I don’t get time walking dungeons

I’m not against them, I just don’t really want to do them.

I ran a few of these yesterday between raids and other whatnot and was realizing that I didn’t enjoy them. I was thinking about why they didn’t appeal to me and came up with a few different things.

Wait, I was just here

Since I am an altoholic, I run all of those dungeons being used for time-walking pretty often. If you are someone that has 1 main (mind = boggled) or a few alts but they are all close to the same level, you are probably up to date on current content but maybe not doing much with older content. I have characters in all sorts of ranges so I see all of the dungeons on a fairly regular basis. For me, this isn’t a big, exciting trip back to something fun that I haven’t done in years. It’s an exciting trip back to last week.

Reward vs Risk

Since you can’t count on a warforged piece (although I did get lucky once yesterday) it is safe to say that any reward you get out of the dungeon will be 660 ilvl. If the entire party is below 660 (so the ones that would benefit from the dungeon), the level of struggle to get those new 660 pieces may not be worth it, or even possible depending upon the group. If you are overgeared, you probably aren’t getting much out of it. It’s not that there shouldn’t be challenge; I’m fine with that. I’m just not clear on who the challenge is for.

Tumbleweeds in party chat

The social aspect of the game is really down. Now, as someone that enjoys a fair bit of solo WoW, this shouldn’t bother me in principal. And I do think some of the calls about the social aspect of WoW are a bit over the top. However, even though I (generally) like questing alone, I understand that dungeons are group content. And I always try to type hello or whatever in the group when I enter. And I’ll usually get one, maybe two responses. And then off to the silence.

It’s not that this type of thing never happened before, but it just seems so much more so. Even when LFD first came out, people talked and were generally nice (for WoW). But to have a nice group of people that talk or interact at all is so rare anymore.

To be fair, this isn’t unique to time-walking dungeons and is present in all dungeons.

L2dps noob

When people aren’t being quiet, they are likely being jerks. It isn’t just dps, tanking and healing get it too. There is this very unkind mentality to players that do not meet some imagined minimum standard. It’s not that people were always kind and welcoming in Wrath, far from it. But it did seem like there was more room for error. For learning. In the current time walking dungeon, I think it is because people are expected to have played in Wrath so they are expected to know everything right away.

This isn’t about the lunk heads who just yell “gogogo” or think they can pull the entire room without heals. It’s about players who don’t read damage logs or wowhead or watch videos. There’s nothing in game that indicates what the challenge of a time-walking dungeon will be and when those people enter and get hit by the situation, their teammates are far from forgiving.

Again, not unique to time-walking dungeons, but it is most definitely a reason I dislike dungeons.

You can never really go back

I was there when the content was new, so I remember when I was still learning the layout of dungeons, the excitement of new types of enemies, and the new stories being told. All of that newness is gone, so it doesn’t have that excitement about it.

In addition to that, I was also in a guild with friends when this content was current. Those friends have moved on now but being back in those areas is always a little bittersweet.

I think they just aren’t for me. I’ve read a few people that started in Mist of Pandaria or Cataclysm and so they didn’t really spend much time in Wrath and never when it was new. So for them, this is content is a good challenge. And that’s great. Again, I’m not against the dungeons and I’ll likely try to do the run 5 dungeons quest and see what the reward is. But if I don’t get anything really good or the investment is too high, they’ll just be something I rarely, if ever, do.

One last note about why I don’t like them. Since I find the overall story here in WoD to be lacking at best, re-running these other dungeons from expansions with lots of good and engaging story, really makes me notice the lack of one here. Especially when I’m literally leaving current content to go do old content.
____
As I was writing this I noticed a few people have been writing about time-walking dungeons too. I'm sure others have too but I haven't found them yet. So I'm off to read these and see what they think and perhaps search out some more opinions.

Growing up in Azeroth - A Walk back in Time
Rambling thoughts about WoW - Wrath Timewalking
The Grumpy Elf - Historical Revisionism: The Wrath Time Walker Dungeons

On the pressure to produce content

So I was doing my usual Reading of The Blogs and was on Naiv's site when I noticed something strange.

My blog was on the links.

Whoa /Joey Lawrence

At first I thought it was amazing and cool.  Wow, someone not only read my words but also thought others might want to read them.  Crazy.

And almost immediately, I was hit with a mini-panic - that means others are actually reading what I write!

Yes, of course that was always the point but there's something about the reality of it happening that just struck me.  And then I was hit with this pressure to consistently produce quality posts and soon.

Cue further mini-panic.

After I got my head about me, I started to think about what that really meant for me.

