expanding and the market matures. Growth in terms of subscriptions is not necessarily healthy growth, kind of like humans; if your kid grows 20% in a year, it could be a good thing... but if it's 20% in the waist, probably not. There are many more dimensions to healthy growth, and I'm not convinced that WoW fills them. As long as the conversion rate from casuals to core customers is greater than the rate of attrition, subscriptions will grow so long as the supply of new casuals is consistent. But what do you do when the market has matured and there are no new casuals to convert? Eventually everyone who would reasonbly be willing to try WoW will have tried it.

Consider a game with a million core players, which has now become "casual". Every month, 200 000 people try out the game. How many of them play in 2 months? How many in 6? By the time you create a long term customer, you're looking at maybe 20 000. With a monthly attrition rate of 1% amongst existing core customers (10 000 / month), your subscription base steadily increases. We're just now starting to see a slowdown in WoW growth as the market has expanded and casual players who never developed that long term interest in the game start to drop off.

Its clear that only a limited number of the casual playerbase can ever be converted into long-term MMO players and core customers. While rapid expansion into the mainstream market yields great short term gains, the real objective needs to be long term market share. Once the market has expanded, what chunk of the pie will Blizzard have? Satisfying casual players, even if they pay the bulk of the subscriptions, means catering to a crowd with no long term value. For casual content to be profitable, it has to improve the rate at which casuals become core gamers faster than players are being lost. To use my previous example, keeping the 200 000 new players happy is irrelevant in measuring if the choice is profitable. If the casual content causes 10 000 to leave, it means that of those 20 000 new retained players, at least 10 000 need to have stayed because of the casual content. Otherwise we assume that as the market develops, they would have become core customers to someone anyway.

I'm willing to bet that if you look at Blizzard's financials and ignore fixed costs, their profit margin has dropped substantially from where it was 3 years ago. Growth in the market will slow down considerably and the size of Blizzard's subscription base will contract as fewer casuals are leaving than are coming in. Blizzard is paying the price now to expand the market, but in 5 years they will inevitably be looking back to the tried and true gamers who may or may not have stuck around. While Mr. Casual and Mr. Hardcore might be worth $15 a piece now, only Mr. Hardcore is worth $15 a few years down the road. There is a strong financial incentive to cater the your minority customer base if they're the only ones with any lifetime value.

Time well spent? A look at the MMO.

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:42:23 -0400

Is 3.1 Redemption?

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:09:52 -0400
I thought I was enjoying myself until I began running through the Stonetalon mountains. Sparse quests with great distances in between them, and with a level range so broad it seems like the developers actually intended for you to come back here and quest in several distinct bouts. I got my Hunter to level 24, then I stopped. This is about the extent of how much I've played since Christmas.

It got the the point where I discovered I'd rather stare mindlessly at the Facebook logo than play World of Warcraft. But then I realized that activity on Gameriot was up, and that it was because of not only the TR but the impending release of patch 3.1. This, my friends, is a chunk of code with a lot of responsibility. Three-point-one, as I like to call him, provides the only hope of instilling optimism in a group of gamers already disenchanted with a relatively new expansion. Bloggers everywhere have spent 5 months citing easy rehashed content and glaring PvP balance as the problem. I point to the fact that the expansion offered relatively nothing new, and more of the same. Either way, it was clear that WotLK was a failure in that it failed to live up to expectations.

I started listening to Three-point-one. He made proclamations of Change and Hope. Sceptical as I was, I decided to give him a shot. While I'm not so convinced as to blindly follow him regardless of where he goes, I can't help myself from becoming a little more optimistic. Ulduar looks nice. Like, really nice. The artistic design almost excuses the fact that Blizzard completely reused another instance at the release of the expansion. The difficulty seems closer to what the entry level raid dungeon should have been. While it doesn't appear to be as tough as I would have expected, it does show that Blizzard can follow through on their commitment to making PvE content progressively tougher.

Significant class balances changes are finally being made. I wouldn't go so far as to say things are fixed. Or that we've reached Mission Accomplished, but from a Paladin's perspective I like where they're going. Broken and gimmicky mechanics have been dealt with - Divine Purpose on Holy Paladins, Holy Shock crits followed by .7s Holy Light casts, and keeping Sacred Shield on 5 people. In their place we see a shift from the Holy/Ret hybrid to the traditional Holy/Prot support healer. I like that Prot finally has an 11-pt talent (though I really do think they could have been more creative). Holy having an activated ability is equally awesome. I wonder what they'll change it do, considering the current Aura Mastery is outrageously overpowered.

What interests me most is the Argent Tournament. While it generally uses existing mechanics to provide more of the same, the mounted combat is actually very well designed. It essentially uses vehicles and offers the rider a nuber of abilities (4-5 IIRC), making for a relatively fun and surprisingly complicated system. Sure it will get old and it's largely a rehash of existing stuff, but it holds a great deal of potential for expansion in the future, adding world-event content and building PvP and PvE into a city-state representative competition. Sure the prizes now are relatively lame, but I can see this becoming a very casual friendly facet of the game, and Blizzard being free to balance more PvE/PvP content to the hardcore gamer

How 3.1 affects the game remains to be seen, and I don't expect it to fill all the holes present at release, but it does have me a little bit more excited for 3.2, and almost willing to come back and play...

until Starcraft II comes out.

WoW as a sport? Lol

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:23:15 -0400
I'm posting solely to relieve you from the forum quality blogs I've been reading here lately. I'd been given the impression that some of GRs "top" bloggers were going to participate in this month's contest, but as it goes it seems they've cracked under the pressure.

