I had an interesting problem last night in WoW: I had bought a "Holy Bologna: What the Light won't tell you" book from the auction house for my priest, to be handed in for the Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas in the library of Dire Maul. (Man, these books have gone up in price, Blizzard must have fixed the DM teleport exploit) I know how to get to the library solo and without aggroing anything from DM north, but my priest doesn't have the key. My warrior does have the key, but I can't group with myself.
Or can I? In the end I worked it out. I logged on a character from my wife's account and made a group with my warrior. Warrior goes to DM North and unlocks the door, my wife's char goes to DM north and stands behind the door, now being able to open it with the lever disguised as a torch from inside. Warrior enters the DM north instance and unlocks the door to the library. Log off the warrior, log on the priest, and have my wife's character invite the priest to the group. So because this is technically still the same group, the instance doesn't reset. Priest goes to DM north, wife's char opens outer door from inside, priest enters the instance, library door is still unlocked, and I reach the library without problems.
I'm not usually a fan of "two-boxing", playing on two computers. But in this case I found it was an elegant solution to the "how to get to the library without a key solo" problem.
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
Sunday, June 4, 2006
Ragnaros
I finally made it to the "end" of Molten Core, seeing Ragnaros for the first time. So of course I made a screenshot as a souvenir.
We were on our usual Sunday raid, killing Sulfuron and Golemagg, and trying Majordomo, who unexpectedly decided to drop dead on us on the second attempt. We must have accidentally done something right. So we just *had* to visit Ragnaros as well. We wiped three times there, with our best result being him down to 75%, and we getting wiped by his sons. Not bad for a first attempt.
Unfortunately actually killing Ragnaros probably needs us to have a lot better equipment than we have, basically all of us in that nice tier 1 MC armor with fire resistance. But as you can clear out MC only once per week, and then you get like 20 epics for 40 people, this is going to take forever.
We were on our usual Sunday raid, killing Sulfuron and Golemagg, and trying Majordomo, who unexpectedly decided to drop dead on us on the second attempt. We must have accidentally done something right. So we just *had* to visit Ragnaros as well. We wiped three times there, with our best result being him down to 75%, and we getting wiped by his sons. Not bad for a first attempt.Unfortunately actually killing Ragnaros probably needs us to have a lot better equipment than we have, basically all of us in that nice tier 1 MC armor with fire resistance. But as you can clear out MC only once per week, and then you get like 20 epics for 40 people, this is going to take forever.
Friday, June 2, 2006
Changes part 4: Gameplay
At first glance the gameplay of a typical MMORPG, from Everquest in 1999 to World of Warcraft in 2006 hasn't changed much. It still follows the same basic rules that are so brilliantly parodied in Progressquest: You go out, slay monsters, find loot, come back to the city to sell the loot and buy things, go out and slay more monsters, level up, see new zones and new monsters, and get ever more powerful. But what has changed a lot since then is amount of direction the game is likely to give you, and the degree of freedom you have to tackle challenges.
Gameplay in Everquest was based generally on social aspects. The game didn't tell you where to go next, you had to get this information from other players. Once you arrived at a new place, you had to group with other players to beat monsters. Soloing was not an option, because once you passed the lowest levels, the lowest level monster that would still give any experience points to you would be too hard to kill solo, unless you had chosen one of a few special "solo-enabled" classes, like druid or necromancer. This game design was voluntary, a philosophy called "The Vision", that massively multiplayer games had to make people play together, whether they wanted or not.
Surprisingly that turned out to be highly unpopular with the majority of players. People did not want to have to rely on other players to get information about the game, and to gain experience. The information part was quickly outsourced to websites, where you could look up the information you wanted, instead of having to appear like a n00b when asking other players in-game. On forced grouping not much could be done, but the few solo-enabled classes were more popular and numerous than any group-reliant class.
