What will SWTOR's end-game be like?

That is the $64,000 question over the past several days after last week's San Diego Comic-Con when James Ohlen responded to an insightful question:

Q: If a player completes their class story, do you think it's likely that they'll restart as another character to experience another story, or focus on end game content?

A: We really hope that players will go play other classes because otherwise that would be a waste of resources

It's been no secret that many people have been very worried about the prospects of this game being closer to that of an RPG than an MMORPG and answers like this do nothing but feed into that fear.  It touched off numerous lengthy threads on the SWTOR forum and to which Bioware never replied to any of them.  By some accounts we're less than a year away from release -- the release of Deceived was delayed until Mar 2010, according to the author, to coincide with the release of the game -- and there is still a majority of the game we've heard virtually nothing about, let alone gotten to the specifics of.  End-game is one of those topics.  Other than a generic statement by Bioware that "there will be an end-game" we know absolutely nothing concrete.  During the San Diego Comic-Con we heard that some of the flash-points may be an hour to two hours long, which may in fact be the first examples of the end-game content we can expect.

If Bioware's developmental plans for end-game include starting new characters whenever you complete a class story, I think that idea will simply lend meat to the fears.  And I think it would be a terrible mistake.  Bioware has touted many times that all the content they've written for SWTOR thus far amount to more than 10 times the amount of content that was found in KOTOR, as if that were to stand as an example of why no one will ever get bored.  They didn't actually say that in so many words, but that's the impression I've gotten over the months when I read those answers.  If Bioware thinks that 300 or 400 hours of content is going to be enough to keep people satisfied, they are woefully mistaken and naive.  That's probably two to three months of play time for most players, although it would probably be several additional months of play time for the most casual of players.  So what do they expect those not so casual players to do in the intervening period before Bioware adds more content?  I can't tell you that, other than I guess create new characters, but I can  tell you what those players will do.  They'll get on the forums and bitch up a storm, and will bitch up a storm on their blogs, and anywhere else available to them.

The moral to this story is that Bioware really needs to understand the expectation of their potential customers.  They'll be varied, but that will include a vibrant PVP aspect that compliments and coincides with the PVE aspects; a strong crafting and gathering element, and most importantly, a design that doesn't force them to essentially start over when they reach the level cap.  Ten Ton Hammmer has a few interesting comments on the matter as well.

Where to indeed?

It is an interesting question, is it not?  It's one that I've thought of in the past and numerous others have commented on the official forum on several occasions. Blizzard's reply is that a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required. They acknowledge the dis-jointed nature of the story from beginning to end, but that it was a simple reality of an evolving story. Where Larisa is focusing on the dis-jointedness of the story and the fact that we really are looking at WoW 2.0 at this point, I tend to focus my own criticisms at more specific aspects of their game design.  I've mentioned before how unsettling I find these complete game mechanic overhauls every 24 months.  While I can't dispute that some of that has actually been good for the game, taken on the whole I think it's actually not helped a great deal.  Blizzard has not shown that they have a long-term vision for WoW and as a consequence the entire player experience has changed dramatically with every expansion.  And here comes Cataclysm with it's dramatic changes, and combat and talent trees that are reminiscent of Vanilla WoW. 

So, yes I ask myself where we go from here many times.  As far as story goes I can think of many avenues down which WoW could head that would keep up occupied for years to come.  Where the development strategy can go from here is an entirely different question.

I'm not playing Star Craft 2 today

I may be one of the few who isn't, but I made a decision not to buy Star Craft 2 even though I had been looking forward to it.  I even got a beta invite that I never used, much to the chagrin of a friend who wanted me to give it to him.  I really did like the original and I'm sure I would enjoy the sequal equally as much, but in the end I don't really want to pay $59.99 for a hobbled game.  And by hobbled I mean a game that doesn't offer out of the box LAN support, and which doesn't feature campaign modes for all three races.  You can't even play it without logging into Battle.Net, which means no stand-alone laptop play or playing directly connected to my son over our home network.  "Conicidentally" it also means I wouldn't be able to sell the game after I've played it as it will be tied to my Battle.Net account.  In order to sell it to someone I'd have to give them my Battle.Net username and password.  I'm sure Blizzard didn't mean to do that as the law allows me to sell my software and Blizzard wouldn't do anything to infringe on my rights, now would they?  Forcing me to tether to Battle.Net is only about being able to communicate with my friends wherever they are in Blizzard's gaming network, right? 

Sorry, but playing WoW I know how often Battle.Net has issues, and didn't another company find out these sorts of plans have issues recently (more)?  Of course a lot of players had issue with the scheme before the game was released too.  Did Ubisoft listen?  Neither did Blizzard.  Blizzard used to be a model company, but in the past year they have started to through around their weight and are now in that transformative period where they are no longer an "us" and are becoming a "them".

SC2 ships with only a single campaign mode -- Terran -- though Blizzard has said they would add campaigns for the Proteoss and Zerg at a later date.  Of course that's lead to much speculation about how they'd do that exactly with most people making the assumption that Blizzard will be charging for those updates.  Bobby Kotick has made it clear he's going to wring every penny out of the market, which is understandable from a business standpoint, but from a consumer standpoint is something alltogether different.  I decided to vote with my pocketbook and not purchase now.  I'll wait for the price to drop to $20 in the future and decide then if I'll buy it or not.

DC Universe Online

You'd probably not know this from my posts here over the past two and a half years but I'm a huge geek.  I grew up in the 70's and 80's playing Dungeons and Dragons and I started collecting comic books in 1979.  By the time I graduated High School I had about 20,000 comics in my collection but stopped collecting for about 10 years shortly after.  I started collecting comic books again in 2001 and stopped again in 2003 or 2004 because by that time they had just grown so expensive and I had philosophical differences with the literary devices creative teams were using more and more often.  The dreaded story-arc!  A story-arc is usually six issues long and features five issues of dramatic lead-up to the final issue in the arc.  The main plot usually climaxes in a finale in just a few pages, which in my mind is a tremendous let down.  There's also the issue that creative teams move around entirely too much these days.  In the "old days" creative teams would spend years on a title developing the characters and multiple plot lines, but it's not unusual now to see creative teams on one title for as little as four to six months and rarely on the same title for more than a year.  It leads to disjointed title and character development as every new team that comes in seeks to put their own spin on things.  I really detest it.  And I detest even more the cheapness which both Marvel and DC use "death" now.  Characters die and the emotion wrapped up in that event is completely lost because we all know they'll be back in short order.