Speaking of pressure, I enjoyed following ESL results during this weekend's blogs. It is always a gratifying experience to see someone humbled. If there is one thing I've noticed about video game competition, it's that the competitors display some of the worst sportsmanship I've witnessed in "sport". Sure the professional leagues have their divas - Terrell Owens comes to mind - but regardless of their skill level, these athletes largely end up failing to meet their full potential.

Of course, I don't think sportsmanship is an innate quality. It's something developed over years of competition. I started playing soccer when I was 4 years old, and I kept playing until the end of my second year at University, 16 years later. As an aggressive player I had my fair share of clean, but rough, tackles on players from teams I wanted nothing more in the world at that moment than to beat. By the time I was 12 years old, my first instinct when I'd knock someone down was to turn around and help them back up.

Why do real athletes act this way? Two Hockey players may be fighting in the middle of a game, throwing insults at one another, but at the end of it they shake hands and congratulate each other. Seldom do you find the winning team kicking it's opponent when they're down. Sure there are isolated exceptions to these, but in WoW the exception has become the rule. Maybe it does just take time - WoW has been out for just over what, four years? Even the younger professional athletes have generally been playing their sport for 14+.

We all know WoW wont last that long. Believe it or not, the closest World of Warcraft ever came to being a true sport was when it was WLD vs. WLD - how can any game claim to be competitive when it isn't a mirror match? The very idea of WMP vs. PHD inter-comp balance seems ridiculous when applied to any other sport on the planet. Blizzard's constant efforts to achieve this balance destroy any viability WoW has at becoming a truly competitive game.

Unfortunately, video game success doesn't seem to transfer between games. In fact, it seems to hardly even transfer between classes (or even specs). Each new game brings a new group of social inadequates who do a terrible job of giving people any reason to take their "sport" seriously. What surprised me even more than the pathetic interaction between teams has been the interaction within them. How often do you see athletes on ESPN blaming their loss on a member of their team? If I had done that in the locker room I would have been wrung out by the coach, and if I had done it publicly I would have been benched. I see this sort of behavior consistently.

Has WoW peaked, not only as a game itself but as an "e-sport"?

World of Casualcraft; The Experiment

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:42:59 -0500
World of Warcraft is a casual game. Right? I mean, between recent trends in game design and proclamations from all of the game's elite, we have no reason to believe anything to the contrary, do we? I elect not to differ, because certainly Ghostcrawler isn't lying when he claims that most of the players in WoW have yet to reach 80 on their mains.

But what is casual to us now? Certainly it has changed - if I played soccer for 3 hours a night 6-7 days a week, would you call me hardcore? I would, considering when I was playing varsity we only practiced for a total of half that. But in Warcraft? 3 hours is nothing, it's a drop in the pan. Spread that out over a day (two 1.5 hour periods) and you hardly have time to do a couple heroic runs let alone get some serious PvP in or raid. No hardcore is defined by the Serennia's of the game; the people who put in enough hours that if it were their full time job, people would think that they're workaholics.

And it's these players who define the pace of the game. Being good at Warcraft means having good PvE gear and/or good Arena ratings. That's basically it, and while I don't deny skill is involved, the amount of time you commit is really a determining factor. I've seen many mediocre players hardcore their way to victory, in both aspects of the game. It's hard to be the kind of player who must be at least in reach of the top, like me, and not play this game very much. I can only imagine then what the truly casual feels about this, and what enjoyment they derive from the game. If Blizzard's statistics are a valid indicator, they seem to spend a lot of their time leveling.

Of course I hated it. I re-rolled a BE Paladin at the beginning of TBC and leveling it up while people were entering the new content was brutal. Every day I didn't have time to commit to XP farming I felt that I was falling behind. Quests become nothing more than a kind of healthy vegetable (I pick broccoli), and any progress not made directly towards the goal of attaining epix felt like a waste of time. But still, I find myself wondering how the process would be if I didn't have an 80 to look forward to.

So I made Keiths. Three years ago I wanted to make a Hunter but I didn't then have the time if I wanted to max-out my Paladin, so it was abandoned. Keiths is a Blood Elf Hunter on Mug'thol, named after the best beer in North America and the pride of Nova Scotia. I wanted to roll a Dwarf, but the access to BoAccount items was too great a determining factor. I equipped him with the new heirloom gun, sword and shoulders. He has FPs to the major cities, bags, and ammunition. 100g is all I've sent him and he will receive no more. Because Keiths is an experiment - a test of the casual perspective - a character that levels for the purpose of enjoyment rather than end-game. Every quest will be read, and every instance will be run with a group of similar leveled individuals. Of course I'll be stoned senseless from beginning to end.

But there's a catch.

I will hit level 80 and after two weeks of end-game content, I will delete him. Keiths, Mug'thol's first openly heterosexual male Blood Elf Hunter, will cease to exist. The prospect of turning him into my new semi-hardcore main at the end of the experiment would destroy my objectivity and circumvent what I'm trying to achieve! No, this will be for the process alone. It will be 1:30-2h a night, and if at any point I go over that 2h I have to add an extra kilometre onto my every-other-day run for every 5 minutes spent playing the game. This is waived for the remainder of the week while my girlfriend is at home for spring break. I will need to employ self determination comparable to that of the fox in order to maintain gaming vigilance.