One of the classic pieces of advice for writers, especially bloggers, is that you need to write for yourself. If I was doing this for a paycheck, I might need to tailor what I write for an audience, but I'm not, so that isn't an issue.

What I need to do, and plan to do, is write for me as best as I can. I need to work at a pace that works for me. I need to write about what interests me and in ways that I like. And if no one comes for my conversations, that's okay. Because if I'm having a conversation I don't enjoy but it pulls in lots of people, that won't be fun. And if I do end up actually attracting readers, the ones that come and stay will ultimately be ones that like (or at least understand) my writing quirks. Which will make my writing more natural and easier.

Since I'm still new at this (12th post right here and testing the scheduled post out for a second time) there is quite a bit to learn. This might seem like an odd post in and of itself, more like it should be an internal dialogue with myself. True to a point. I want to put this up for three reasons.

1) If there are other newbie bloggers or soon-to-be bloggers out there they might see some of my stumbles and experiences and learn from them.

2) I hope to keep this blog going for a while and it will be interesting (and painful) to watch my writing develop over time.  To see my voice develop.

3) It's for me.

Why is it so hard to listen to feedback?

My intent here is an honest question and specifically to avoid “Blizzard, y u no listen?” just-do-what-I-say territory. In fact, it’s pretty clear that this is a universal problem for companies. Still, this blog is about WoW and Blizzard is an excellent example of the problem I want to explore.

Let’s start off with some statements I think anyone can agree with. Blizzard is a successful company with a large and varied customer base. To expect such a company to be able to consider the opinion of all of its customers is ludicrous. Further, to expect that company to even be able to find the opinion of some of those customers is pretty unreasonable. And if they do find opinions, there’s nothing to say that the feedback given is good. After that, there is a fair discussion to be had about the line between artistic vision and meeting customer wants.

With all of that said, I really don’t understand why Blizzard often seems to be caught by surprise by problems of their own making. Flying is the easy go to, and I will go there, but let’s start out with a very recent problem: the mission table for the shipyard.

As soon as people got their hands on them, I think nearly everyone remarked on their placement. That the distance from the garrison made it unenjoyable to use the shipyard. Yes, it makes sense that the shipyard are close to water of course, but there is no reason that the table to assign the missions needs to be. Not even sure why it had to be a separate table from our follower one, since that seems to be a general command table. Just as we send our followers out on missions and can watch them leave the garrison, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to send a deckhand out of the town hall with orders for their captain. Or even just call the captain up themselves. We are a general at this point, are we not?

But I digress and back to the point. It was pretty obvious from reading feedback that it wasn’t enjoyable to have to ride down to the shipyard to send out ships and then ride back to the garrison. We couldn’t even log out at the shipyard, even though they are ostensibly part of our garrison. This has been changed and now you can log out at the shipyard as if it was the garrison. Which is great, but why did the shipyard go live without this? I’m sure people gave that feedback early on and it seems like a pretty obvious need. And now they are adding a table to your town hall when you get a level 3 dock. Which again, great, although why does it have to wait until level 3 and more importantly, why did this not exist before?

Let’s tackle flying in Draenor. One of the condescending replies from Ion Hazzikostas about the flying situation was a (seemingly apocryphal) Henry Ford quote. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." (This may be my favorite reply to that nonsense.)

Most people expected no flying until max level and were okay with waiting for it. When it came down that we would never fly in Draenor, there was a huge negative response. Yes, some people liked it but the overwhelming response was anger, frustration, and confusion. Without a doubt, part of the reason this response was so strong was that Blizzard had kept saying maybe, maybe, maybe and then suddenly, amongst something of a content drought, during a poorly received expansion, on a 3rd party site, on a Friday, the final answer is no. That’s of course going to generate anger.

But if we were to remove the poor (terrible, bad, no good) presentation of this information, it still would have gotten an angry response. How can I say that? Because people had been talking for months about how they were looking forward to flying. How much they missed it. How much it mattered to them. And the thing is, this wasn’t just on random blogs or in obscure forums. This was on their own Beta and regular forums!

Note that far above I said Blizzard has a large and varied customer base, not fan base and I think that’s important. (Well, I think all of my writing is important and so does my mom). A fan is almost assuredly a customer but the reverse? It can’t be assumed. Blizzard may have a large and varied fan base but I’m willing to say it is still much smaller than their customer base.

Blizzard is a company first and foremost and obviously tailors itself to the needs and interests of the majority of its customers. The problem is that they can’t really predict what the large group of silent customers will want out of their game. This, to some extent, justifies the not-Ford quote above.