World of Warcraft revolutionized the genre by adding a quest system that was designed to guide players through the game without them having to ask other players for advice on where to go next. Previously quests had be an optional extra, minor tasks with minor rewards you could do or leave as you wanted. In WoW the quest system is the heart of the gameplay. It not only directs you into the different interesting corners of the zone you are in, thus dispersing the player population over a wide area, but it also sends you on to the next zone once you have outleveled the zone you are in. Information given about the quest has become a lot more precise, and you can actually solve most quests just with the information given. That hasn't prevented players too lazy to do minor searching in the game from frequenting third-party websites like Thottbot with spoiler information, but these sites aren't strictly necessary any more.
At the same time World of Warcraft and many other modern games abandoned the concept of forced grouping. WoW has gone further than most other games, in making it possible for a player to solo all the way up to the level cap in a time which isn't any longer than if the player was playing in groups. There is still "group only" content, elite quests and instanced dungeons, but they are optional, and clearly labeled. If you want, you can group, and you are rewarded with better items than you could gain soloing. But if you don't want, you can still reach level 60. *At* level 60 you're pretty much lost if you don't want to group with other players, but the fabled "end game" is in fact only a minor part of the content created for World of Warcraft, and you can always make a new character and solo the leveling game again.
There is no doubt that the ability to solo a MMORPG is here to stay, even if it seems counterintuitive to the massively multiplayer concept. Recent games that were not quite so successful, and that had not quite enough solo content, quickly retracted from their position and all promised to offer more solo content due to market pressure. No game yet has dared to eliminate groups and raids altogether, and I don't think that would be a good idea. People enjoy the freedom of choice, the option to play in different modes, depending on their available time and social mood.
The advantages of giving players more information inside the game aren't quite as recognized. The WoW quest system, while widely admired, is pretty unique, and the secret of its success not well understood. Even in WoW you don't get all the information you need about the game in the game. If you are looking for a specific sword or other piece of equipment, you still need to consult other players or third-party websites. There is no "sage" NPC you could ask for advice in the game. But that is something which might well arrive in the future of MMORPGs.
Gameplay in Everquest was based generally on social aspects. The game didn't tell you where to go next, you had to get this information from other players. Once you arrived at a new place, you had to group with other players to beat monsters. Soloing was not an option, because once you passed the lowest levels, the lowest level monster that would still give any experience points to you would be too hard to kill solo, unless you had chosen one of a few special "solo-enabled" classes, like druid or necromancer. This game design was voluntary, a philosophy called "The Vision", that massively multiplayer games had to make people play together, whether they wanted or not.
Surprisingly that turned out to be highly unpopular with the majority of players. People did not want to have to rely on other players to get information about the game, and to gain experience. The information part was quickly outsourced to websites, where you could look up the information you wanted, instead of having to appear like a n00b when asking other players in-game. On forced grouping not much could be done, but the few solo-enabled classes were more popular and numerous than any group-reliant class.
World of Warcraft revolutionized the genre by adding a quest system that was designed to guide players through the game without them having to ask other players for advice on where to go next. Previously quests had be an optional extra, minor tasks with minor rewards you could do or leave as you wanted. In WoW the quest system is the heart of the gameplay. It not only directs you into the different interesting corners of the zone you are in, thus dispersing the player population over a wide area, but it also sends you on to the next zone once you have outleveled the zone you are in. Information given about the quest has become a lot more precise, and you can actually solve most quests just with the information given. That hasn't prevented players too lazy to do minor searching in the game from frequenting third-party websites like Thottbot with spoiler information, but these sites aren't strictly necessary any more.
At the same time World of Warcraft and many other modern games abandoned the concept of forced grouping. WoW has gone further than most other games, in making it possible for a player to solo all the way up to the level cap in a time which isn't any longer than if the player was playing in groups. There is still "group only" content, elite quests and instanced dungeons, but they are optional, and clearly labeled. If you want, you can group, and you are rewarded with better items than you could gain soloing. But if you don't want, you can still reach level 60. *At* level 60 you're pretty much lost if you don't want to group with other players, but the fabled "end game" is in fact only a minor part of the content created for World of Warcraft, and you can always make a new character and solo the leveling game again.