I will never force myself to play. The moment I'm in such a position, the experiment is over. What are my expectations? The prospect of enjoying this game the way I did the first time I played it is pretty awesome. Of course it's entirely possible I won't enjoy it, and the spirit of the last 4 years of playing hardcore may be too strong. I just want to see if this game really is rewarding and enjoyable from beginning to end when the end isn't the ultimate goal, and I'm playing just to have fun. I'll post about it at the end once I reach that point, and maybe a couple times along the way.

In fact , I may be persuaded to post RP blogs in a narrative/story format .

Oradol's Oscar Picks

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:20:11 -0500
I always enjoy doing these things, so here it is. For each category I've picked my projected winner, and I challenge you to beat me by posting your own. I've also picked what I deem to have been the deserving winner, because we all know the politics involved skew the results. For a few of them I'm throwing in a "really should win", for films that weren't nominated and should have been or really were the best in the category.

comes out on time for me again here. Based on it's $3 million gross (which is insane given the people in it and the critical success of its director[Charlie Kaufman]) I can bet you probably didn't see it. The problem with Synecdoche is it went too far in it's depth and complexity. I love movies like Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine/Adaptation that leave you without complete understanding - they give you things to ponder, a lasting impact, and have a lot of repeat viewing potential. The problem is after you see them for the first time you walk away being able to piece most of it together. Synecdoche didn't start to reveal itself until the second viewing, and to be honest most movie-goers aren't going to make that commitment. Oh well.

Giv'er

PS: I'm looking at getting back into WoW by rolling a Hunter and leveling it up casually. If I go Horde I have access to Heirloom items. If I go Alliance I get to go through the questlines I missed having abandoned my other Paladin at TBC release. If I deem the latter to be worth it (personally I always enjoyed playing Alliance more) I need a guild of competent players to surround myself, who don't mind a casual player with little ambition to raid or PvP. If anyone has one on a good server, let me know via PM.

Being Cool

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:30:44 -0500
I'm only writing this because I want to get in on the drama too.

I've composed a step by step guide for certain WoW players to improve how they are perceived in real life. It isn't hard, but it may involve logging out of WoW for more than 15 minutes a day. If you aren't willing to make that commitment, look no further.

Step 1) Wash Your Clothes - This no-brainer does seem to elude many. As your body perspires, it also releases oils into the clothing. Alongside the many scents you are exposed to on a daily basis, they begin to... well, stink. The best course of action is generally to wash them with some regularity. If this is ever not an option, spraying them with a deodorizing body spray can provide a temporary solution. Note: if people see you in the clothing three days in a row, they will know you haven't washed them and the body spray is irrelevant.

Step 2) Brush Your Teeth - If your breath smells, brush more often. I brush morning/afternoon/evening as a rule, and always brush before I go out to interact with other human beings. Brushing your teeth is crucial to social acceptance - the only thing grosser than yellow teeth and smelly breath is when the gaps between said teeth are full of white residue. Visible lack of tooth-brushing is a serious no no. Avoid at all costs.

Step 3) Shower - In our modern society, there is very little reason for anyone to stink. Excessive odor is reserved for the homeless, post-workout athletes, and residents of trailer parks. If you have a computer, you should have a shower, and regardless of your physical excertion you should use it on a daily basis. I shower for approximately 10 minutes - wash hair, apply conditioner, wash rest of body with body wash (don't forget armpits specifically), and rinse. If you complete this along with step 1/2, and people still say you stink, start again at step 1.

Step 4) Dress Well - There are certain things that went out of style a long time ago, like cargo pants. If you are wearing khaki cargo pants, you have failed. Replace those with some blue jeans (not the same kind of Levi's your dad wears). Don't button your shirt all the way to the top. Finally, your shoes should match your outfit. Khaki's and cross trainers don't go together. Get a nice pair of Nike AF1s as they go with just about anything. Personally I recommend going out and buying some nice detailed boot cut jeans, some nice sneakers, a white t-shirt (long sleeve in the winter) and a nice polo to wear over it. That's just a generally nice outfit in any situation. Just don't wear it for 3 days in a row.

Step 5) Learn How To Drink - There are some people who just don't drink, and I totally support them. Then there are those who willingly drink, but make a fool out of themselves in the process. This goes from the person who pukes before they're drunk to the person who is drunk before they're finished a pitcher. Otherwise, practice. Drink alone if you have to, it's definitely better than having the few people you interact with laughing at you. Beer can be hard for many people to start with, so take it easy with something simple - rum and coke, vodka lime, and other mixed drinks are all much easier to stomach.

Step 6) Face Reality - WoW is not cool. Being good at it doesn't make you cool IRL, even in the presence of other WoW players. This must be realized because unless you come to face this fact, you risk ignoring all other steps and going out to social events smelling like a fish. WoW is a video game. A video game. A video game. A video game...

Step 7) Be Confident - This is important. If you seem like a weasel, people will treat you like a weasel. Confidence is all about thinking you're awesome (or acting like it) because you can. Take me for example, I'm ******* smart. Probably not genius smart, but while my classmates are failing classes like Introductory to Accounting I can get a 97 without trying. Thinking about this makes me realize I'm awesome. Confidence doesn't mean you talk down to people though, it just means you don't put up with ****. It means that if someone tells me my opinion on a matter is wrong, and I know it isn't, I make sure they know how stupid they are. The key is not to openly give away the reasoning behind your confidence, because if it's something they don't care about you lose validity. Being a Gladiator, for example, is not something to bring up.

Step 8 ) Basic Social Skills - Most people acquire these during elementary school. Those who were over-nurtured usually get them in high school. Those who are total outcasts during high school get them by the time they hit university. Those who go to university and would rather lock themselves in their rooms playing World of Warcraft than go to the innumerable co-ed parties available to them may not get them at all.