I still consider myself to be a tremendous comic fan, holding Thor, Batman, Daredevil, Iron-man, the X-men (Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Cyclops were always my favorites), and Superman as my favorites but certainly not the only heroes I loved to follow.  Suffice to say I'm a huge fan of the genre yet that hasn't exactly carried over into my gaming.  I've generally steered clear of super-hero based MMOs and games, having never played City of Heroes/Villains or Champions online (though I did play Champions with paper and pencil back in the day).  I have been following, somewhat, the DC Universe MMO and Marvel's deal announced last year but DC Universe Online is only one of the two that is close to release and unfortunately it's been developed by SOE.  I've vowed never again play an SOE developed game so despite the awesomeness that is the latest game trailer I'm going to have to put a lot of thought into whether I want to go back on that vow or now before I try DCUO.

So what about the other two best known Hero-based MMOs?  Why haven't I ever played those?  Hero based MMOs don't follow the typical model found in most Fantasy based  MMOs these days.  Hero based MMOs feature plenty of PVE but are shy of content that makes the PVP aspects meaningful.  Perhaps I'm mistaken but my impression is that PVP in the hero-based MMOs are mindless and really serve no purpose, which I think is a travesty.   In any event that's the prime concern I have with DCUO as well.  Questing is fine but at the end of the day I get most of my enjoyment from going head to head with others, and I don't really want that to be meaningless.  It'll be interesting to see how things unfold as DCUO gets closer to release in November.

Bioware's Comic-Con reveal

Bioware has been teasing for the past several days that there would be a "big reveal" at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, and during their panel yesterday there was.  Darth Hater provided a concise roundup so it didn't take us long to learn yesterday that the big reveal was the fact that we'll be able to customize and participate in combat with our ships.  Of course there are no details yet about how ship combat will work but it should bring an interesting facet to the game.  Other interesting tidbits revealed were that we'll be able to customize our companions with gear and I imagine skills as well.  Mythic did the same thing in Star Trek Online so I have some experience with this already and think it's a terrific idea.  But the fact that we'll never be able to faction change I think is a mistake.  I think limiting choices in that manner only lessons character development and cheapens the entire moral decisions system so I'm hoping the decision to limit faction changes will get changed at some point in the future.  In any event the panel seems to have served its purpose well and kept the discussion about SWTOR lively for another week.

Blizzcon 2010 DirectTV stream tickets on sale now

I figured after the positive feedback from the streaming last year Blizzard would do it again and as luck would have it, Blizzard opened up ticket sales this morning for the Blizzcon streaming.  Same price as last year, but this year they're improving the product by enabling us to watch all of the events.  I'm still not all that excited to be seeing Jay Mohr again but I'm appreciative that I'll actually be able to see more of the event this time.  No word yet on the in-game pet.

We interrupt our normally scheduled content

I'd been writing a lengthy and detailed post that I was going to post today but quite a bit of it dealt with my UI, it's crowded nature and some mods.  Actually the fact that my UI is/was crowded wasn't the main point and only came up indirectly in my writing because what I was writing about sort of forced the confession out of me.  So earlier today I decided to tackle the root of the problem and build my very own custom UI.  It's actually a pretty big step for me as I've been using the default UI since I started playing WoW 5 years ago.  Outside of a few mods that gave me additional information everything on my screen was stock.  Which means I've been using the default buttons (four on bottom and two on the right side) too.  It really left me very little room on my screen to play with.

I knew generally what I wanted to do in a new UI and I've spent the better part of the afternoon putting it together.  It's minimal and I'll most likely tinker with it some more over the course of the next several days or so but I think I'm off to a good start.

The biggest issue was figuring out Bartender4.  I've got the top bar set to change with my form, but I do need to figure out why I lose my pre-set key-binds on the bar in cat form while stealthed.  Not an emergency but an annoyance and something I definately need to figure out before going too much further.  I also still need to set up profiles for my various specs and I'm not quite sure how to do that yet so it looks like I'll be playing Balance only for a bit.

Master of Warsong Gulch complete

I did make some additional progress this week toward Justicar and Battlemaster so I think my plan to put the normal things I'd do during the weekdays off until the weekends will work out for me over the long term.  Most of the achievements I have left for Battlemaster aren't that difficult, but are time sinks.  And of course the remaining rep I need for Justicar is all about time but I can deal with that.  It's all about setting intermediate goals for the Battlemaster achievements and earning the rep for Justicar in blocks.  Of course a fair bit of luck is involved with some of the individual battleground achievements though, not to mention the fact that some of them are just downright impossible in the "wrong spec".  Up until this past weekend I had been doing everything as either Resto or Balance, but it's hard to return flags in WSG as either of those.  Switching to Feral for BGs made a lot of this easier but you still end up having to be in the right place at the right time and hope that no one else is gunning for the same achievements.

Take for instance the Frenzied Defender achievement in WSG.  I just had that and Persistent Defender left for Master of Warsong Gulch as of this morning.  While I might have eventually earned Persistent Defender as Resto or Balance, I was never going to get Frenzied Defender in either of those specs.  Since the weekend I've been able to return the 12 additional flags for Persistent Defender, including the 5 I needed for Frenzied Defender today finally finished Master of Warsong Gulch achievement.  I was seriously wondering if I'd ever be able to get Frenzied Defender however as the enemy flag carrier is usually swarmed with mad clicking skillz going on.  I'd get 2 or 3 returns in a match and the match would end.  When I hit 4 in an match earlier I was starting to get a little edgy and was like a fiend on the flag carrier.  When his health would drop to 5% or so I'd start clicking like mad on the screen and voila.

I'm all for making achievements challenging but they do tend to limit ones choices and I have a hard time seeing how certain classes and specs would be able to do these outside of a pre-made group.  Which is perhaps the answer but if anyone is having better luck at finding regular pre-made groups these days you need to tell me your secret.  Incidentally, 853 more flag caps required for rep.