But what of big names and “thought-leaders”? As averse as I am to using that second term (the idea of a thought-leader makes my skin crawl), it can be fairly said that that are some bigger name bloggers and writers that can reach and sway a large audience with their thoughts and opinions. Those bigger names are often passionate fans who want to see the game improve. They are (partially) big names because what they write (or vlog or whatever) may often speak for a large number of people.

Yes, of course Blizzard would need to be careful with listening solely to those type of people; not only can they be wrong but they may come to abuse that power. This is not a plea to listen to the superfans always and 100%. But it is a question of why developers in general, and Blizzard in particular, seem to purposely tack against fans for as long as they can until it becomes untenable.

Across the industry, fans seem to be regarded as whiny and entitled know-it-alls that can only see as far as their own interests. And many are, let’s not lie. But many are not. Many are passionate players of the game that “get” the game as much, if not more than, some of the developers. Many are people who listen, talk, and generally interact with both the small fan base and the larger customer base and so have a good idea of what is going on at multiple levels.

There’s a fair and immediate objection to the previous paragraph and that is to define “many”. I agree, who knows what group is truly the “vocal minority”. I’m not saying that Blizzard should always do what fans ask. I’m saying I don’t understand why Blizzard doesn’t try to research, listen, and directly address fan feedback more often.

To end this let me quote from the Harvard Business Review article above:

“Yes, some customers in certain types of businesses are quite capable of verbalizing precisely what sort of innovative product one could build and sell them. And of course, customers in other types of businesses are wholly incapable of verbalizing, with any sort of fidelity whatsoever, what they need and why they need it.

An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition. They should also feel free to ignore customers’ inputs…The real lesson learned was not that that Ford’s failure was one of not listening to his customers, but of his refusal to continuously test his vision against reality….”

Fan feedback is one of these tests against reality. Why don’t more companies see that?

(This post was created a week or so before the post on clothes and choice but it ties in well)

Your homework for today

I don't have much time today but I wanted to put this out there.

Does the Warcraft movie have a problem with women?

I had no idea this post was up when I wrote yesterday's post.  Maybe it wasn't even up yet.  Doesn't matter.

Go read the post and as many of the comments as you can handle.

Feckless Leader has some thoughts as well.  Read them.

I'm sure we'll see others soon but this is the starting place.

What Elizabeth Harper said isn't new. It, sadly, isn't shocking. To be honest, it isn't even the best example out there about sexism in gaming. But the conversation around it, or as Feckless Leader puts it the "lack thereof" is important.

Please read.  Please listen.

The importance of player choice: female clothes edition

This post could actually get quite involved, so I intend to limit it for now. Perhaps I’ll revisit the topic in the future. Apologies for the somewhat disjointed, rambling nature of the post. That is how I write by nature, but this feels a bit more so at times. I was also multi-tasking.

I was starting to read Navi’s post about more video game scaremongering (very good post, go read!) but I was more distracted by skimpy outfits.

Or at least, the discussion of said outfits.

I’ll get back to the “video games are destroying [NOUN]” at some other point, but for now let’s talk about sexy clothes vs practical clothes and player choice.

Her post seems to have been inspired by Poison Ivy in the most recent Arkham Knights game. The thing with Poison Ivy is that her sexuality is part of her weaponry. Her kiss (depending upon the writer) is literally deadly. She wants to defend plants and the Earth in general, so any weapon she has at her disposal is good to her. And she knows that since many men find her attractive, it puts her at an advantage.

Now, that does not in any way mean we can then just ignore how often this idea of the femme fatale is used. Nor should we ignore the sexism that permeates much of comics and female characters in particular. Or video games for that matter. Or everything else.

I am digressing. My point here is that while a female character can have good storyline reasons for sex appeal to be so obvious, most times it isn’t warranted. It really only serves to add sex appeal to the story and can greatly detract from your story.

In video games specifically, to have your NPCs be little more than eye-candy is one issue, but to make players also be sex-kittens with shields, when they don’t want to be, is a bigger issue.

I’m not against (or for) sexy/realistic outfits but I want to know why can’t a player make that choice themselves?

If they want to be a realistic looking tank character in full armor, they should be able to do that. If they want to look like something out of a Frank Frazetta painting, well, not my cup of tea but go for it. (Note here: Frazetta, artist of iconic Conan images, might be a poor example for WoW because his stuff would tend away from the Teen rating they have now – google “Frank Frazetta women” and check the images tab. Possibly NSFW).