First, you don't call out people (like co-workers) that you should be sucking up to or at least tolerating. It makes you look like a stupid child. While you should be confident, you also need to realize that you're probably not as awesome as you think you are and that everyone else is laughing at you. In fact, this should be at the back of your mind every time you open your mouth. Only speak when you have something worthwhile to contribute, and treat other people the way you would expect to be treated. Everyone on the internet insults people behind the security of the screen and firewall - none of those people are the same IRL. If you are, then you have a serious problem.

If someone attacks you personally, and your response has to do with how bad they are at WoW, you should probably use this list.

Fixing WoW; The Ascention of the Azerothian Empire (Part 1)

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:12:59 -0500
The Decline of the Azerothian Empire can be read here.

I said I would never complain about things without providing solutions, as I did in an article of similar name a few weeks ago. Regardless of my not playing WoW, I have a number of friends still talking about it and I'm still theorycrafting about it. It's like a sickness. Following through on what I had in mind when I subscribed to GR, I'm going to provide some suggestions to fix the game. There will be some more in another post once I get more thoughts together.

Keep in mind, these aren't really balance changes. None at all. There are infinitely better people, like Serennia, to make suggestions there - and I think it's well established that things will eventually get better, even if far too slowly. These are things that would get me excited to play WoW. The sister article to this was about how WotLK added plenty of content, but it didn't change the entire game the way Arena did two years ago. More of the same is fine so long as the same is good, but when the same gets old, no amount of new content is going to satisfy. They need to change the game. Here are some ideas.

.

Sharing time; eight favourite films?!

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:13:41 -0500
Ever wanted to inflict torture on someone with no fear of repercussion? Find someone who loves movies and ask them to name their favourites of all time. They will be utterly unable to resist the opportunity to discuss and reminisce about the films they truly love, but the inner turmoil many experience when trying to choose them brings about a level of frustration that even cause an anneurism.

There isn't much I enjoy more than movies; video games, sports, and even music fall by the wayside. Every night, I crash with some sort of DvD playing on the TV across from my bed. My bookcase holds a respectable 150-200 movies, all purchased through legal means - making it very hard to pick eight that stand above the rest. Why 8? Because 10 is too many and 5 belongs to Slapnuts. This list was not a spur of the moment creation but something I've been working on for a week, sorting through my potential candidates in an effort to come to a conclusion. I've watched about twenty films since last Thursday, and I'm fairly pleased with my conclusions. If there is one peculiarity it's that there are no old movies here. I wont try to rationalize, and I know that The Godfather and Shawshank Redemption are probably the greatest of all time. I think our favourites are partly a product in the circumstances we find ourselves in when we first see them, and it's no surprise mine are more recent.

While I try to explain my infatuation with the listed films, the beauty of a favourites list is that no justification is really necessary. Like and dislike are entirely subjective, unlike good and bad, and there is no real need to list the evaluative criteria because, to be honest, they're non-existent. The odds of a two lists being the same are slim to none - and this is where you come in. I challenge you to post your list here just as I have done, in the hopes that you might post something I haven't seen and should go hunt down. Feel free to comment on my choices and open up discussion - I'm interested to hear what you think. I'd like to see everyone who enjoys movies share their top 8, or at least their #1 (with some description why) - Slapnuts, I'm looking at you too!

(And +1 for the cause!)

I'm calling you out; put up or shut up

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:21:25 -0500
I've played WoW once in the last 3 weeks. The rest of my /played during that period is from logging into the game out of boredom, an subsequently idling until the server boots me off. Why? Because the game isn't fun for me right now. It has nothing to do with the PvP system - hell, I'm playing the most overpowered class in the game. It has nothing to do with the ease of PvE content - I've never really enjoyed raiding all that much anyway. It has everything to do with a stale game that requires fundamental changes to peak interest.

This is why I haven't been blogging about WoW; if I'm not actively playing, I don't see it as being prudent for me to go ahead and comment on the state of things. This is irrelevant though, because whatever criticism I provide will just get lost in the sea of noise that is Gameriot - endless blogs about how much the game sucks and how it isn't going to be better. So do you know what I did? I quit. There is no better way to tell Blizzard to fix their game than to cancel your account - especially one that has been consistently active for over 4 years - and tell them why you're done.

I know that I have far better things to do than play a game I'm not enjoying, and I'm one of the few who believe that positive changes are incoming. This doesn't seem to be the universal case, however, as there are plenty of hardcore players with endless complaints about a game they play 40 hours a week but claim not to enjoy. Are they masochists? If the game is so bad and broken, why continue to play it extensively? There can only be two rational answers;

A) Their time is worth absolutely nothing.

B) The game isn't nearly as bad as they say it is.

So I'm calling them out. If the game really is as bad as you claim, then quit. If it isn't as bad as you say it is, stop complaining. It's time for people to put their money where their mouth is because as far as I am concerned, Blizzard is doing a perfect job if they can create a game that caters to casuals while keeping the addicted hardcore masses paying their $15 a month. I've read claims that the game cannot survive if it fails to appease its hardcore following, or that the existence of high-profile players like Neilyo and Serennia is integral to the games success. I've always chosen to disagree.

The only way to prove these claims is for their proponents to follow through on the claims of dissatisfaction by cancelling their accounts, in a very public fashion. If a large chunk of the Pro-PvP community (or prominent raiding guilds) cancelled their accounts, the message would be clear.Â My subscription has been terminated, I've told them what I think - now let's see if the others are willing to put up and follow through on their claims of disillusionment.

