I’ve mentioned many times here on the blog that I’m somewhat of an alt-a-holic, and that I have generally been playing three main toons in WoW, with a few others for short periods here and there. Generally though, I spend the lion’s share of my time on my Death Knight, my Druid, and my Paladin. I raid on my Death Knight as a member of the core team, and spend the rest of my time on my other two toons for everything else. In fact I had planned on switching to my Druid as my raid toon and retiring my Death Knight but I saw very quickly that it was going to be excruciatingly difficult to catch up gear wise the way our loot system works. It would actually be easier for me to replace my Death Knight with my Paladin, and raid as Ret/Holy than to gear up my Druid with all the people currently in the raid that wear leather or want agility stacked weapons. In any event I’ve been pounding away for the past couple weeks trying to catch my Paladin up to my Druid and my Death Knight, and I’m having a blast doing it. Surprisingly so since I had thought I was completely burned out on achievements. Seems along with my strong push to gear up my Paladin I’ve come into something of a achievement revitalization.
I used to main tank on my Druid in BC up through Tempest Keep, and then healed as Resto through Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal. While I think I still do prefer tanking on my Druid, I greatly prefer Paladin healing for PVE content. I knew Paladins were terrific healers but I never realized just how nice they truly were until recently. My desire to start healing again was the reason that I rolled and leveled a Paladin in the first place. A friend recommended that I try out Paladin healing instead of continuing to heal on my Druid, and now that I’ve been doing it for some time I simply can not thank him enough for turning me onto this.
What is it that makes Paladin healing so enjoyable? Two things in my opinion. The extreme mana efficiency, with three ways of regenerating mana; and Beacon of light. Even after all the nerfs to Paladin mana efficiency that have taken place in WotLK, Paladins are still eminently mana efficient. I’m by no means an expert in the area (yet) but I have healed as Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, and Holy Paladin and I have far fewer mana issues as a Paladin than I ever did with either of the other two. Gear is obviously part of that, but of the three types of healers, Druid mechanics emphasize periodic mana regeneration via innervate which has a three minute cool down. And requires you to use that Innervate at precise times in order to maintain a full mana bar.
Resto Shamans are closer to the continuous mana regeneration style of the Paladin through use of their mana totems but I don’t think it can keep pace with a Paladin continuously judging and using Divine Plea. My own spec and glyphs emphasize Flash of Light spamming, so I really only begin to see any whittling down of my mana pool if I start to use Holy Light for the big heals. But I’ve yet to run into any trouble where I could not very easily regenerate my mana from judging and divine plea. Even after death and a battle rez, where I come out with little mana I can very quickly get back to healing and regenerating mana without the need for an innervate. It’s simply amazing and I find I enjoy it very much.
Then we have Beacon of Light. Lets face it, Paladin healers were not designed to be AOE healers. However Beacon of Light goes a good ways toward making Paladin healers viable as raid healers. Placing your Beacon on the MT and healing the OT or raid members as they take splash damage effectively means double healing as any healing you do to anyone also heals the person you put the Beacon on. A single Paladin can easily heal two tanks. Two Paladin healers on a typical two tank boss fight are pretty much everything you need. One spamming FoL and one spamming HL. Even healing an OT with my beacon on the MT, I’m able to assist with raid healing most of the time.
In as much as I truly enjoy Pally healing, I am even more taken with Retribution. I can remember thinking how amazing it was to be able to take on elites with impunity as I was leveling. Very very few elites gave me any problems what so ever, and it was something that Ret had in common with my DK as I leveled him in Blood spec. Leveling and playing a Ret Pally is the closest thing to “god like” I think you can have in WoW. There simply isn’t anything that you really have to sweat through, and out side of a few specific instances, you can easily solo anything and everything you come up against. The Ret Pally experience is remarkably like what I have experienced with my DK. Obviously mechanics and abilities are different, so it boils down to emphasis. DKs heal while doing damage, and depending on spec have a couple oh shit buttons to push to help with their self healing. Yet I prefer direct healing, which of course explains my love of and penchant for playing hybrid classes. Mileage may vary, but I definitely prefer being able to directly heal. And the Pallys Lay on Hands ability, bubble, cleanse, and insta-heals off Art of War procs only add value to the mix. To be quite honest the only ability from my DK that I miss when I’m playing on my Pally is Path of Frost. I can not tell you how handy PoF is, and if I could just bring one ability over from my DK to my Pally it would be that. I’d never play my DK again.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
NY Times add's it's .02
Thanks to wowinsider.com I saw that the NY Times added their .02 cents on the WoW issue being played out publicly between GAAP and the Ministry of Culture in China.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
L O L
OMG I can't stop laughing. Leave it to Syncaine when you want a real good belly rumbler! Thanks man!