I do think the “realism” angle of the argument against something like the platekini is not the strongest. When we have people throwing fireballs with their hands, making deals with demons, healing all sorts of wounds or just riding dragons, realism has long since stopped being an issue. This author has a fair rebuttal to this specific point and while I agree with it in general, I still think the large point holds. WoW has so many things that use “lol magic” as storytelling device that this one seems small. That is the problem with magic in a story, especially magic as powerful and far-reaching as that which we have in Azeroth. On the other hand, I am someone that strongly supports the idea in fiction that “I will believe the impossible, not the improbable” so I do get their point. Tell me magic exists, fine, sounds good, let your story roll. Tell me Tarzan can button a shirt without ever having worn human clothes and you break my belief. (No, it doesn’t make sense).

Also, WoW only takes itself semi-seriously, so we can’t really point to the need for high fantasy. Again, digressing. Just give it a read as they have very good points (and one of my favorite Ren & Stimpy clips). There’s also a follow-up of sorts.

Back to the point, I think the freedom of choice is a much better way to go. There are some women that want platekini and some that want realistic armor. And both should have that option. And male players too. Yes, transmogrification exists and allows you to turn that platekini into something more realistic, however that isn’t exactly the problem. The problem is that if a piece of armor is full plate for a male character, it should be full plate for a female character. If a piece of armor is skimpy for female characters, it should be so for male characters.

One of the things I never got about this is that male characters have so few “skimpy” clothing options. If a player wanted to create some Norse berserker inspired character, they don’t have that option (See also Frazetta above). None of my characters fit that bill, but I have little doubt that if the option were available, many players would do that or something similar.

While it wasn’t perfect, City of Heroes had a pretty great character creator that allowed you to create as modest or sexy of an outfit as your character needed (within limits). It had problems of its own of course, but overall it allowed players to create characters that they could identify with and enjoy.

Now, obviously, this is where things can get a bit complex. Developers can’t code for everything. Players will want a near infinite amount of choice and it is programmatically impossible to be able to do literally anything. However, when we are discussing player clothing choice, this shouldn’t be that hard. Just use the same model for the female character as the male. If you have sexual dimorphism between your male and female characters, adjust the size but don’t make something that is full, solid armor on a male character expose the stomach and cleavage on the female characters. It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard.

One thing I didn’t hit this time that will perhaps be saved for next time is: fine I get to dress how I like and you get to dress how you like. But should anyone be forced to see you bare* ass tanking Iron Reaver if that isn’t what they want to see in game?

* (Bear butts are fine. Objectify druids all you like.)

Expansion and patch pace

The nature of how I play really puts me at odds with what many people want. This isn’t something to be proud or ashamed of; just something I’ve known for a long time and accept as my default. It cuts across a number of things: interest in PvP, raiding, gear, “burdens”, and so much more. One of the areas with the largest difference, though, may be in consuming content.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I am a slow player. I am in no rush to level and in fact enjoy the leveling process more than any “end game” content. I don’t like artificial slowness but just being able to go at my own pace, which appears to be slower than the mean. I can level quickly when I really need or want to but it isn’t my preference.

So when I’ve heard people talk about wanting shorter time between expansions, I am always a little repelled by the idea. Not saying that others should wait for me, just that I don’t want to be on the faster treadmill.

There’s nothing that says I have to stay current with the content and it would obviously save me money to not buy an expansion when it first comes out. But as we all know, anything that requires grouping (which is becoming much more common) means that if you come to an expansion late, you’ll miss out on a lot of stuff.

The best example right now is probably the Sha of Anger in Pandaria. If you aren’t geared or skilled enough to solo it and you never fought it before WoD came out, you probably won’t get it done. You might be able to use the group finder to assemble a group to fight it but I’m guessing it is going to take you a long time to find them. Now, it isn’t the end of the world if you can’t kill some world boss, but you are missing out on key aspects of the story or just general experiences.

Killing the whale shark in Cataclysm for the achievement or the one around Timeless isle are other ones that are going to be tough when no one else is there. I’m sure others can solo it, but I’m not that player.

As disappointing it might be to not get the gear from the above kills (or just the achievement), that gear was going to get replaced eventually, so the loss is minimized. With Tanaan, there is a whale shark that drops an important item for the shipyard. I haven’t tried to get in a group for it and if I don’t soon, it might be something I never get and it can’t be replaced. I am somewhat okay with that since I’m not really interested in my shipyard, but it just really drives home the need to be in content when it is current. I hate that forced feeling.

There is also the argument that by rushing expansions so much the quality will drop. At least if you want them to be bigger than a content patch. I think Warlords of Draenor is a pretty clear example of this. I would be hard pressed to find anyone who honestly thinks this expansion was 100% ready to go on open.