Change 2 to Eclipse

Last Friday Blizzard held another dev chat on Twitter and one of the questions answered was regarding the current beta implementation of Eclipse.  I blogged earlier in the month what I still saw as the short falls about the current implementation but Lissana and Graylo went further and spoke a little more eloquently than I on the matter.  Luckily for us Blizzard seems amiable to making changes reflected at the criticisms lobbed at Eclipse.  The next iteration of Eclipse will see a 45-second effect window that certainly answers the movement problem but I don't know enough yet about the linear casting problem yet.  I'm still hoping for a random "charges" system that keeps some of the randomness of our casting routine now.  I can live with a linear casting system like we had in BC but if at all possible I'd like to keep more of what we have now than what we had in BC.

Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin "hold" the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.

Lissana has a lengthy post on the announced changes, which my question about the randomness is based on.  When she talks about 10 or 5 casts she's surmising but that's the point.  We haven't seen any information (yet) that Blizzard intends to introduce a random element to how much power each cast might use so I'm left to believe we'll have a strict linear system.

38 Studios project mercury coming to fruition

I read about this in USA Today earlier this morning, so I was looking for a little more information.  Leave it to Gamasutra to deliver.  Curt Schilling made quite a stir when he let it be known a couple years ago that he was an avid WoW fan, and that he had founded a company and would be publishing games of his own.  Glad to see his hard work is finally coming to fruition and looking forward to learning more about this first game.

Rated battlegrounds should create a more beneficial PVP setting

I’ve been working on my Justicar and Battlemaster achievements for quite a while now, so when we have a weekend like this weekend, where the battleground is Arathi Basin, I spend most of the weekend PVPing. I do the same thing when it’s Warsong Gulch weekend as well, but otherwise I’ll get a number of random battlegrounds in before moving on toward working on Loremaster or putting some time in on an alt. On the positive side of things I made great progress this weekend on the rep I need for AB but find myself still shy of Revered. To be honest I haven’t been focusing as much as I should, outside of the AB weekends toward gaining the rep so I’m significantly behind where I should be right now. Same with WSG rep. The negative side of things is that I played in more battlegrounds this weekend than I have in a while and having to deal with the magnitude of AFK’ing and bad play really irritated me as the weekend wore on. Several of the battlegrounds I ended up losing were a result of being undermanned because of AFK’ers and because people were being silly – not defending after a cap, fighting on roads and away from flags that were easily ninja’d, and by people participating in PVE gear. These are the weekends I would particularly like to participate in pre-mades but since the two I was able to find a couple weeks back I haven’t been able to find any since.

The AFK’ing and bad play is driving my desire for Rated battlegrounds, which Blizzard has announced for Cataclysm. Arenas will become just one avenue for obtaining arena points – called Conquest points in Cataclysm, and pre-mades will become as big a part (bigger) of PVP play as it was in the Burning Crusade days. Eventually regular PVP’ers will find regular groups to participate with and those teams will eventually graduate to the top of the rankings. I haven't arena played because to me those are just structured duels and aren’t true PVP. Well, okay, it is player-vs-player, but in my mind PVP is defined as “warfare” and not as dueling. In my mind Battlegrounds and open world fighting are the only true form of PVP. There might be some level of structure in battlegrounds, but a fight can break out anywhere and at any time in them and fights will almost never be fair. It’s the need to adjust to the constantly changing nature of the fighting and the circumstances at hand that make battlegrounds so fun to me and why I spend so many hours every week doing it. It’s the competitiveness without the stark limitations of the arena system. Through the rating structure each of the teams will be pitted against other teams in the same bracket which will also mean, over time, the intensity of the battles will grow as well. Also, I won’t continue to be penalized from obtaining the best PVP gear for not participating in arena play. I’ll be able to access the full gambit of PVP gear in Cataclysm by doing nothing more than what I love to do right now. Win – win in my opinion. Most importantly, I’m hoping that de-emphasizing arena play will also alleviate the constant class changes and tweaks to suit arena play that impact my PVE play. That’s a particular irritant of mine and another reason why I’ve refused to play in arenas thus far.

• Players will participate in rated battlegrounds by forming their raid group prior to joining the queue.
• You will only face off against other rated groups.
• Each week the format for rated battlegrounds will be different. It will rotate between 10, 15 and 25-player battlegrounds.
• Rating loss will not exist until after a certain threshold.
• Conquest points will be rewarded for winning rated battlegrounds.
• There will be a limitation on the number of Conquest points you can earn each week to prevent feeling like you must participate in both arenas and rated battlegrounds.
• There will be end-of-season rewards for rated BG teams similar to arenas:
  
  • The classic Honor titles will be coming back and rewarded to the top teams each season.
  • The "Gladiator" equivalent teams will also receive epic ground mounts. Ground mounts because they want to reward something you can ride in the battleground and be proud of / show off.

There is one aspect to rated battlegrounds that I don’t think is well understood by many people yet. Similar to the current system of personal and team arena ratings, players will have a personal and team rating in rated battlegrounds as well. As we have not yet seen how this is to be exactly implemented, as anyone can form ad hoc teams on the fly how will “team” ratings be generated, tracked, and controlled? But more importantly how will one’s personal rating fit into the mix? If your personal rating is as important to you in rated battlegrounds as it is in arena play, then will it also mean you will be more careful with your choices on which teams you play? In other words, will it mean your choices will be limited to only those players with similar personal ratings? If that’s the case it would tend to severely restrict when and how you’ll be able to participate in rated battlegrounds. It probably won’t matter if you find a static team to participate on, but if you are someone who just wants to jump onto any team that is forming whenever you feel like PVPing if could. It’ll be interesting to see how those details are worked out.

In the mean time I’m going to continue working toward Justicar and Battlemaster. I usually have between one and two hours after getting home from work and dinner during which I run my daily heroic and do my dailies. I’m thinking my time might be better spent if I just run my daily heroic and save the dailies and work toward Loremaster for the weekends. I don’t really need the gold but I do really need the rep and the battleground achievements. For WSG I’m still somewhere north of 850 flag caps worth of rep, 12 total flag returns, and the 5 flag returns in one battle shy to meet all my Justicar and Battlemaster requirements. And for AB I’m still at least 220 AB matches of rep, and a handful of AB achievements, including winning 1600 – 0, shy of all my Justicar and Battlemaster requirements. If I focus my weekly PVP attentions toward WSG and AB I should be able to finish Justicar and hopefully Battlemaster by the end of the year. Cataclysm will bring its own slew of battleground related achievements and I’d like to be able to focus on those when the time comes.