In other news Syncaine goes completely insane. Film at 11:00.
In other news Syncaine goes completely insane. Film at 11:00.
MMO’s are serious business
No, really, they are. And in China there are currently two government bureaucracies that are fighting a very public turf war right now over the fate of WoW there. See this, this, this, this, this, and this about it. Fortunately the war hasn’t progressed past the initial very public declaration from GAPP, so WoW is still up and running there. It’ll be interesting to watch this unfold further, though I’d expect things to meld back into the background. After all, this is something of an embarrassment for the Chinese government, and we know how Communist governments typically take to embarrassment.
And all this over the very recent previous WoW troubles there.
And all this over the very recent previous WoW troubles there.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Psychology of the gamer mind and Syncaine
I've spoken recently about my restlessness and my vacillations in which MMOs I play. I still play WoW, but in the Spring I played EVE seriously for about two months, and again stopped by to teach a friend a thing or two and to continue training. In the Fall I gave WAR another go, but found I liked it no better than I did at its initial release, and I tried out AION which was quite visually appealing, but had little other hold on me. Particularly as I found out more and more about the game. I'm extremely happy that I wasted as little time on it as I did now, because by many accounts things are beginning to look grim for the game and I would have hated to have invested a lot of time and effort into character development only to see it virtually wasted as the game all but died. And finally, lately I have been following two up and coming games--Star Trek Online, and The Old Republic. Both of which have just entered Beta, or in the case of the Old Republic, may be conducting limited closed testing.
In years past I was not even tempted to play other games. Despite being a rabid Tolkien fan there was nothing in LotRO that tempted me from WoW. And despite growing up on Conan; having read every Conan book ever written, and the fact that Conan the Barbarian was the first movie I ever purchased and owned, AOC did not tempt me away from WoW either. Neither of which did I track during their development or beta phases either. So why have I been so restless this year when in years past I have not? Simple, and it has lessons that Syncaine needs to learn.
When you listen to people talk about Politics, or games as an example, they very often talk about “this”, or “that” as if it was a black and white example. Take the casual vs. hardcore debate for instance. What is casual? What is hardcore? Some people believe that the difference between hardcore and casual is in the number of hours they play, yet I can tell you of numerous examples of people that play 30+ hours per week and would by no means ever be considered a hardcore player. Other people believe that the difference relates to the tenacity by which the player pursues a goal, or by a level of ruthlessness. Yet I can again tell you of numerous players that I know who are quite laid back, but whom I would consider to be very hardcore. Instead I think it better if people would understand that nothing in this world is truly black and white. Often distinctions are representative from points of view, making things truly grey. Things are more a spectrum than linear comparisons.
Any discussion such as this would not be complete without also dipping into the Bartle test of Gamer Psychology. There is debate regarding how accurate Bartle’s test truly is, but I think it accurate enough as long as one thing is understood. The test predicts the gamers’ psychology as a point in time. Others would say that the test accounts for that, offering a glimpse at the predilection of the individual taking it, but I believe people’s predilections change over time, and also believe that no test can accurately account for people’s conscious desires over their subconscious desires. In other words, someone saying they are “hardcore” does not make one so. Take me for example. For hours, or days, or even weeks I may be keenly interested in something specific, and I will most likely doggedly pursue it. Achievements for example, either in general or specifically. Or I might be interested in raising a particular reputation, or perhaps several. Either for the achievement in and of itself, or for some reward. That might seem on the face of it to fit into the Bartle Psychology Achiever’s category as my major trait. But I invariably change and will forgo that entire line of game play and will instead pursue something in the Killer category. Depending on how I answer questions and during which period I answer them I can get different predictions of my predilections. I am but an example of what I believe is truly in the heart of most people.
People are invariably driven by a need for challenge and that challenge differs from person to person. The “social” player challenges him or herself to create networks of friends, though that hardly looks like a challenge at all to someone that is more driven to a directly confrontational play style that a “killer” would represent. Yet it’s a distinction that is very real. I have been restless this year because the challenge I most often seek is lacking. I’m not driven to the utmost of lengths to complete every achievement, but I do like to achieve goals. I like to raid, though I lose little sleep if I am not able to complete all hard mode encounters in a raid dungeon. Despite my lack of getting into hard modes because of my guild, I personally find the raid encounters in WotLK to be very easy comparatably to what we’ve seen previously. It’s a mantra that a lot of “hardcore” raiders have put forth over the year. It lead to the resurgence of my alt-a-holism, but the restlessness has only increased as I got more and more achievements completed under my alts. I was dissatisfied with some of my alts and moved onto a next one, until finally I think I have a mix of characters that I am fairly happy with – that being my DK, my Druid, and my Paladin. At the moment I have things I want to accomplish on these toons, but they’re achievements that I would term as the low, or lower hanging fruit. Once I get all or most of those done I’m aware I’m likely to start feeling restless again. Not because I do not like the characters, but rather because of other content in the game that I can participate in isn’t challenging enough for me.