Of course they wont, because either A or B is true - and to be honest what would the 40hr+ a week crowd do with that much extra free time, besides put a little more effort into personal hygiene.

3.0.8; Change we can believe in?

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:04:37 -0500
I haven't posted in a week because there hasn't been anything worthwhile to post about, especially since I haven't even logged in since Thursday. Just as I've decided to wait for the patch before taking Arena seriously, I have been waiting to see the bulk of the changes before chiming in on them. I think we're seeing the very last of 3.0.8 changes on the PTR, and a few of them find me asking questions that we may never know the answer to. This is a stream of thought rather than what I would submit as a typical article, take it for what it is.

RNG is often a deciding factor in any given Arena match. Dispel RNG, Mace Stun RNG, Imp. Hamstring RNG have all made us jump for joy or facepalm at some point in our Arena careers. This horse has been beaten to death and I have some reservations about reviving the topic, but 3.0.8 opens Pandora's Box again with the changes it brings to dispel mechanics. For the record the last Arena I did, just over a week ago, involved us losing because Polymorph resisted 5 GCDs worth of Cleanse while my BoP (with Blessed Hands and Stoicism) fell off on the first try.

I do like what we're seeing with these changes - Cleanse has been almost completely devalued and is often seen as a waste at times when it should be the most viable option. I do feel there should be more protection on 2-minute cooldowns than on spammable abilities like Slow, but if this is a philosophy shared by the developers than why don't they change the mechanics so that RNG is no longer the deciding factor at all? You can still remove my BoP first try, or not remove it on the 5th. Why haven't we reached a point where a where a charge-system is assigned to abilities and the number of the dispels is a set value?

Thankfully some other changes have been brought to RNG-reliant abilities - Death and Decay Glyph, Sudden Death, etc. are all seeing changes for the better. I still stand by what I said before about the changes required to balance Arena being simpler than otherwise suggested by well-known members of the PvP community. The list of balancing Serennia suggested was as extensive as a new expansion and would have thrown things even further off if implemented word by word. Remember when Fel Armor was made to be indispellable? On paper that sure looked pretty inconsequential.

The real problem at this point is not Resilience or overall damage being too out of control. More than anything it is a few specific classes whose RNG potential is still more or less immune to anything but drastic changes to RNG. Mages fit the bill here more than any other class - an AP PoM Pyro crit is unavoidable and too great a single source of damage. This is the one ability I'm surprised hasn't been addressed. If I had to make a suggestion it would be to throw a 30s shared cooldown on Iceblock and PoM, which I don't think is particularly unreasonable. This is what has been done for Avenging Wrath and BoP, no?

Deadly Brew. Who thought this one up? As DR is applied to Silences, I keep asking myself who actually feels it's reasonable that a Rogue prevents any target they attack from casting a single spell. Applying Would + Mind Numbing was possible before this talent existed but actually required skill. Rogues poisons used to be unreliable as a consequence of their not needing to be actively applied. They have been buffed consistently to counterract abilities like PC Totem and Abolish Poison, both capable of removing poisons without any concerted effort. I think that these counters should have been adressed rather than buffing poisons themselves, and using Fan of Knives in conjunction with Deadly Brew might not prove to be a deciding factor but is still inherently overpowered.

I'm impressed that Blizzard hasn't throw any nerfs at Paladins yet besides a well deserved cooldown added to Turn Evil when Glyphed for instant cast. Why impressed? The dominance of Paladin healers is, more than anything else, the result of an Arena system that currently favors zerging over controlling. Nerfing both the class and the source of its strength would likely leave it broken much like during TBC. I'd like to see Paladins emerge as a strong healer alongside the others, and I can't help but believe that being an "ungibbable" target while playing alongside Death Knights (practically ungibbable) makes Paladins inherently overpowered. I predict a sharp fall in Paladin representation when DKs take a hit.

As Paladins fall, Druids and Shamans quickly move up. DK's drop (as well as Hunters) and Warriors start to climb. Warlocks will start to carve out a niche once some changes are made to the versatility of Demonic Circle. Go to the SK-100, look at the numbers and remove the class icons from your field of vision. Those little blue bars representing class balance don't appear all that different from how they looked at any given point in S4. What do you think things will look like after 3.0.8 drops?

The Decline of the Azerothian Empire

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:22:48 -0500
Yes, this is an article about WoW.

While the title for this article may be borrowed from a 23 year old film by Denys Arcand, the French-Canadian filmmaker best known for the Best Foreign Language Picture winner The Barbarian Invasions, the inspiration is from a newer work; Gonzo, a documentary chronicling the life and work of Hunter S. Thompson.

The Decline of the America Empire, through Thompson's eyes, began with the Vietnam war. I feel that to him it represented a turning point in the American ideology. Following independence the United States grew in both scope and relevance through its creation of a new way of life; a new form of democracy that embraced freedom and gave power to the individual. This idealism spread, fueled by the success of the nation that founded it and the undeterred faith its citizens held in the endless opportunity. People from around the world flocked to embrace the American dream. Vietnam was a definitive moment where the government, elected to represent the people, decided that faith in freedom and democracy was not enough. War was deemed necessary to continue the dissemination of the "American way" throughout the international consciousness.