Feral PVP

I don't normally PVP as feral, or at least haven't done it in quite a while.  Most of my PVP is on my Druid and most of that is either in Resto or Balance spec.  But every once in a while I like to really shake things up and this weekend I decided to go back to my Feral roots and PVP as Feral.  I've done it in Cat spec in the past, which I wouldn't really recommend but PVPing in Bear spec is great fun.  You might not have the total burst DPS as the few Cat talents assist with but you are infinitely more survivable.  Especially from Rogues who always seem to be my nemesis where ever I go.  Even in a mostly Furious set with Relentless off-pieces I can survive a fearful beating and still dish out a fairly significant amount of punishment myself.    I've seen other Ferals in BGs from time to time but most Druids I see are like me, either Resto or Balance.  Most of those Ferals I have seen have absolutely torn people up (including me).  Looking at their gear they're typically fairly well off gear wise which has me looking forward to some upgrades.

I already started replacing my Relentless off pieces with Wrathful last night but I still have several to go, and then I have to worry about starting to replace the Furious main set pieces with Relentless.  I still have one Furious piece to replace with Relentless on my Resto set but I might just forgo that at this point and concentrate on my Feral PVP set instead.  I already do very well PVP healing as my set is the one Furious piece and all the remainder are Relentless/Wrathful at this point.  Since I don't Arena play that suit is good enough, especially as I'm actually very mana efficient.  Either way at 25 arena points a day I have a good while before I need to commit as I currently have only 280 arena points.

So, a few observations about Feral PVP.  First, choose your battles wisely and Pounce is your friend.  Second insta-Cyclone's are the bomb, and third I LOL a little when a Rogue vanishes on me after a CoS and I Demoralizing Roar him.  Hello little Rogue.  Warlocks are a hoot as well, after they figure out they can't fear chain me.  Open up with Pounce, Mangle and Tiger's Fury before unloading under Berserk.  I haven't seen a Lock yet today who has been able to teleport away in time.  It is super annoying however to have every DK in the Battlegroup that feels the necessity of standing 20 yards away from fights and using Deathgrip to pull an enemy to them when they can clearly see it's already being fought by others where it was.  Deathgrip a fleeing enemy back to you, yes.  Deathgrip an enemy out of the middle of others fighting him, no.  Thus concludes today's lesson in DK etiquette 101.

Mimiron 1 - Me 0

Ever had one of those nights of raiding where you feel like you either ran strait into a brick wall, or got hit by a big truck and not quite sure which it was?  That's how I feel last night after 11 rounds with Mimiron and Firefighter.  Last night was our nightly foray into Ulduar and while I knew Firefighters wasn't exactly easy I had no idea it would be the giant obstacle it appears to be right now.  After the first several attempts we hadn't even made it into phase 2 and figured out we wouldn't be able to two heal the encounter as the occasional tick of fire and the dot from the napalm was a great deal to heal on top of keeping the tank up.  We had several people die from the Napalm alone while the rest of the raid was being healed.  Which means we hadn't quite gotten the swing of exactly how much we needed to spread out.  We also were having trouble with the fire filling up too much of the room because people were spreading out too much and not keeping the fire controlled in parts of the room.  We ended up needing a third healer and once we got her to switch to her healing spec we had enough healing and eventually started getting into phase 2 with very little trouble at all.

But phase 2 continued to be a big problem for the remainder of the evening.  We did get into phase 3 a few times but too many were dead because our inability to control the fire well enough presented too many problems to keep everyone healed.  At one point I had no choice but to cross through a couple lines of fire because the tank and several others were actually out of healing range, and it was a problem we didn't correct for the rest of the evening.

I was greatly surprised by just how difficult Firefighter still was.  It clearly wasn't a DPS issue as we did eventually establish we could burn through phase 1 very quickly.  The health of the stages isn't the issue so it boils down to the human performance issues.  It's the mechanics of the fight that continue to make Firefighter extremely difficult -- even in 251/264 gear.  I don't mind a challenge; in fact I like challenges very much so I'm looking forward to the next go around with Mimiron.  Obviously we'll need to discuss the fight and make sure everyone is crystal clear how they need to react to and control the fires.  Because once we do that I think we'll get past this fight and be able to move on to the General.

Ruby Sanctum - accomplished

Unlike last week where we had a bit of guild drama and a late start, we were firing on all cylinders last night.  This time through we knew exactly where to stand and how the tank would need to adjust during phase 2, so we promptly came, saw, and conquered.  One-shotting Halion felt pretty good to be honest, even if I did lose my bracers to another Druid.

So unenthused by the new Balance tree

Blizzard's released the new 31-point talent trees they've been commenting on the past couple weeks.  I'm so very un-enthused by the balance tree.  I know these will probably change at least a few more times (I hope!), but you can see where they're thoughts are regarding Balance.  They've said as much but it's something all together different to actually see it.  We're going to be Moonfire spamming while moving.

I seriously hope Blizzard throws away everything they're thinking currently and goes back to the chalk board.  They need to rethink the whole package at this point.

Elite versus casual explained in real terms

I felt really bad for some of my friends in my old guild last night. In my old guild we’d never extended our raid lock out up to the point I joined my new guild but they’ve now started doing that as of last night in an effort to get to the Lich King. My old guild starts their raids at 7:30 and my new guild starts at 8:30 so I was chatting at a few of them while they were raiding and I was standing around in Dalaran. They were working on Dreamwalker, which we had only downed twice before and ended up spending the entire evening on her, and never did finish the fight. The Blood Queen, Sindragosa, and the Lich King are also still standing, none of which have ever been killed. The frustration was very evident in the whispers I was getting and I felt more than a little guilty for jumping ship. Then we started our raid at 8:30 and had cleared up to Putricide in a little more than an hour and ended up clearing up to Sindragosa by the end of the night, having one-shot every boss. Point of fact I do still have characters in my old guild so it’s not a situation where I’ve abandoned them entirely, but I can’t help but feel that way at times like last night. I doubt my presence would have changed matters for them which is why I ultimately made the decision to switch back to my Druid as my main now instead of in Cataclysm and to join him to another raiding guild. In the end I made a conscious decision that I wanted to experience the end-game content I was unlikely to experience in my old guild.