Games like WoW that are termed as “theme-parks” are popular in the market place, but over the long term I think they individually have to find a level of difficulty that caters to their players. Remember when you used to play regular PC games back in the day? And you used to use cheat codes to breeze through content? Same concept here. I would bang my head against some encounter, then eventually grow tired of it and use a cheat code to breeze through. That was the beginning of the end right there because things became simply too easy. Despite my own lack of discipline, the game received the “punishment” by my abandonment of it. WoW, and other theme-parks could suffer the same fate if they go too far along the spectrum that leads to content becoming too easy. On the other hand people like Syncaine are of the mind that we need to be on the other side of the spectrum where MMOs are brutally impartial. He desires an MMO where he can impose his sense of fun onto you, regardless of your own desires. But that type of game often has mechanics that are far removed from what I think most people find acceptable these days. If it were not the case, would not the market had answered? Would not the market have decided that Darkfall is “better” than Wow? The people are speaking, though Syncaine does not want to listen.
In years past I was not even tempted to play other games. Despite being a rabid Tolkien fan there was nothing in LotRO that tempted me from WoW. And despite growing up on Conan; having read every Conan book ever written, and the fact that Conan the Barbarian was the first movie I ever purchased and owned, AOC did not tempt me away from WoW either. Neither of which did I track during their development or beta phases either. So why have I been so restless this year when in years past I have not? Simple, and it has lessons that Syncaine needs to learn.
When you listen to people talk about Politics, or games as an example, they very often talk about “this”, or “that” as if it was a black and white example. Take the casual vs. hardcore debate for instance. What is casual? What is hardcore? Some people believe that the difference between hardcore and casual is in the number of hours they play, yet I can tell you of numerous examples of people that play 30+ hours per week and would by no means ever be considered a hardcore player. Other people believe that the difference relates to the tenacity by which the player pursues a goal, or by a level of ruthlessness. Yet I can again tell you of numerous players that I know who are quite laid back, but whom I would consider to be very hardcore. Instead I think it better if people would understand that nothing in this world is truly black and white. Often distinctions are representative from points of view, making things truly grey. Things are more a spectrum than linear comparisons.
Any discussion such as this would not be complete without also dipping into the Bartle test of Gamer Psychology. There is debate regarding how accurate Bartle’s test truly is, but I think it accurate enough as long as one thing is understood. The test predicts the gamers’ psychology as a point in time. Others would say that the test accounts for that, offering a glimpse at the predilection of the individual taking it, but I believe people’s predilections change over time, and also believe that no test can accurately account for people’s conscious desires over their subconscious desires. In other words, someone saying they are “hardcore” does not make one so. Take me for example. For hours, or days, or even weeks I may be keenly interested in something specific, and I will most likely doggedly pursue it. Achievements for example, either in general or specifically. Or I might be interested in raising a particular reputation, or perhaps several. Either for the achievement in and of itself, or for some reward. That might seem on the face of it to fit into the Bartle Psychology Achiever’s category as my major trait. But I invariably change and will forgo that entire line of game play and will instead pursue something in the Killer category. Depending on how I answer questions and during which period I answer them I can get different predictions of my predilections. I am but an example of what I believe is truly in the heart of most people.
People are invariably driven by a need for challenge and that challenge differs from person to person. The “social” player challenges him or herself to create networks of friends, though that hardly looks like a challenge at all to someone that is more driven to a directly confrontational play style that a “killer” would represent. Yet it’s a distinction that is very real. I have been restless this year because the challenge I most often seek is lacking. I’m not driven to the utmost of lengths to complete every achievement, but I do like to achieve goals. I like to raid, though I lose little sleep if I am not able to complete all hard mode encounters in a raid dungeon. Despite my lack of getting into hard modes because of my guild, I personally find the raid encounters in WotLK to be very easy comparatably to what we’ve seen previously. It’s a mantra that a lot of “hardcore” raiders have put forth over the year. It lead to the resurgence of my alt-a-holism, but the restlessness has only increased as I got more and more achievements completed under my alts. I was dissatisfied with some of my alts and moved onto a next one, until finally I think I have a mix of characters that I am fairly happy with – that being my DK, my Druid, and my Paladin. At the moment I have things I want to accomplish on these toons, but they’re achievements that I would term as the low, or lower hanging fruit. Once I get all or most of those done I’m aware I’m likely to start feeling restless again. Not because I do not like the characters, but rather because of other content in the game that I can participate in isn’t challenging enough for me.