There is no doubt that the ability to solo a MMORPG is here to stay, even if it seems counterintuitive to the massively multiplayer concept. Recent games that were not quite so successful, and that had not quite enough solo content, quickly retracted from their position and all promised to offer more solo content due to market pressure. No game yet has dared to eliminate groups and raids altogether, and I don't think that would be a good idea. People enjoy the freedom of choice, the option to play in different modes, depending on their available time and social mood.
The advantages of giving players more information inside the game aren't quite as recognized. The WoW quest system, while widely admired, is pretty unique, and the secret of its success not well understood. Even in WoW you don't get all the information you need about the game in the game. If you are looking for a specific sword or other piece of equipment, you still need to consult other players or third-party websites. There is no "sage" NPC you could ask for advice in the game. But that is something which might well arrive in the future of MMORPGs.
Thursday, June 1, 2006
Carnival of Gamers #15
The Carnival of Gamers #15 is here. As always, an opportunity to see other gaming blogs and have a look around for other people's opinions and writing styles.
WoW Journal - 2-June-2006
My fire resistance in my best FR gear for my priest went up to over 100. I found that I had a forgotten cloth bracers with +14 FR in my bank. And then I found a cheap tunic of fire resistance with +28 FR on the auction house for just 15 gold and bought it. But of course items like these point out the problem with fire resistance gear: it obviously has less good stats in other areas. So if I put on my FR tunic, I can't wear my Truefaith Vestment at the same time. And all the other FR items are replacing items that give me intelligence, and I end up with something like 1000 mana less for 100 fire resistance more. So as a priest I would certainly not want to shoot for 300+ fire resistance, if in consequence I just stand around stupidly without mana. For the rest of the people in the raid it doesn't make a huge difference whether I don't heal because I'm out of mana or whether I don't heal because I'm burned to a crisp. I tend to favor survival, due to the chance of regenerating mana, but that is slow, and I shouldn't go all out for maximum survival gear and forget about my mana pool.
In other news I'm playing "waiting for the weekend" during the week in World of Warcraft. My new guild is raiding every single night, *sigh*, and at hours that are incompatible with my need for sleep. So I didn't get into any guild group all week long. :( Last night I joined a pickup group to Stratholme living, but we abandoned at the third Ziggurat because the hunter had just wiped us for the umpteenth time by a bad pull and bad use of his pet. I know that there are good hunters around, but if I'm ever organizing a pickup group I'll install a "no hunters" rule. I don't know what it is about that class that makes them the source of trouble in most pickup groups I've been in. What was really annoying was that the hunter had already got a blue BoE polearm he could sell and his beaststalker boots at that point, so he probably left quite satisfied with his performance and reward.
So I'm wondering what I'll do during the week in World of Warcraft in the future. I play in 4-hour sessions from 6 pm to 10 pm, but at 6 pm it's still to early to get a group together, and by the time I got a group together at 8 pm, the remaining 2 hours are often too short to finish a dungeon. I spent a lot of time in activities that fall under the heading of "raid preparation", like collecting fire resistance gear, or gathering herbs for major mana and greater fire protection potions. But I don't think a cycle of raiding on weekends and raid preparation during the week will satisfy me, it is too repetitive. But I'm sure raiding and grouping on the weekend will be fun again.
What I really, really want is to play the Burning Crusade expansion, and experience all the new content, instead of repeating content I already know all over again. But of course the expansion is till half a year away, and I feel a bit as if I'm stuck on the longest loading screen ever.
In other news I'm playing "waiting for the weekend" during the week in World of Warcraft. My new guild is raiding every single night, *sigh*, and at hours that are incompatible with my need for sleep. So I didn't get into any guild group all week long. :( Last night I joined a pickup group to Stratholme living, but we abandoned at the third Ziggurat because the hunter had just wiped us for the umpteenth time by a bad pull and bad use of his pet. I know that there are good hunters around, but if I'm ever organizing a pickup group I'll install a "no hunters" rule. I don't know what it is about that class that makes them the source of trouble in most pickup groups I've been in. What was really annoying was that the hunter had already got a blue BoE polearm he could sell and his beaststalker boots at that point, so he probably left quite satisfied with his performance and reward.