It occurred to me last night that this situation accurately exposes the differences between what I like to think of as elite players and casual players. In my mind the difference between elite and casual is not entirely about the number of hours one plays. I don’t consider myself elite at all but I play WoW 4-5 hours every day during the week and all day Saturday and Sunday unless I have chores or other things to attend to. In my mind the difference between casual and elite is more accurately tied to motivation. Casuals are more social in nature and form attachments (AKA loyalties) whereas elites are tied more to personal benefit and advancement. You can have motivated and competitive casual players, but you can’t have an elite player who isn’t motivated and competitive. Many casual players will forego goals for the group but an elite will almost always place themselves first and foremost. To them the ends justify the means, whereas with the casual player that almost always isn’t the case. Casuals might leave guilds and join new guilds, like I did, but not for the same reason as an elite player would. For an elite player the guild is simply a means to the end they seek – progression. Whereas I’ve declined raid guild invites from two of the top raid guilds on our server because while I’m interested in progression it isn’t the totality of the experience I’m seeking. For me, and for casuals in general, the other factors of the guild are as important as progression. It’s why I feel guilty for leaving my other friends in my old guild to join a friend in my new guild.

It just so happens that we lost six players on Sunday because they wanted to work on Heroic ICC but because of the normal attendance issues that all guilds undergo during the Summer, the raid leader is having to recruit new players and gear them up. Instead he’s emphasizing integration of the new players (myself included) into the raid and ascertaining the raids performance issues before moving into the harder content. Of course there is the issue that we have yet to kill Lich King on 25-man either. So those players left in a huff, putting their individual desires well ahead of the raids, even though they’ve all killed Lich King on 10-man and have been working through the 10-man heroic achievements. In my mind I say good riddance even though they were all very capable players. Their capabilities simply aren’t enough to overcome the drama they introduce into the guild. Instead of sticking it out and continuing to work on Lich King phase 3 with the rest of us they chose to strike off on their own and in setting up their own guild will have to contend with others of their like that will probably abandon them for greener pastures at the earliest opportunity. I’m so glad that has never, and will never, be me.

Pondering fate

Ruby Sanctum

Believe it or not last night was my first foray into the Ruby Sanctum. I haven’t done the 10-man version so I jumped right into the fun in 25-man. We had a fair bit of guild drama late yesterday afternoon so we got started late and didn’t down Halion, but I was thoroughly entertained. Blizzard created a challenging instance and the Halion fight itself was very nicely done. At this stage of raiding in WotLK everyone is used to over-powering trash but it’s highly unlikely that most, if any, raids will be doing that much here. The initial trash packs on either side of the portal are AOE trash but the other trash packs that wander around require CC and focus targeting. That was a welcome change from the typical raid experience.

The Halion fight was great fun and really not all that difficult to follow. Despite that we had several wipes that occurred mostly from mistakes with the beam in phase 2. Once we got specifics figured out about where to best stand and how the tank will maneuver Halion during phase 2 we got into phase 3 and our last attempt got Halion down to less than 1 million health. My biggest challenge was being able to stand still long enough during phase 2 at the dragon’s back left leg while the tank maneuver Halion so that I could take advantage of my Eclipses and not get singed by the beam. I had one death from a shadow void being dropped under me and then immediately getting tail slapped and stunned to death. It happened rather quickly so I didn’t feel much – that was until my body materialized back in the material world and I got tea-bagged by the main tank.

I can imagine after a couple weeks we’ll have everything down pat and will be clearing the place in an hour or so every week. It’s hard to think that the learning cycle we’re going through now was where we were at on Obsidian Sanctum in the early days of WotLK too. Will RS be as easy as OS is now in a few months?

Ulduar group

When I started the Ulduar-10 hard mode group I was expecting that we'd be done in a couple weeks.  Three at the most, but the attendance problems have resulted in us being able to go three times in about six weeks and I've had to replace several people from the original roster.  I've also had to switch specs myself so I'm healing instead of DPSing.  Still, it's been entertaining and fun.  When we have gone we've only been able to raid about two and a half hours a night so we were finally able to clear up to Freya last night with everything up to her having been pretty easy, except for Steelbreaker.  Initially we didn't have anyone that could dispell Fusion Punch so you can imagine how fun that fight was at the time.  One good Pally tank later and we voila.  We did actually also have some difficulty with Freya however as we had only two healers and just couldn't keep the Tanks and the entire raid up.  We ended up having the Elemental Shaman switch to her healing off-spec after several attempts with two healers, and that ended up being just enough to down Freya. 

If we can get our night in next Saturday we'll start off with Mimiron and Firefighter.  I know the last three achievements are the hardest but I can't help but look forward to the challenge.  If nothing else we'll certainly see who is up to the challenge and who isn't.  Since we'll out-DPS the fight it'll boil down to those personal performance issues of good flame management as well as avoiding the other insta-gib mechanics.

That project is proving to be a bit harder than I had thought

I got bored with my Shaman again. In fact it was the third strike with him so I took the extreme measure by deleting him entirely yesterday along with my Warlock who I was absolutely certain I would never be playing again.  This go around with the Shaman was much like the previous lengths of play and boiled down to the fact I just was not at all enamored with Elemental.  It's fun for a bit but it's just not all that interesting.  Although I do like Enhancement.  Enhancement is what I played until the end of BC but I didn't keep up with all the changes to the tree and the playstyle in WotLK and at the end of the day I simply didn't want to put in the work to go back and totally re-gear him.  Much the same with my Warlock.  I was never very enamored of the Warlock to begin with but at the time I started it I wanted to try another pet class that didn't require me to pay to DPS.  Read that to mean I was replacing my hunter, yet I always disliked the Affliction tree and never quite got the hang of Destruction either.  I liked the Demonology tree but not enough to ever play the Warlock longer than a few days.