Games like WoW that are termed as “theme-parks” are popular in the market place, but over the long term I think they individually have to find a level of difficulty that caters to their players. Remember when you used to play regular PC games back in the day? And you used to use cheat codes to breeze through content? Same concept here. I would bang my head against some encounter, then eventually grow tired of it and use a cheat code to breeze through. That was the beginning of the end right there because things became simply too easy. Despite my own lack of discipline, the game received the “punishment” by my abandonment of it. WoW, and other theme-parks could suffer the same fate if they go too far along the spectrum that leads to content becoming too easy. On the other hand people like Syncaine are of the mind that we need to be on the other side of the spectrum where MMOs are brutally impartial. He desires an MMO where he can impose his sense of fun onto you, regardless of your own desires. But that type of game often has mechanics that are far removed from what I think most people find acceptable these days. If it were not the case, would not the market had answered? Would not the market have decided that Darkfall is “better” than Wow? The people are speaking, though Syncaine does not want to listen.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Sorry
I call B.S. Just ask my wife if she thinks that randomness was "fine". I tried for two previous years and didn't get the squashling. Got it on a character I wasn't even trying to get it on last year, then all of a sudden got it on two different characters I was trying to get it on this year. My son got it three times on the same character.
It is completely indefensible when we're discussing content that takes a full year to compelete, if you don't run into problems caused by this "fine" RNG.
It is completely indefensible when we're discussing content that takes a full year to compelete, if you don't run into problems caused by this "fine" RNG.
Monday, November 2, 2009
When will people learn?
Seriously. If there is just one aspect of our lives that you would truly think people would learn from, it would be the MMO market. Considering how much time we all spend within it. Yet, every new MMO that comes down the pike is trumpeted to the tunes of the "WoW-killer" or the "best MMO evah!", or the like. Every. One. I would like to point the community to the dictionary and ask that you all look up the word "lemming". Then I would like to direct your attention to the axiom that a "fool and their money are soon parted".
Aion is apparently beginning to feel what other games have experienced in the recent past, if you believe what players are saying. Games such as WAR, LotRO, AOC, and Aion were marketed at a fanatical pace, and game sites and blogs galore spoke glowingly about each of them . Seldom was heard a disparaging word about any of these games in the months leading up to their release, and the people who frequent those game sites and blogs ate up the praise like it was mana from heaven.
Though the community at large bears a very healthy helping of responsibility for the mess that is now the MMO market, I think another healthy helping belongs to sites like Massively, MMORPG, Ten Ton Hammer, Eurogamer, and others. These sites quite often act as mouth pieces for the developers and hardly ever critique or offer critical analysis of a game during development or beta. True, many things often change during development, but the point is the community at large do not think critically and if you are going to take on the roll of a journalist, then you must also take on the responsibility of one as well. You have a responsibility to point out the downside while also pointing out the upside or else, in my view, you lose a level of credibility.
And that is something I strive very hard to maintain here at Iggeps Realm. Despite my love for the Star Wars franchise, I have been quite vocal about my concerns with the Old Republic. Likewise with Star Trek Online. And anyone can see my often scathing criticism of Blizzard for it's handling of various issues with WoW. I may not be as large, or command a following of loyal readers like many other blogs out there, but I can assure you that no level of notoriety will ever change my core beliefs. I will not sell glowing coverage of any game for a free beta pass or comp subscription.
Aion is apparently beginning to feel what other games have experienced in the recent past, if you believe what players are saying. Games such as WAR, LotRO, AOC, and Aion were marketed at a fanatical pace, and game sites and blogs galore spoke glowingly about each of them . Seldom was heard a disparaging word about any of these games in the months leading up to their release, and the people who frequent those game sites and blogs ate up the praise like it was mana from heaven.
Though the community at large bears a very healthy helping of responsibility for the mess that is now the MMO market, I think another healthy helping belongs to sites like Massively, MMORPG, Ten Ton Hammer, Eurogamer, and others. These sites quite often act as mouth pieces for the developers and hardly ever critique or offer critical analysis of a game during development or beta. True, many things often change during development, but the point is the community at large do not think critically and if you are going to take on the roll of a journalist, then you must also take on the responsibility of one as well. You have a responsibility to point out the downside while also pointing out the upside or else, in my view, you lose a level of credibility.