This is important to keep in mind when talking about the decline of World of Warcraft, because this decline is neither numerical nor sudden. The economic influence of the United States has not dwindled, and immigrants still line up at the borders keeping population on the rise. The decline is not sudden. It is intangible; beginning at a point where the dream doesn't change but the determination to further it all but evaporates. A point where the status quo is deemed to be acceptable and the focus shifts to maintaining it.

Despite subscriptions having hit an all time high, we are now in the midst of World of Warcrafts steady decline. This has nothing to do with an increasingly casual-friendly game, easy PvE or a PvP in dire need of solution. The latter is just our current economic crisis - a brief storm followed by an inevitable return to form, leaving us only slightly worse or better off than before its arrival. Nothing less than a fundamental change to the national consciousness, or in this case to the design process, will turn things around.

Many of us disliked Wrath of the Lich King for any number of reasons, on this site it was quite simply that the time commitment was reduced as a result of the content being easier. Regardless of what new rep. grinds are introduced or how difficult Ulduar is, the decline will continue. Wrath represents the turning point, but not because of anything it changed for the worse. Wrath marks a point of complacency within Blizzard's ongoing design processÂ - a point where the status quo is accepted as being adequate and it is assumed the outsider will migrate to their server for the same reasons you or I did years ago.

This expansion, and anything forthcoming in patches, are nothing more than an infusion of content. The development team has arrived at a point where they are comfortable with traveling in the current direction indefinitely, assuming that success is the result of a polished finished product rather than a product perceived as being ever-changing. The Burning Crusade introduced new and fundamental changes; Heroic instances and Badge loot, and the introduction of Arenas, represented complete shifts in the game-play paradigm. We didn't get this in Wrath. The Death Knight? The class we play represents nothing more than how we interface with the game, and the addition of this new class offers nothing beyond a new window through with its players view the game. Perspectives quickly grow old, especially when whatever is being perceived remains unchanged.

Championing, dual-specs, and 10/25 man instances are merely improvements on existing, already adequate mechanisms. They aren't unappreciated but they add no longevity. Nothing in Wrath does. Wintergrasp lacks the dynamic nature of Arena and 10-man dungeons do not change the game any more than upgrading Karazhan loot would. What Wrath needed was rated Battlegrounds or player housing, not siege engines. Something completely different, changing both how we view the game and how we play it.

No number of new Battlegrounds or Raid Instances in the world could change the fact that interest in the game is dropping amongst players such as myself. Too few alterations in the 4 years of playing have caused disinterest that extends beyond a lack of content. Prospective new players will see the slow exodus and growth will scale downwards as subscriptions are simultaneously canceled. Like in politics we will see proclamations of "Change" made by Blizzard, but they will be solely rhetorical. Are we past the point of no return? I'm not sure. I'm just glad I was there while it was still good.

Please if you enjoy the blog.

Where did the trolls go?

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:52:43 -0500
No, I'm not talking specifically about Gameriot (before you post with some reply like "wtf r u talking about ther r lots of trollz here"). Over a month ago, driven by nostalgia, I blogged about the Golden Age of WoW. Thinking back to that time now begs another question;

Where did all the trolls go?

Do you remember your realm forums circa 2004-2005? I know that on Bleeding Hollow they were a beautiful place to go read. It was not unusual to read drama threads so powerful they destroyed guilds. For the ex-BH amongst you, does this look familiar?

"Alaena of bop deleted mypostso."

It was a universal story; player leaves his guild, joins another guild, gets the Eye of Sulfuron over long-time members, quits guild and goes back to his old on. The thread grew so large it broke. What do we have to show now for the lessons the great trolls behind these works showed us? Nothing. Look at the pathetic attempts here on Gameriot, where you'd hope the better trolls would migrate. The only person here capable of any sort of originality is Lusitania, and his trolling is its own different breed.

The art form developed by the original trolls has been lost. Why were they so different? Unlike modern trolls they didn't try hard. They didn't exploit every possible opportunity for drama, only those that would yield results. Now they use no discretion, taking constant stabs in the hard in the hope that they might eventually strike gold. Many of the greatest trolling efforts of old were made by individuals who didn't even think of themselves as trolls.

Take me. I'm by no means a troll. When I rerolled on Jaedenar my guild decided to let a girl in; she played a Priest, and she was awful. One day during Karazhan her performance was critized to the point where she was brought to tears (for which she was further made fun of). I went to the forums, jumped on an alt, and boom. Instant magic. It was effortless. The alt-troll tactic has been all but ruined - it was once used by individuals in a guild to post drama about without ruining the prospect of retrieving more. Now it's a facade wannabe's hide behind because they're scared to insult someone to their virtual "face".

Then there were those consistent trolls who posted on their mains. I haven't seen a troll on any forum or site in the last 2 years that measures up to a 10th of the greatness of these trolls of old (except Lusitania). They were larger than life personalities, so assured in their replies that they could not be countered. They weren't always negative, but when they were they were unrelenting. Nothing was off-limits. Now? The trolls are unrelenting, but their reactions are so predictable that they come off as stupid. They will argue points where all onlookers can see their fallacies, destroying their own credibility.

Every day I check the Mug'thol forums I wish that I could open the page and see someone step up to the plate. I'm constantly disappointed. Where the hell did they all go?

TossÂ a if you enjoy the blog!

Slapnuts'... er, Oradol's Best Movies of 2008

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:47:07 -0500
It's no secret that I love movies. I love them more than any other form of entertainment. I have an extensive collection in my room of about 150 legit DVDs, and see essentially every movie released over the course of a year. In fact on New Year's Eve I gave you a list of all the films I thought were worth your time to watch over the course of 2008. I had intended on listing the top five and Slap beat me to it... so I'm going to go ahead anyway because our lists are a little different.