Since I had a full slate of characters on the server already deleting those two opened up two valuable slots for me.  I made a baby Mage and Hunter to fill them.  Those were on top of the Priest I made a week ago and have now leveled to 22.  Of all the classes Priest is the only class I'd never leveled before so I was excited to try it out, but my lord is it boring.  Dot and mind-flay, or dot and wand to death depending on mana issues.  Mana isn't really a problem while questing but it sure is in instances where I rarely get a Sprit Tap proc.  I'll end up leveling all three and see which one I ultimately want to play.  Knowing me I'll probably play all three.

I haven't played a Mage since the Karazan days in BC.  I remember leveling my original Mage and really hating the mana inefficiency that forced me to sit and drink after every couple fights.  Those days are largely in the past though, but some of that is probably attributable to the fact he's fully decked out in heirloom gear.  I'll level as Ice as figure out what I want to do when I grow up when I get there.

It's also been about three years since I played a Hunter. My Hunter was actually my first level 60 but a lot has changed since then. I haven't paid all that much attention to Hunters generally and haven't paid any attention to what's in store for the class in Cataclysm but I do know that the resource mechanic is changing to "focus" from "mana" and I'm kind of anxious to do some research to see what the current and future lay of the land is and will be.

I'd forgotten just how easy it was to level a hunter, even without the pet which I don't have yet. I'm only level 9 at the moment but doing quests is like walking through the park and it'll only get easier once I have my pet. The Mage is only slightly more difficult in that I do actually have to sit and drink every few fights, depending on whether I stick with Frostbolts of not. If I start popping off with Arcane Bolts I use more mana and end up having to drink a bit. My Priest is the least fun to me but it's getting a bit better once I figured out I can be a little more offensive with my mana usage if I picked up two of the spell power heirloom trinkets. I don't have to wand so much as my I get mana back from those after every kill and my Spirit Tap always procs. The down side is that on dungeon runs it doesn't and I still have to wand a lot on those. If I can wait it out and get through the lower levels I know things improve markedly. Looks like my Summer will be extremely busy between chasing achievements on my Druid, and leveling these three new characters.

Yes, they heard you

Mike Morhaime stopped by the official forums to beat a retreat from their announcement Tuesday regarding using RealID on the WoW forums.  Instead of real names we'll instead continue posting with your character name, but also with a unique "character code".  Meaning of course, that people will still be able to link "trolls" to "mains" unless you don't post on your main in the first place.

While I'm happy Blizzard saw the error of their ways I'm not sure Blizzard will ever regain the level of trust they had with me up to this point.  I've never previously felt that Blizzard was "committing evil" but now that I thoughts have drifted to that extreme I'm not sure they could ever drift back where they were.  And I doubt I'm the only one left feeling this way either and that bespeaks darker days ahead for a company that heretofore has had a storied history.

RealID - Do you hear them now Blizzard?

Now isn't this interesting?  Of course the blogger is correct, as all he did was use Google, Facebook, and used (it appears) a few publicly available internet databases.  That he searched for information on people who's names we already know is irrelevant to his point that others will do exactly what he did for the people in game they've had issue with at some point.  If you think this doesn't happen then you need to climb back in that hole you've been living in for the past decade.  I have a Facebook page but I have the privacy policies set tightly so that my information is only shared with a small number of friends.  But you know, that was my choice.  And choice is what Blizzard seems to not be getting here.

Except they do get it.  They've said as much.

We have been planning this change for a very long time. During this time, we have thought ahead about the scope and impact of this change and predicted that many people would no longer wish to post in the forums after this change goes live. We are fine with that, because we want to change these forums dramatically in a positive and more constructive direction.

It’s been very obvious over the last few years that the forums are an exceptionally valuable source of information both for players and for us to gather feedback. There are many threads on this forum now, and over the last few years, that people have been constructively discussing many aspects of the game. They’ve received new wisdom and have then been able to go back to the game and enjoy it further with the new knowledge acquired through the forums.
These threads, however, can often be lost amongst a great deal of other threads that are basically filled with trolling, name calling, flaming, off-topic conversations and that’s just a small amount of some of the content that has been found in these forums over the years. We don’t want that anymore, and we believe the Real ID change will bring about a lot of the improvement that we are hoping for.
There’s a lot of scare-mongering going on about the change, but there seems a need to make something very clear. The forums have always been an optional extra — something you can choose to participate in if you wish to. With our Real ID changes for the forums, this is still the case. The only difference will be, if you do choose to participate in the forums, then you will do so by using your real name. But only after you’ve been warned and accepted this in advance.

And

A lot of legitimate and understandable concerns are being raised. It would be hard for myself or any caring individual to not empathise with the fears and concerns people have. But amidst these concerns there is also a bit of something going on that I can’t easily describe with other words, but I’ll try.

Posting on the forums with your real name will be optional — yes, in the sense that the options are simply post and show your real name, or do not post and you keep it confidential. If people are happy to post and do not feel intimidated by this, then great — hopefully they will also post constructively (though it’s fair to say, this isn’t a given). It might be scary to consider posting with your real name, in which case it might be advisable simply not to post in these forums. There’s a whole load of other forums across the internet where you’ll be able to post in a more anonymous way, and maybe you will make a useful and constructive contribution there instead.

If you really do read all posts in this thread and others, like we are doing, then you will see some examples of what I was meaning by “scare-mongering”. There are posts from some people who are either confused by the changes or generally uncertain, and they are getting understandably scared and then posting in a way that scares other people in the process. With such a change as we have outlined, it is completely understandable that people can and do feel this way. Describing the process of scaring others and raising the level of general fear as “scare-mongering” does not in any way diminish people’s validity in doing so, nor does it dismiss the usefulness of anyone expressing themselves in any way, including in a way I might describe as “scare-mongering”; the term simply describes it for what it appears to be.

You see? Anyone with trepidation or outrage over this upcoming policy change is simply fear mongering. While many are indeed completely naive about the information available about them, they are protected by obscurity. In the IT field that's called security by obscurity, which of course is no real security at all. But it works in that no one know to look for you specifically. Run your mouth on the forum, or piss someone off in game -- hey that bastard keeps undercutting my auctions (just go read Gevlon's blog for the hate mail he gets regularly) -- and you might just find out how far some people are willing to take things. They only have your name right? Ever hear of social engineering? Look it up some time. Google is as much your friend as it will be for that special someone looking for you too.