So I'm wondering what I'll do during the week in World of Warcraft in the future. I play in 4-hour sessions from 6 pm to 10 pm, but at 6 pm it's still to early to get a group together, and by the time I got a group together at 8 pm, the remaining 2 hours are often too short to finish a dungeon. I spent a lot of time in activities that fall under the heading of "raid preparation", like collecting fire resistance gear, or gathering herbs for major mana and greater fire protection potions. But I don't think a cycle of raiding on weekends and raid preparation during the week will satisfy me, it is too repetitive. But I'm sure raiding and grouping on the weekend will be fun again.
What I really, really want is to play the Burning Crusade expansion, and experience all the new content, instead of repeating content I already know all over again. But of course the expansion is till half a year away, and I feel a bit as if I'm stuck on the longest loading screen ever.
Is WoW PvP still a game?
Some eye-opening insights on what it takes to reach rank 14, the highest honor rank in World of Warcraft PvP are described in a series of interwiews on NotAddicted
Or you just have your account participate 24 hours a day in PvP, by paying a powerleveling service. Then 3 players from a third world economy will play on your account in shifts, doing PvP all the time until you get to rank 14. Cost to go from nothing to rank 14, according to this site, is $2,800, and the process takes 4 to 5 months. Of course during that time you can't access your account to play yourself, so as you live in a first world economy, you could use those 15 hours per day for 5 months do earn considerably more than $2,800, even if you just flip burgers or mow lawns. And you have the satisfaction that by employing people to play PvP for you 24 hours a day, it becomes even harder for other people on your server to reach the highest PvP rank.
Is that still a game?
I would say that both relative ranking and decay in World of Warcraft PvP have to go. Just create a fixed "PvP XP" curve, where you earn PvP XP for kills and for battleground victories, and you know exactly how many more PvP XP you need for the next level, and to reach the PvP level cap. Leveling your PvP rank up to the cap should not take more hours than leveling a character to the PvE level cap. And you should be able to do it over whatever period of time is convenient to you.
Unless WoW PvP is changed to a fixed points system, it remains just an oddity in the game. Everybody plays a couple of battleground and then most players just give up on it, because they can't compete with those who have nothing else to do. If you meet a High Warlord or Grand Marshall in WoW, you might want to express your compassion for the poor guy having wasted so much of his life for so little reward.
Frybread: How much effort does it take, really? From start to finish?5 months of 14 to 15 hours per day to reach rank 14? That is over 2,000 hours, four times more than it takes to level from 1 to 60 in PvE! No thanks, mate. The author thinks that the problem with this is decay, the stupid mechanism that if you don't do any PvP for a week you lose rank massively. But I say that the real problem is that the system is relative, not absolute. While in the PvE game you can exactly calculate how many rats you need to kill to go up one level, in the PvP game your rank depends on how much more you play than the other players on your server. Thus a few person without a job / school / life, who can play 15 hours a day set the barrier which you have to climb to reach the top.
Medeve whispers: rank 4 - 14 took me about 5 months of finishing top 10 standing every week, usually top 6
Bosco whispers: like 5 months
Bosco whispers: i pugged for 3 of those
Frybread: How much would you play daily?
Medeve whispers: 14-15 hours average
Frybread: Did you put in any sleepless nights?
Bosco whispers: if you call 1-3 hours [of sleep] max then yeah i put in quite a bit.
Or you just have your account participate 24 hours a day in PvP, by paying a powerleveling service. Then 3 players from a third world economy will play on your account in shifts, doing PvP all the time until you get to rank 14. Cost to go from nothing to rank 14, according to this site, is $2,800, and the process takes 4 to 5 months. Of course during that time you can't access your account to play yourself, so as you live in a first world economy, you could use those 15 hours per day for 5 months do earn considerably more than $2,800, even if you just flip burgers or mow lawns. And you have the satisfaction that by employing people to play PvP for you 24 hours a day, it becomes even harder for other people on your server to reach the highest PvP rank.
