As some of you may know, Blizzard recently released Patch 2.3 . Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, this major patch presents several major tweaks to the game. While the introduction of guild banks (hooray, more storage space) the release of the new 10-man dungeon, Zul'Aman (hooray, new content), and addition of damage modifiers to +healing gear (hooray, more freedom for healers), are definitely worth writing home about, I'm personally excited about the easier leveling curve from levels 20-60.
In theory, this will allow players to level through old content more quickly, but in practice, this change primarily benefits alts* and casual players. Some hardcore players have criticized Blizzard for making the game too easy as a result, noting that the game's leveling curve was already easier than other games (FFXI and Everquest comes to mind), and that making it easier to level just caters to the lowest common denominator. Most players, however, are in favor of the change, particularly older players who wish to play a new toon, but cringe at the thought of the mindless effort needed to catch up to their level 70 peers. Not only that, but now players can advance further in new classes to get a feel for the play-style of the class, at least, even if they never level all the way to 70. At the very least, the leveling change offers a change of pace for players who are getting bored.
As for me? I've now had an excuse to try out a shaman and a paladin, but I think I still like my druid more. For now.
*A toon that is not your most-played. You can have 9 different toons per server, and can play on as many servers as you want.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
A Trip to the Tower
Yesterday was my first time raiding in Karazhan*. The run itself was surprisingly smooth, and we even managed to down Curator on the first try before we stopped. It was especially nice to socialize and joke around while working toward the same goal, and even though I didn't leave with anything except a hefty repair bill**, I had more fun than I probably should have had.
A lot of people frown down upon raiding, though -- both players and non-players alike. One of the biggest arguments against raids is that they are incredibly time-consuming. My 10-man group, for example, was there for a little over six hours, but since this is a casual raid, we meet only once a week. The hardcore raiding guilds meet several days a week, usually for four to five hours at a time, and require 25 dedicated players on at once for the most difficult dungeons. This might not sound like too much, especially when compared to the old 40-man dungeons, but as Tobold notes on his blog, the 25-man dungeons have all of the complications of a 40-man dungeon, but with a reduced margin of error because every player now carries more of the weight. Furthermore, the current raids are on a hidden timer; if you don't clear the mobs up to the boss and defeat the boss before the mobs respawn, your raid will likely die, and you have to clear the mobs again before you make another attempt on the boss. If you do manage to kill the boss in time, though, everything that was dead remains dead, and you can continue.
As you can probably tell by now, raiding is a rather intense (and intensive) pastime.
Some people will call this activity a waste of energy, better spent elsewhere on more productive tasks. There are a few reasons why players consistently flock to raiding, though, beyond the token desire for fun and escapism. I've already mentioned the socializing aspect earlier as a pro for raiding. Two other positive aspects that are sometimes overlooked are teamwork and strategizing. These days, we*** are given few opportunities to indulge in groupwork beyond a shallow level for schoolwork and projects; no one actually wants to be working on these things, so groups often have a mixture of the lazy, the reluctant, and the driven. The common goal in these kinds of groups is just to do a good enough job to get a desired grade, and maybe some kudos on the side, with (at least for some) the least amount of work. As a result, the whole process is awkward at best, and more often than not teaches wariness when approaching groups rather than the spirit of cooperation that teachers hope to inspire. Raiders, however, choose to partake in this activity freely, often investing countless hours and considerable effort to achieve their goals. While these goals may be personally motivated (to get gear, for example), raiders must assume a position of responsibility, learn to work with others, synchronize their efforts, and know each encounter and their roles within the encounter. Yet, these players draw pride and satisfaction when they down a boss because of their combined efforts, often cheering over chat about it. Even if they have never met each other before, they all share this sense of accomplishment -- as great as winning a sports game or another similarly great task. In this sense, raiding can be a beneficial activity, building up valuable experience in teamwork that might otherwise be absent.