Using social engineering skills to locate you physically is the extreme (I hope). But don't think for a moment that it's the only possible action that can transpire out of all of this. Imagine all of those embarrassing bits of information out there that you'd rather keep separate from your gaming persona. Instead they'll be be posted and brought to the attention of those folks you raid with three times a week. And don't think that THE GUILDS won't be using Google as a further tool to see if you are GUILD material. Hey, the sky's the limits baby.

For a major company Blizzard and Activision sure seems to have completely missed the boat on this one.  And on the heels of very public melt-downs by Facebook over nearly the same issues.  When Blizzard would have desired the coverage about RealID to be positive it's instead virtually unanimously negative.  That sort of thing goes viral very quickly and will only leave a lasting, nasty, black-eye on a company that here-to-fore had a very good reputation.  Of course we know what and who is driving this (cough Bobby Kotick) but it's Blizzard that's going to pay the price.

Blizzard eats even more of that bowl

Could this possibly be correct?  I can't vouch for this obviously, but if true shows exactly what many people have said would be happening.  Blizzard apparently recognizes that their employees lives would or could be subjected to harassment but it's also apparently fine to allow that for the gamers who lavish the company with billions of dollars each year.

Irony, it seems, is not without a sense of humor.  BTW, Scott Jennings had even more to say.

Possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen Blizzard do

No, I do not like the current implementation of RealID.  But instead of taking those privacy concerns I and many others have stated repeatedly, they decided to eat a heaping bowl-full of dumbass.  Coming to the WoW forums near you -- Posting that identifies you by name only!

Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.

In addition, individual topics will be threaded by context, meaning replies to specific posts will be grouped together, making it easier for players to keep track of multiple conversations within a thread. We’re also adding a way for Blizzard posters to “broadcast” important messages forums-wide , to help communicate breaking news to the community in a clear and timely fashion. Beyond that, we’re improving our forum search function to make locating interesting topics easier and help lower the number of redundant threads, and we have more planned as well.

With the launch of the new Battle.net, it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment -- one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID -- including these forum changes -- have been made with this goal in mind.

We’ve given a great deal of consideration to the design of Real ID as a company, as gamers, and as enthusiastic users of the various online-gaming, communication, and social-networking services that have become available in recent years. As these services have become more and more popular, gamers have become part of an increasingly connected and intimate global community – friendships are much more easily forged across long distances, and at conventions like PAX or our own BlizzCon, we’ve seen first-hand how gamers who may have never actually met in person have formed meaningful real-life relationships across borders and oceans. As the way gamers interact with one another continues to evolve, our goal is to ensure Battle.net is equipped to handle the ever-changing social-gaming experience for years to come.

For more info on Real ID, check out our Real ID page and FAQ located at http://www.battle.net/realid/ . We look forward to answering your questions about these upcoming forum changes in the thread below. 

And:

One important point which I don't believe has been relayed yet is that the switch to showing RealID on the forums will only happen with the new forum systems we're launching for StarCraft II shortly before its release, and a new forum system for World of Warcraft launching shortly before the release of Cataclysm.

All posts here on the current World of Warcraft forums, or any of our classic Battle.net forums, will remain as-is. They won't (and can't) automatically switch to showing a real first and last name.

All posts in the future on the new forum systems will be an opt-in choice and ample warning will be given that you're posting with your real first and last name.  

I absolutely will not use RealID as it is currently instantiated.  So I guess that now means I also will not longer be able to post in the WoW forum once that goes live.  Scott Jennings pulls few punches about it himself.

I have a feeling I'm not much longer for healing

I've made various comments in-game in the past that I was anxious about the changes to healing and mana regeneration.  Continued comments like this do not make me any easier.  Healers already have a difficult position and don't even get to participate in the same raid as everyone else.  For a healer their raid is is always the raid frame they are assiduously glued to, while everyone else is staring at the content and the creatures running around through it.  It was the same in Vanilla and BC too, except in Vanilla and to a lesser extent, in BC as well they also had to worry about mana and would often go OOM.  Blizzard wants to bring those days back apparently.

Prior to LK, healers could run out of mana, and for the most part it worked. They didn't just use their efficient heals, because sometimes their group would die if they did. They didn't just use their big heals though, because they'd run out of mana (and then the group would die).

I think of healing like a cross-continental road race. If you go too slow, you'll lose the race, but if you just floor it the whole itme, you'll run out of fuel a lot and waste time stopping to fill it up again. There is a happy medium somewhere in between. However the encounter specifics push you out of that medium, sometimes asking you to choose big numbers over efficiency and sometimes vice-versa.

I know it sounds like we are picking on healers all the time, but once you can run out of mana again, I think everything will just feel better, your choices about what spell to cast next become more compelling, and the healing game overall will be more engaging. 

 When I healed in BC I hated the fact that my HOTs were so underutilized, as they were often quickly over-written by faster direct heals.  I wasted my mana but then the Priests who were busy COH healing would always ask (demand) my Innervate on top of it all.  The situation was only fixed when I would be asked to tank heal where I'd keep HOTs ticking on the tank but would be using Healing Touch most of the time.  In WotLK the situation was much relieved.  While my HOTs are still often over-written the "wasted" mana is much less of a concern to me as I have sufficient mana regen to ignore the situation.  Regardless I still do considerable healing because I can keep Rejuv and Wildgrowth flowing throughout the raid.  In Cataclysm it doesn't sound like I'm going to be able to do that.

I can certainly understand the underlying rationale for wanting to change the dynamic, however I think Blizzard has some gaps to bridge in their rationale and our experience.  First, how does any of this change the current healing dynamic where I see virtually nothing but raid frames?  I'm able to survive because of raid warnings that tell me to get out of goo and my eyes are constantly moving but that is not much fun at all.  I'm not watching the encounter, I'm watching my feet and my raid frames.  And it's very much more stressful than either a DPS or Tanking role -- I've done all three.

If there is going to be ample time in combat for these types of decisions to be made, then would this not also necessarily mean that fights are going to be much longer and become more tedious?  Doesn't sound much fun to me either.  Ask yourself the same questions about PVP and the question just becomes more murky.