So what is my ideal amount of time between expansions? I honestly have no idea. Seems a bit odd to start the conversation (well, soliloquy more accurately) and not really have more to contribute. I guess part of this is just that I’m thinking out loud to some extent. What do you, gentle reader, think is a good amount of time between expansions?

Burdens I miss (part 1 of ?)

This started off as just a list and as I began to expand it kept getting longer and longer. So I think I’ll break this one into multiple posts.

I started playing just after Burning Crusade came out so while I haven’t seen everything, I’ve been through the vast majority of versions of World of Warcraft. In that time, there have been a lot of great (flying!) and terrible (CRZ) things added as well as the removal of great (scenarios) and terrible things (limit of 20 on crafting material stacks). There can be arguments over how the game has been made easier this way or that but what I wanted to talk about are things that were removed from the game that they were probably right to remove, but I kind of miss or even want back in the game.

Ammo

For those that didn’t start playing until Cataclysm, originally hunters had to carry the appropriate ammo  for their ranged weapon. The quality of the ammo ranged from common (white) to legendary (orange).

The good:

Realism. Okay, so take "realism" with a grain of salt when we have a game with elves and demons and magic and the like, but I appreciated that it was trying to reflect an aspect of reality. It really reminded me of D&D where you had to carry, track, and purchase arrows for your bow. Yes, it was a pain, but it also meant more thinking about the character since arrows took up space and weight. Weight isn't a problem here in WoW but space is.

Income for Engineers. Engineers could use up all of that damn Rough Stone to make Rough Blasting Powder and make basic ammo at low level and make some money. Or just save money for themselves. And they could keep making better and better quality ammo too.

The bad:

Space. While it could stack up to 1,000 shots/arrows, ammo could take up a lot of space if you didn’t want to have to find a vendor all of the time. And while engineering was great for guns, there wasn’t anything comparable for bow & arrow. That always bothered me.

Cost. A mage didn’t have to spend gold to do DPS but a hunter did. It wasn’t always a huge cost and there were of course ways of limiting it (engineering, high end ammo, etc) but in the end, a hunter had to pay to do damage.

Quality. If you wanted to be effective, you needed to have good ammo. Just like with any piece of gear, it wasn’t the end-all-be-all but it mattered. And so if you didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the top end ammo or were not an engineer or didn’t get good ammo drops, your damage could suffer because you weren’t getting the best quality ammo available to you.

Complex talent trees

I have the second edition of the World of Warcraft Master Guide  and I used to love to read it. It helped me to try to understand the world that I was just learning to explore. WoWhead (and before that Thottbot) has much better information on in game stuff, but this was my starting place. Plus you can read it offline (<--- what is that, the youngins say)

One of the things that I would do is look over the talent trees and think about what my focus for a character would be. Not in a technical playing type of focus but in the way in envisioned my character.

The good:

The freedom of choice. I really enjoyed the ability to choose what I wanted. To go deep into a tree if that theme fit or to take a little bit from everything at the sacrifice of not getting the defining talents. As you may have guessed, the theme, the RP idea for my character was typically more important than the effect on game play. To me, at the level I was playing, the talents did not usually do much. Some did help me of course, but most were not visibly impacting my game. So if I had chosen wrong, I couldn’t see it. But being able to flavor my character correctly, in my mind, really added to my quality of play.

The bad:
Wrong choices. It really did matter what talent you picked if you were part of a group (raid or dungeon). Certain skills were not just better but decidedly so. If you didn’t have X talent from this line, which is buried 15 talent points in, you weren’t going to be part of the team. Now, the issue is not necessarily with the talent in that situation but rather creating content that requires a specific set of talents. Whatever the case, the freedom to choose what you wanted created the freedom to exclude yourself from content. Not typically an issue for me, but it was for many.


Firewood

In order to make fire, you must have something to burn so you had to carry firewood. And flint and tinder too.

The good:

Realism. Yes, I actually, kind of, miss carrying firewood. And it is pretty much exactly for the reasons you might expect, “realness” and RP. There really is no other good reason for it.

The bad:

Space. Not a huge amount since it was two slots (which comparatively speaking, was a lot early on) but again, there really isn’t a “good” reason to have it other than to have a nod to reality.


There are several more that I plan to type up, but as I said, I do see why these things were removed from the game. It isn’t as simple as “dumbing it down” or making it easier for the casual (which I wouldn’t complain about anyways). It’s about reasonable game design. Most of those things, from a story/RP perspective, make a lot of sense but when contrasted with the gameplay reality, just don’t mesh well.

Still, if I could have them back for me, I probably would.