Is that still a game?
I would say that both relative ranking and decay in World of Warcraft PvP have to go. Just create a fixed "PvP XP" curve, where you earn PvP XP for kills and for battleground victories, and you know exactly how many more PvP XP you need for the next level, and to reach the PvP level cap. Leveling your PvP rank up to the cap should not take more hours than leveling a character to the PvE level cap. And you should be able to do it over whatever period of time is convenient to you.
Unless WoW PvP is changed to a fixed points system, it remains just an oddity in the game. Everybody plays a couple of battleground and then most players just give up on it, because they can't compete with those who have nothing else to do. If you meet a High Warlord or Grand Marshall in WoW, you might want to express your compassion for the poor guy having wasted so much of his life for so little reward.
WoW Journal - 1-June-2006
I'm working on getting my fire resistance up on my priest. With my new guild slowly but surely approaching Ragnaros and Onyxia, that will be necessary. Last night I did the "When Smokey sings, I get violent" quest. The annoying part is that you first need to do another quest from Smokey, handing him a bunch of smithed and engineered goods, which aren't exactly cheap. The good part was that as priest I could easily solo the quest to blow up the Scourge structures in the plaguewood around Stratholme. The structures are each guarded by a level 58 elite mob, which makes the quest hard to solo for many classes, but as the mob is undead, I could simply shackle him, walk past him, place my bomb, and run away.
So now I have Flarecore Gloves, the Onyxia key amulet, Smokey's Drape with a self-made +7 fire resistance enchantment, plus the +8 to all resistances from wearing two tier 0.5 items, for a total of 65 fire resistance. I still need some more stuff. A Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas would be nice, but I can't find a reasonably priced book to start that quest in the auction house, people demand 100 to 150 gold for it, while the book for my warrior was a fraction of that price. I'm on the Hydraxian Waterlords quest, so in two weekends I should get the Tidal Loop with +15 fire resistance. Unfortunately EVERYBODY is looking for fire resistance, so fiery or lava cores from MC to tailor more Flarecore items, or rings that give fire resistance are terribly expensive. And if you go to a dungeon where a boss drops some nice fire resistance item, like the cloak from the emberseer in UBRS, everybody in the raid presses the need button, and my chances to get it are low. I can cast the +15 fire resistance enchantment instead of just the +7 one, but at a cost of 3 nexus crystals even than enchantment is overly expensive.
I should at least get to a fire resistance of 100, which would prevent about 25% of the fire damage I take. A main tank might want to have a fire resistance of 300 or above, which gives a maximum protection of 75% fire damage reduction.
So now I have Flarecore Gloves, the Onyxia key amulet, Smokey's Drape with a self-made +7 fire resistance enchantment, plus the +8 to all resistances from wearing two tier 0.5 items, for a total of 65 fire resistance. I still need some more stuff. A Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas would be nice, but I can't find a reasonably priced book to start that quest in the auction house, people demand 100 to 150 gold for it, while the book for my warrior was a fraction of that price. I'm on the Hydraxian Waterlords quest, so in two weekends I should get the Tidal Loop with +15 fire resistance. Unfortunately EVERYBODY is looking for fire resistance, so fiery or lava cores from MC to tailor more Flarecore items, or rings that give fire resistance are terribly expensive. And if you go to a dungeon where a boss drops some nice fire resistance item, like the cloak from the emberseer in UBRS, everybody in the raid presses the need button, and my chances to get it are low. I can cast the +15 fire resistance enchantment instead of just the +7 one, but at a cost of 3 nexus crystals even than enchantment is overly expensive.
I should at least get to a fire resistance of 100, which would prevent about 25% of the fire damage I take. A main tank might want to have a fire resistance of 300 or above, which gives a maximum protection of 75% fire damage reduction.
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