In fact, raiding is far from a mindless activity. The strategizing needed to figure out how to tackle a boss, how to coordinate others, and how to adapt quickly to situations, also provides valuable lessons in creativity and problem-solving. I'll draw an example from Karazhan to demonstrate this (raid terms explained below****). The second boss, Moroes, comes with four other mobs, randomly selected from a list of six mobs. Beforehand, the raid works out which order the mobs and Moroes will be tackled, including where the main fight will take place, and where and how the other mobs will be kept out of the way until the group can tackle them. Moroes himself requires two tanks, since he can Blind one tank and then switch to the next player on his aggro list; if this is anyone else except a tank, they will die (from experience). If there is a wipe, the players will resurrect and discuss a new plan and go over mistakes from the last fight. Moreover, during the fight (and many fights in general), something will probably mess up, since players are multitasking. Players must quickly learn to assess a situation and figure out the best way to adjust to it, while still keeping up with their duties. While, of course, some of the players' reactions do become automatic over time, they generally can enter new dungeons and adjust more quickly to the encounters because of their previous experiences. Thus, raiders gain several useful tools from this 'time-consuming' activity, such as faster decision-making, multi-tasking, flexibility, and even creativity -- all from a video game. They can even take these experiences with them when encountering problems elsewhere.
I'm not saying that there aren't problems with raiding, or with the kind of raiding found in WoW. They exist, and there are several of them inherent in something like raiding, particularly at the hardcore level, that should not be discounted. Likewise, I also don't mean that these learning experiences are limited to raiding -- player versus player (PvP) is another good example of this. However, in-game and out, there is a stigma against raiders amongst certain groups, who will accuse raiders of having skewed priorities, being addicted because of the time they spend playing (see Rob Cover's article, "Gaming (Ad)diction: Discourse, Identity, Time and Play in the Production of the Gamer Addiction Myth", for a more in-depth look at addiction in gaming) and even of having no social life. I would like to offer to the last sentiment that, perhaps, the definition of "social" ought to be redefined then, especially if interacting with nine, or even thirty-nine, other players isn't quite considered "social".
*hops off the soapbox*
In other news, patch 2.3 came out last Tuesday. I'll write more on that in the next post. (I haven't tried everything yet!)
*A 10-man dungeon released with the Burning Crusade expansion; currently, it s the first (and easiest) raid dungeon that aspiring raiders must enter to progress through endgame content.
**You don't lose experience when you die, as is traditional in MMOs, but your armor pieces and weapons take a hit in durability. Once this number has been reduced to 0, you no longer gain the effects and bonuses from the piece until you go to a smith to repair the damage -- for a price.
***And by this, I mean young people, particularly students, but that makes me sound old and possiblymore pretentious. Hah.
****For ease's sake, a glossary of common raid terms:
Aggro: You can gain the aggro of a mob by aggravating them. If you are at the top of that mob's aggro chart (unseen without addons), the mob will turn to attack you. The mechanics are a little more complex than this, but that's the gist of it.
DPS: Short for Damage Per Second ("How much DPS do you do?"), but it can be used to refer to damage-dealing ("This is my DPS weapon"), or to damage-dealers ("Looking for DPS for a raid.'). Oddly enough, there's rarely any confusion amongst players regarding the term. In this case, it means damage-dealers.
Healer: Players who can heal other players. I play one of these.
Pulling: The act of starting a fight by 'pulling' a mob or group of mobs toward the party, usually with a ranged attack.
Tank: Players who are responsible for keeping the mob/boss's attention while the DPS kills them. They need to be able to generate aggro quickly and be able to take a lot of damage, though healers are often focused on them anyway because of how much damage they take.
Wipe: The entire group dies, often when a fight goes awry.
A lot of people frown down upon raiding, though -- both players and non-players alike. One of the biggest arguments against raids is that they are incredibly time-consuming. My 10-man group, for example, was there for a little over six hours, but since this is a casual raid, we meet only once a week. The hardcore raiding guilds meet several days a week, usually for four to five hours at a time, and require 25 dedicated players on at once for the most difficult dungeons. This might not sound like too much, especially when compared to the old 40-man dungeons, but as Tobold notes on his blog, the 25-man dungeons have all of the complications of a 40-man dungeon, but with a reduced margin of error because every player now carries more of the weight. Furthermore, the current raids are on a hidden timer; if you don't clear the mobs up to the boss and defeat the boss before the mobs respawn, your raid will likely die, and you have to clear the mobs again before you make another attempt on the boss. If you do manage to kill the boss in time, though, everything that was dead remains dead, and you can continue.