And that is something I strive very hard to maintain here at Iggeps Realm. Despite my love for the Star Wars franchise, I have been quite vocal about my concerns with the Old Republic. Likewise with Star Trek Online. And anyone can see my often scathing criticism of Blizzard for it's handling of various issues with WoW. I may not be as large, or command a following of loyal readers like many other blogs out there, but I can assure you that no level of notoriety will ever change my core beliefs. I will not sell glowing coverage of any game for a free beta pass or comp subscription.
Syncaine has one interpretation
I have another. He's said it before, though I think the situation is greatly more complicated than I've seen him allude to, and that is the whole debate surrounding hardcore vs. casual. Or more apropos, "sand-box" vs. "theme-park". The gaming market is but a microcosm of larger society, though in this case it's complicated by the international nature of it. Peoples in geographic regions so far apart often have very different views on things, because apparently grindy MMO's are all the rage in Asia. Not so here in the U.S. where we prefer a little more refinement from our entertainment.
And this portion of the international market has seemingly spoken as to the casual vs. hardcore debate. Games that Syncaine favor -- Darkfall for one, do not have the mass appeal that he would like them to have, and he's blaming all the wrong things for that. It's not that people run off to test out Aion that cause the problems in his type of games, rather it's the problems in his type of games that cause people to run off to test other games. Factor in that any number of people who say they are hard core players, aren't really hard core. Either they are fooling themselves, or fooling someone else. At least part of the time. Games that offer sand-box elements, but other more casual elements tend to do reasonably well in the U.S., though what that level is no one can really say. It's all hearsay and innuendo after all. Especially because no two developers definitions on what an account is, seem to match.
The raw hard reality of sand-box MMOs is that they strictly rely on a certain population level because its the population that creates the vast majority of the entertainment. Whereas in theme-park MMOs the majority of entertainment is provided, and usually only supplemented by sand-box elements. If the population falls below a level where you will be able to sustain a reasonable level of activity in the game, then boredom quickly sets in and people look elsewhere for entertainment. The less hardcore leave quickly, and the more hardcore tend to stick around for longer. Syncaine is in the habit of blaming other games, and WoW specifically, for the ills that befall other MMOs. Like WAR, and Darkfall.
That simply isn't the case. The market always speaks, though not in a single voice, and not all at once. And the market is never wrong.
And this portion of the international market has seemingly spoken as to the casual vs. hardcore debate. Games that Syncaine favor -- Darkfall for one, do not have the mass appeal that he would like them to have, and he's blaming all the wrong things for that. It's not that people run off to test out Aion that cause the problems in his type of games, rather it's the problems in his type of games that cause people to run off to test other games. Factor in that any number of people who say they are hard core players, aren't really hard core. Either they are fooling themselves, or fooling someone else. At least part of the time. Games that offer sand-box elements, but other more casual elements tend to do reasonably well in the U.S., though what that level is no one can really say. It's all hearsay and innuendo after all. Especially because no two developers definitions on what an account is, seem to match.
The raw hard reality of sand-box MMOs is that they strictly rely on a certain population level because its the population that creates the vast majority of the entertainment. Whereas in theme-park MMOs the majority of entertainment is provided, and usually only supplemented by sand-box elements. If the population falls below a level where you will be able to sustain a reasonable level of activity in the game, then boredom quickly sets in and people look elsewhere for entertainment. The less hardcore leave quickly, and the more hardcore tend to stick around for longer. Syncaine is in the habit of blaming other games, and WoW specifically, for the ills that befall other MMOs. Like WAR, and Darkfall.
That simply isn't the case. The market always speaks, though not in a single voice, and not all at once. And the market is never wrong.
Certainly not her
The RNG gods might have smiled upon me this year, but they certainly didn't for my wife who tried in vain to loot the Sinister Squashling on her main toon throughout the two week Hallow's End world event. Which of course means she now has to wait an entire additional year, and hope she loots the squashling next year (she didn't get it last Octobr either) in order to complete her "What a long strange trip its been" meta achievement for her purple Proto-Drake mount. We were curious, and she put in a ticket, to find out just how many attempts she made to trick-or-treat, and how many times she actually killed the Horseman. It'll be interesting to see if, or when, Blizzard responds to that because it is simply ridiculous to put that kind of RNG into a process that takes a full year to complete.
And if she doesn't loot it again next year?
And if she doesn't loot it again next year?
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