All of my questions harken back to what I've said about Blizzard in the past -- that I'm not greatly heartened by the decision making process I've seen Blizzard use over the years.  They've implemented too many things to change them too much later on.  They've introduced, pulled back, reintroduced and made everyone's head spin in the process.  As it is we are to expect almost completely changed game play every 18-24 months and changes that also make such vital roles as healing much more difficult are not welcome in my opinion.

Moonkin PVP movie

I watch videos all the time, but don't often link to them.  Moonfury is just one such of those that I feel compelled to do so though.  Not only does he appear to be a very good PVP'er, and for a Moonkin that is saying quite a lot, but he's also an artful and masterful video editor.  The video is as striking as it is beautiful and his music selection is very complimentary.  Ivan's made one of those videos that you tend to remember, and when we are swimming in a sea of videos that is also saying quite a lot.

Eclipse update from Cataclysm Beta

There's a very interesting thread that was recently highlighted over at MMO-Champion concerning how the new Eclipse mechanism works.  First, understand what the Eclipse problem (and especially) is, then you can look at Blizzard's solution and begin to make some informed opinions about it.  I don't have exact figures but I wouldn't be jesting by any means if I were to say my DPS is boosted by 1500-2000 DPS by Lunar Eclipse.  It's a huge percentage of my overall damage figures, so any movement or wasted portion of Lunar Eclipse severely gimps me.  Making the matter worse is that my Eclipse effects are already largely at the mercy of  RNG.  Despite that I've come to like the randomness of Eclipse.  Ignoring the mana efficiency issue that was a hallmark for Balance in BC, the strict spell rotation made it somewhat boring to play.  While I know what my immediate opening is in any fight in WotLK, a quick Lunar Eclipse immediately changes things up for me.  The randomness brings just the right hint of reactionism to the mix.  Yet with that does come the perplexing problem of how to retain the oomph of the Eclipse while forcing movement at the same time.

Blizzard indicated they understood the problem and had a plan to fix it.  But after reading how that plan is currently implemented I'm not certain they have.  In fact I think they've taken a bit of a step back toward BC.  Currently each spell gives a certain amount of Eclipse power and will move a scale from the Lunar to Solar end and vice versa.  I don't like the fact that our casting rotation seems to be becoming formulaic again.  And the 15 second Eclipse window also doesn't seem to solve the problem of movement.  It's still a massive considering no other caster class receives such a big portion of their DPS from a proc mechanic.  Instead of the 15 second window I think I'd rather like to see a "pool" of Eclipse power become active, from which either Starfire or Wrath will pull from.  Each cast would draw a "random" percentage with a specified range of the power, and after the power is depleted you'd begin to work up to the opposite side of the Eclipse scale.  Having a pool available would retain the Eclipse effect, despite movement, until a range of casts had been made.  And just to ensure an advantage wasn't retained over others, you could clear the effect upon end of combat.

Unfortunately Blizzard doesn't seem to be thinking along this line at all:

Here are a few clarifications on Eclipse and Balance intent is general. As you probably guessed, part of what you're seeing is a work in progress.

On Eclipse -- Currently Eclipse has a 30 sec cooldown on its proc, so it may be beneficial sometimes to say proc Lunar, go almost halfway to Solar but then just go back and proc Lunar again depending on the situation. In an upcoming build you cannot proc Lunar unless you proc Solar, and visa versa.

Eclipse’s “predictability” -- A new talent is being added that if taken will make lunar/solar energy gain a little more random, so as to make Eclipse less predictable. 

You can currently re-proc a specific Eclipse effect but they intend to fix that; a fix that will force you to proc the other Eclipse effect before being able to re-proc the Eclipse effect that just did.  And they intend to introduce some measure of "randomness" to the equation again by making the amount of power you receive from each cast somewhat random.  But that's only window dressing.  Instead of 5 Starfalls, 10 Wraths, 10 Starfalls, etc, it'll be something like 4-7 Starfalls, 8-14 Wraths, etc.

Graylo over at Gray Matter has even more to say on the matter.

Troll and Worgan Druid forms

I wondered when we'd see these.  Started seeing them discussed on the forum yesterday but Blizzard was all over those threads, deleting any links to them for some reason.  No, these are not the final forms (we believe), but I still get annoyed when Blizzard acts like a total tool.  People will talk about what they want to talk about Blizzard.

Thanks to Big Bear Butt I was able to see these.  And all I can say is uggh.  The Worgan models aren't too bad, but the Troll versions are simply horrible.

Cataclysm alpha is ended and the closed Beta has begun

That Alpha really didn't last very long but Blizzard announced yesterday that the closed Beta has officially begun.  And unlike in previous years, they immediately dropped the NDA.  Which means we'll begin to get a flood of information and it won't be taken down at the insistence of Blizzard lawyers -- Cough MMO-Champion.  According to various reports beta invites have begun to trickle out.  I doubt I'll get one, but I'm honestly not all that excited about getting one this go around in the first place.  It's enough for me to be able to read about the changes and report on what I feel needs to be discussed.  Other than that I'm only concerned about the release date, which still hasn't officially been released, but which I'm anticipating to be in November or December.

Switching gears

It was a very difficult weekend.  After a long talk with one of the officers and after talking to the GM on Monday I decided to leave my Paladin in the guild, but step back from raiding on him and instead focus on my Druid.  I had already made plans to refocus on my Druid and make him my main again in Cataclysm, but I've accelerated that plan now.  I've been looking at various guilds but decided to take my friend up on his offer from a few weeks ago.  After I joined my new guild I had a bit of a long talk with my friend about what took me so long.  He hadn't been in the previous guild all that often whereas I'd been in it for a year and a half, so he perhaps didn't have the personal connections to the guild and the people in it like I did.  But the conversation also focused on the difference in motivation.  A lot of people are singularly focused on raiding, and those folks are the ones I consider to be truly elitist.  In other words, motivations like friend ship and the pleasure of just doing things with folks you hang out with aren't the driving factors for them.  They want progression above everything else and when that is stymied they will typically hop to another guild that can provide it for them.  For them all other motivations are either non-existent or so far removed from the top of the priority list that they might as well be.

While I want progression as well, it isn't the sole motivating force for me.  I enjoy running through older content and completing achievements as much as I do killing a progression boss.  In fact I'm just as happy running through a series of 5-man dungeons with friends as I am raiding.  That's what kept me in my old guild so long and why it was a very hard decision for me to "move on".