As you can probably tell by now, raiding is a rather intense (and intensive) pastime.
Some people will call this activity a waste of energy, better spent elsewhere on more productive tasks. There are a few reasons why players consistently flock to raiding, though, beyond the token desire for fun and escapism. I've already mentioned the socializing aspect earlier as a pro for raiding. Two other positive aspects that are sometimes overlooked are teamwork and strategizing. These days, we*** are given few opportunities to indulge in groupwork beyond a shallow level for schoolwork and projects; no one actually wants to be working on these things, so groups often have a mixture of the lazy, the reluctant, and the driven. The common goal in these kinds of groups is just to do a good enough job to get a desired grade, and maybe some kudos on the side, with (at least for some) the least amount of work. As a result, the whole process is awkward at best, and more often than not teaches wariness when approaching groups rather than the spirit of cooperation that teachers hope to inspire. Raiders, however, choose to partake in this activity freely, often investing countless hours and considerable effort to achieve their goals. While these goals may be personally motivated (to get gear, for example), raiders must assume a position of responsibility, learn to work with others, synchronize their efforts, and know each encounter and their roles within the encounter. Yet, these players draw pride and satisfaction when they down a boss because of their combined efforts, often cheering over chat about it. Even if they have never met each other before, they all share this sense of accomplishment -- as great as winning a sports game or another similarly great task. In this sense, raiding can be a beneficial activity, building up valuable experience in teamwork that might otherwise be absent.
In fact, raiding is far from a mindless activity. The strategizing needed to figure out how to tackle a boss, how to coordinate others, and how to adapt quickly to situations, also provides valuable lessons in creativity and problem-solving. I'll draw an example from Karazhan to demonstrate this (raid terms explained below****). The second boss, Moroes, comes with four other mobs, randomly selected from a list of six mobs. Beforehand, the raid works out which order the mobs and Moroes will be tackled, including where the main fight will take place, and where and how the other mobs will be kept out of the way until the group can tackle them. Moroes himself requires two tanks, since he can Blind one tank and then switch to the next player on his aggro list; if this is anyone else except a tank, they will die (from experience). If there is a wipe, the players will resurrect and discuss a new plan and go over mistakes from the last fight. Moreover, during the fight (and many fights in general), something will probably mess up, since players are multitasking. Players must quickly learn to assess a situation and figure out the best way to adjust to it, while still keeping up with their duties. While, of course, some of the players' reactions do become automatic over time, they generally can enter new dungeons and adjust more quickly to the encounters because of their previous experiences. Thus, raiders gain several useful tools from this 'time-consuming' activity, such as faster decision-making, multi-tasking, flexibility, and even creativity -- all from a video game. They can even take these experiences with them when encountering problems elsewhere.
I'm not saying that there aren't problems with raiding, or with the kind of raiding found in WoW. They exist, and there are several of them inherent in something like raiding, particularly at the hardcore level, that should not be discounted. Likewise, I also don't mean that these learning experiences are limited to raiding -- player versus player (PvP) is another good example of this. However, in-game and out, there is a stigma against raiders amongst certain groups, who will accuse raiders of having skewed priorities, being addicted because of the time they spend playing (see Rob Cover's article, "Gaming (Ad)diction: Discourse, Identity, Time and Play in the Production of the Gamer Addiction Myth", for a more in-depth look at addiction in gaming) and even of having no social life. I would like to offer to the last sentiment that, perhaps, the definition of "social" ought to be redefined then, especially if interacting with nine, or even thirty-nine, other players isn't quite considered "social".
*hops off the soapbox*
In other news, patch 2.3 came out last Tuesday. I'll write more on that in the next post. (I haven't tried everything yet!)
*A 10-man dungeon released with the Burning Crusade expansion; currently, it s the first (and easiest) raid dungeon that aspiring raiders must enter to progress through endgame content.
**You don't lose experience when you die, as is traditional in MMOs, but your armor pieces and weapons take a hit in durability. Once this number has been reduced to 0, you no longer gain the effects and bonuses from the piece until you go to a smith to repair the damage -- for a price.