Some movies leave you in awe while others reveal their greatness in the value they bring upon repeated viewings. Those I have chosen are not necessarily the most popular, most acclaimed, or even ones you will (or have) enjoy(ed). In my opinion 2008 was a great year for movies, with fantastic blockbusters and incredible independent films. So here are my 5 favourites, preceded by my favourite five in 2007 were (yes I'm ripping off Slapnuts here);

The Darjeeling Limited
No Country for Old Men
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Bourne Ultimatum
Juno
(Honourable mention for There Will Be Blood)

What so wrong with taking it easy?

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:09:26 -0500
I read the forums. It's true. I don't often post there, but it certainly provides an eye-opening experience every time. It's as if Gameriot represents my local high end clothing store and the WoW forums represent Wal-Mart; when you go to the latter you see those who are on the lowest end of the totem pole. You forget by shopping at that nice place that there are far, far more of the Wal-Mart types than there are of you. The fat, ugly, trashy girls at Wal-Mart wearing those tight fake-velvet track suits find their WoW-counterparts in the terrible QQers of the forums. The ones arguing Warlocks need overall nerfs, because Fear can cause you to DC in Orgrimmar Arena. The ones who played a Hunter in the 1400s for three seasons and truly believe that the dominance of their double BM Hunter 3s team has nothing to do with broken mechanics.

GC made another one of his comments the other day, where he says something without adequately explaining himself and leaves it far too open to interpretation. Bromsius made a nice post about them already. The source can be found here, and the TL;DR is that as often as possible the developers will opt to take the easy solution when posed with a problem. As you can imagine the standard forum rhetoric ensued - Blizzard is lazy, Blizzard doesn't care, Blizzard just wants to make more money, etc. Reading all of this leaves me with one question:

What's wrong with taking the easy route?

Of course this isn't the first time such criticism has been directed at Blizzard for acting in such a way. Whenever balancing is done that is less extensive than players demanded or expected the same accusations have been made of "taking the easy way out". From a short term design standpoint I agree with the QQ, it may be more effective in any given case to completely revamp the mechanics of whatever isn't working. But what about the long term? Not only does the frequency of new problems scale with the complexity of the solution, but what happens when a future concern that could have been easily fixed can't, because so many changes have been made to the mechanics.

You're building a new road to get from point A to point B more quickly. You come to a mountain with a town built on it, which you can either build around or built a tunnel through. What do you do?

Here is a case where the goal is getting somewhere quickly, and the more expensive and complex solution will be more effective. You need to consider the externalities; in the immediate there is the issue of what happens to the town. In the future you need to consider that the mountain is speculated to contain gold, what happens if this turns out to be true? Likewise Blizzard must immediately consider what happens to other aspects of the game, and how this compicates things for the future. As any city-planner can tell you a complex and more efficient roads-system only makes future construction much more difficult.

Take the current PvP issues. Could extensive changes to class mechanics be the most efficient route of balancing? It's quite possible. There is a lot to be said, however, for attempting to solve as much of the problem as possible simply through changes to Reslience mechanics. Changing things one piece at a time helps isolate the problem in the event that it doesn't work. Not being developers puts us in the fortunate position of not needing to worry about anything beyond the immediate, because future changes to aspects of the game beyond that which we're interested in are not our concerns.

I do think that we are in a frustrated position right now where we will criticize Blizzard for just about anything. I've seen raiders complaining about the lack of emphasis on stacking raids class-by-class because it caters to casuals. Really? Did anyone not cheer at the prospect of not needing to bring a ****ty Shadow Priest because you needed a mana battery? I wrote a blog recently in which I stated that even if Resilience doesn't fix the bulk of the problem, as I predicted, the best course of action would still be to see how things turn out. There are certainly reasons to be critical of Blizzard's actions but I don't think that taking the easy way out is necessarily one of them, unless it means doing nothing.

If you enjoyed feel free to... well, you know

WOW SO SERIOUS?!

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:24:22 -0500
Sorry for the title. I had to do it. It's like when you come up with a really sweet your mom joke and while on one hand you know that they stopped being funny in the seventh grade, you really can't help yourself from letting it burst out.

How seriously do you take WoW?

I come to you today with a question. It's something many-a-player has asked themselves over their time in Azeroth, myself included. Why now? At some point in the last few weeks I came home after a long Sunday at work; I work for an energy company and the weather had caused our storm accounts to overflow, meaning a lot of accounting work needed to be done before the end of the year. I woke up at 5:30, worked for 10-12 hours, took a girl to a movie and came home. I logged on to use my transmute CD and got the proverbial "let's do games" message.

I reluctantly agreed, failing to mention that tiredness is my cryptonite. Drunk? High? I can handle it, and some might say I play even better. But when it comes to mental accuity, and let's face it 10+ hours of straight accounting work will numb anyone's mind, you may as well introduce me with a "bring on the fail banner". And boy, did I fail. I got gibbed against RMP without bubbling, because I felt it prudent to run into LoS and HoJ the Priest. Yes, it's possible to be that bad. And one of my teammates raged like I have never heard rage before.

ARE YOU ******* CLICKING?! HOLY **** YOU'RE TERRIBLE YOU SHOULD KILL YOURSELF I MEAN IF I WAS YOU I WOULD PUT A SCREWDRIVER THROUGH MY HEAD. GOD YOU'RE BAD, DID YOU GO WAKE UP THIS MORNING AND DRINK A GLASS OF "I'M GOING TO PLAY LIKE ****" JUICE?