***And by this, I mean young people, particularly students, but that makes me sound old and possibly
****For ease's sake, a glossary of common raid terms:
Aggro: You can gain the aggro of a mob by aggravating them. If you are at the top of that mob's aggro chart (unseen without addons), the mob will turn to attack you. The mechanics are a little more complex than this, but that's the gist of it.
DPS: Short for Damage Per Second ("How much DPS do you do?"), but it can be used to refer to damage-dealing ("This is my DPS weapon"), or to damage-dealers ("Looking for DPS for a raid.'). Oddly enough, there's rarely any confusion amongst players regarding the term. In this case, it means damage-dealers.
Healer: Players who can heal other players. I play one of these.
Pulling: The act of starting a fight by 'pulling' a mob or group of mobs toward the party, usually with a ranged attack.
Tank: Players who are responsible for keeping the mob/boss's attention while the DPS kills them. They need to be able to generate aggro quickly and be able to take a lot of damage, though healers are often focused on them anyway because of how much damage they take.
Wipe: The entire group dies, often when a fight goes awry.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Say NO to Gender Benders?
A little over a month ago, an article came out about a Chinese MMO company requiring players to prove their gender via webcam or face termination. The company, Aurora Technology (a subsidiary of Shanda Entertainment), has already banned a number of accounts where male players were playing as female characters, though -- oddly enough -- they have stated that females will be allowed to continue playing as male characters.
Obviously, this has caused a minor uproar in the gaming community, as mentioned everywhere from Kotaku to Joystiq, who actually questions the veracity of this news. And while it is possible for this to be just another rumor, the fears surrounding this 'news' are worth examining. In MMOs, it isn't usual for players to create characters of the opposite gender, as I briefly mentioned in the last post, for a myriad of reasons. Some players choose this simply because the opposite gender can be more visually pleasing to stare at for hours at a time -- particularly when the models are attractive, such as the voluptuous* female Night Elves for male players (no, really, just look at their dance). Some players players choose this because they might better enjoy adopting the identity of the opposite gender; there are female players, for instance, who play as male toons to escape the (potential) harassment that they may face while playing, or male characters who play female to try and get free handouts, or even players who do so because they identity more with that gender, and have found WoW to be a safe(r) outlet. Other players yet might choose this because their intended roleplaying character/concept happens fit that gender. And, of course, there are others still who may have various and sundry reasons for opting to do this. As a result, some players will automatically assume that every player they meet is male (following the "no girls on the internets" rule), while many others use the avatar's gender to err on the safe side, or to respect the player's privacy.
Regardless of reason, the gender choice has always been available in MMOs, and players have always been aware of this when socializing with others (for better or for worse)**. Hoax or not, players have come out of the woodwork to defend the right to choose their avatar's gender.
*Debatably, since they also look anorexic.
** I'll cover how real life gender affects a player's experience within WoW in another post.
Obviously, this has caused a minor uproar in the gaming community, as mentioned everywhere from Kotaku to Joystiq, who actually questions the veracity of this news. And while it is possible for this to be just another rumor, the fears surrounding this 'news' are worth examining. In MMOs, it isn't usual for players to create characters of the opposite gender, as I briefly mentioned in the last post, for a myriad of reasons. Some players choose this simply because the opposite gender can be more visually pleasing to stare at for hours at a time -- particularly when the models are attractive, such as the voluptuous* female Night Elves for male players (no, really, just look at their dance). Some players players choose this because they might better enjoy adopting the identity of the opposite gender; there are female players, for instance, who play as male toons to escape the (potential) harassment that they may face while playing, or male characters who play female to try and get free handouts, or even players who do so because they identity more with that gender, and have found WoW to be a safe(r) outlet. Other players yet might choose this because their intended roleplaying character/concept happens fit that gender. And, of course, there are others still who may have various and sundry reasons for opting to do this. As a result, some players will automatically assume that every player they meet is male (following the "no girls on the internets" rule), while many others use the avatar's gender to err on the safe side, or to respect the player's privacy.
Regardless of reason, the gender choice has always been available in MMOs, and players have always been aware of this when socializing with others (for better or for worse)**. Hoax or not, players have come out of the woodwork to defend the right to choose their avatar's gender.
*Debatably, since they also look anorexic.
** I'll cover how real life gender affects a player's experience within WoW in another post.
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