I'm paraphrasing there, but it's fairly accurate for the tone of his screaming. I mean that literally, I had to take my headphones off and was still listening to him. Rather than yelling back as I would have done if this had been during, say, a soccer game... I laughed. This bothered him even more, but I couldn't help it. The sheer absurdity of someone getting so worked up over a video game... a video game, was laughable to me.

So what causes this vast variation in how seriously we play the game? I'm sure personality plays into it, but as easy-going as I am IRL I've been known to have a short fuse in similar situations. I'd say the level at which we play the game plays in there too, but I've seen plenty of baddies raging and plenty of "pros" taking things in stride. Perhaps the biggest factor is the investment we have in the game.

I'm not talking necessarily about time investment. There are people with an awful lot of people playing this game, but it's still secondary to them when contrasted against their real lives. From what I can tell it's the emotional investment in the game. Is there any question that some of the most infamous nerd-ragers in the game are those that play the most excessively?Â Or rather, those that have the least going for them outside of WoW? Naturally if you derive a great deal of your self-worth from WoW, and I have little doubt that many people do, then that would be the choice medium to demean and self-aggrandize.

Or is there no correlation at all between rage and emotional investment? Do you dismiss the "it's just a game" argument in light of the fact that your time is still time, and you don't like havig it wasted? How seriously do you take WoW?

Don't forget to if you <3 this blog!

Why I Pay for Movies

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:27:20 -0500
I woke up this morning to discover that my entire bottle of 18-year Glenlivet had disappeared, and I'm fairly certain that no one else touched it but me; the result of a great NYE that I hope you all shared. As I mentioned last night I don't really care for doing off-topic entries. I have something in mind but this headache persists and I don't think I can articulate it now, so I'll wait. Right now I'm going to touch on a topic which was a lengthy point of discussion last night following a little "inspiration".

As I mentioned yesterday I love movies, a sentiment I'm sure many of you share. Last night, I found myself nearly alone on one point; I spend a lot of money on them. I see a movie in theatres every week or two, and rent a movie at least once a week. It feels like I buy one every second week as well. Rarely do I download movies, and rarer still do I burn them. To some people this practice is laughable.

Why do I do it?

For some movies the medium through which you watch it is irrelevant. Others are meant to be seen in theatres. The Dark Knight? If you waited to see this on your computer screen you seriously missed out. Forgetting Sarah Marshall? Movies are flat out better when you're laughing alongside a hundred other (respectful) people. Personally I've been to theatres in the US and now greatly appreciate that no one has ever made me want to leave a movie at local cinema, but nonetheless somethings are meant to be seen on the big screen.

Except for Pineapple Express. As the (awesome) commercial states, this is meant to be seen "on the couch". But theatres are only one part of the equation, since most people are willing to pay in this case. What got me going last night was why I pay to rent and buy movies. And there is a very good reason;

The art form of film is dying.

One of the most incredible things I've watched this year was a film called Synecdoche, New York. When writer/director Charlie Kaufman is asked in an interview do describe his movie he replies "I won't go there". Synecdoche attempts to encapsulate the entirety of life, death, and the relationships we have with those around us. It really defies description, and I can only say that it is the most reaching piece of film I've ever seen. I've seen it twice and have yet to entirely absorb it. Roger Ebert says; "It will be viewed and valued decades from now. You mark my words."Â

Synecdoche, New York holds more substance than nearly any film ever made. It cost only 12.6 million dollars to make. It only grossed 2.6 million.

I'm not trying to push one movie on you. This is an anecdote that is ringing frighteningly true across the entire industry. The actors in this movie aren't anyone to laugh at; Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Michelle Williams, etc. are all well known. The problem is that films that want to make a statement or do something unconventional are not commercially viable unless they operate on minimal budgets. For an unconventional movie to be profitable, it has to be written in such a way that it at least generates Oscar buzz. It's a dangerous gamble for studios, and if movies like The Dark Knight become nominees (as it should be) things will only get worse.

Those of us who enjoy these movies can see the impact. The number of films making their way to theatres/DvD from Cannes, Sundance and the Toronto Film Festival are fewer every year. While it does bother me on many levels that Marley and Me grossed $36 million last week, I understand that The Wrestler will never appeal to that audience. But what do we lose? Memento by Christopher Nolan was his breakthrough film. It was independant, and that it was offered distribution is largely the reason why we got The Dark Knight and The Prestige.

The irony is that it is largely those who enjoy the unconventional who download. Those of us who love movies to the point where we couldn't reasonably afford to pay to see them all. The sad reality is that as movies like Synecdoche fail, the trend towards safety continues and only generic and terrible films will be made. I download my music; any person with a computer and some gear can create their vision. It will exist whether I pay for it or not. I do not feel the same way about movies, and I do honestly believe that unless we make a contribution we will see less and less worth watching.

/endrant

IRL patch 2009 inc!

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:55:21 -0500
It's unusual for me to write a blog that has little WoW content to it, but it would still be great if you could embrace the spirit of the New Year and

A Different Perspective: Blizzard's

no.spam@gameriot.com (oradol) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:39:24 -0500
I want you to clear your mind meditation-style. I want you to reject any preconceived notionsÂ you have regarding Blizzard's motivations for changing the game the way they have. I want you to try to look at things in the most objective way possible as I am trying to do here, void of skepticism and rage. None of us are satisfied with WoW as it exists, myself included. Some are more optimistic than others (myself again), and some are on the verge of quitting the game two weeks into S5.