DING! Leveling Up and Pacing

With Star Wars: The Old Republic releasing very soon (hopefully I get in on Dec. 15, but I don't mind waiting for release), I have thought quite a bit about how this game, or future games, can keep me playing past that first month. So many aspects of SWTOR is still unknown thanks to the Non-Disclosure Agreement for most people and one of them is the leveling curve. After quite a bit of thought, it is that leveling curve that played a major part of why I still play World of Warcraft.

Now why would the leveling curve be important? Surely one would like to get to max level as soon as possible to be able to "fully enjoy the game". It was certainly a train of thought I had years ago. I remember when The Burning Crusade expansion went live, I hadn't slept much over the course of 4 days to be one of the first to 70. After which I promised myself never to do that ever again and, so far, I've kept to that promise.

World of Warcraft's current pace of leveling is certainly not a good point of reference. With so many expansions since it's release, the game pretty much just wants you to blow through the low levels to get the the relevant content. Even without heirloom gear (+xp) or guild leveling perks (more +xp), you can easily skip several zones you've never seen because you can outlevel them by just completing the current zone you are in.

No, if WoW is going to be a point of reference, we will have to go back to the 1-60 game almost 7 years ago. I had started playing March of 2005 and it took me around 5 months to get my first 60. Granted, I've spent time to try a few classes and server types (the RP servers back then were waaaay out of my league and they still are), but during all that time, I have always enjoyed the game and the pace allowed me to get immersed with the world and my chosen character at the time. It felt that my character was growing and learning and that the world (of warcraft) was alive even without dynamic content.

Azeroth just feels to me now like it is a virtual home.

In contrast, leveling in RIFT was just way too fast. I hit level 50 in just 3 weeks and I wasn't even trying that hard. I had split my time between 2 games and still made it to max level in less time than it took for me to find a character I want to level in WoW. I loved the rich environments, but the pace just would not allow me to stay still long enough to be immersed in it. Heck, even now I don't know what the deal is between the rivalry between the Defiants and Guardians. Their emnity always seemed rather petty and arbitrary to me. The titular rifts did spice things up a bit, but a lot of them made them feel grindy, and the randomness of some events made me miss out on the more interesting invasions when they were relevant (eg: I never saw a werewolf invasion while I was questing in Gloamwood).

In the end, while RIFT may be the better game in many respects, I went back to World of Warcraft. It's not even about the time invested in the game, but RIFT simply did not give me the sense of really knowing my character. A lot of the questing is generic and there is nothing that helps define your niche in the world. It's just "get to 50 and grind for your gear". While that pretty much sums up ALL MMOs, having gone through 1-49 so quickly just made it the whole lot more obvious. Grinds just don't feel like grinds when there is an actual objective to reach that is more than an in-game item. 

Perhaps SWTOR's "story driven" gameplay can drive things up several notches when it comes to pace. Without really knowing how fast levelling is, I can only guess that focusing on the story would slow things down significantly. I can certainly tell from the released videos that a lot of time will be spent just watching what goes on during conversations. If the quality of story is similar to Bioware's single player games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age (or even older games like Baldur's Gate for that matter), and if the game paces itself where I get to care about my character and the game world around him, then WoW will have some serious competetion for my time. Perhaps my new home will be in a galaxy far, far away.

Or maybe I'll be running around as an Asura in Guild Wars 2. Or sharing the skies with panda people on dragons. Only time will tell.

WoW: Item Levels go Squish (maybe)

Ghostcrawler posted a very interesting article and really, it was a topic that was expected to come up eventually. A guildie of mine mentioned that it should have been brought up for Wrath of the Lich King, and I definitely agree. I actually remember commenting about this when fighting Prince Malchezaar back in the Burning Crusade. 


What's also interesting is that, this is not just a problem with WoW. RIFT has some really crazy numbers with bosses that would quickly reach WoW Cataclysm health levels in a very short amount of time. Star Wars: The Old Republic will see this as well unless they figure how to deal with it early. 


MMOs have always been a numbers game at it's core. In PvE, the boss' health determines the length of the fight relative to how much damage the players are expected to output. Average player health determines how much that boss can reasonably do to pose a challenge to healing without overwhelming the healers. The situation is the same in PvP where the health/damage numbers have to be managed properly so combat can be enjoyable without getting frustrating (remember back in classic? 2 Holy Paladins going at each other can take hours). 


The numbers cannot go away, but right now, it's just ridiculously large. Back in WoW Classic, Ragnaros' 1 million health was pretty insurmountable, and bosses required 40 people to even pose a threat to The Firelord. Now the stats have inflated so much, a solo player can take him down is less time than when he was relevant content. 1 million just doesn't go very far these days. Good thing he's no longer a threat ...... oh. 

HA! Try to push me around now you meanies!

Now it generally isn't a bad thing, there has to be some incentive on getting good gear. Like Ghostcrawler mentioned, a +1 stat point upgrade is still an upgrade, but it's not that big a deal in the long run. Many people would like to feel like their characters are getting stronger as time goes by and nothing says that than a tank with +20k more health ... or 180k. But when the numbers get larger exponentially, it becomes just really difficult to manage. 


He goes to present a sample of what could be an item from Mists of Pandaria. He stresses that item levels are not set yet, but if they inflate the way they have been, this will likely happen. 

Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment. I totally want this by the way

So what are the solutions? Ghostcrawler presented 2 ways of how it could go; compressing the numbers or "squishing" item levels. 


Compressing numbers, basically just shortening them so that 1.000 will be presented as 1K looks like a good solution, but it seems more of a band aid than a fix. Not going into the technical limitations of current computing hardware/software, while the numbers will become more managable, inflation is still actually happening at a silly rate and, when we come to it, 1B will still be 1,000,000,000. Also, DPS numbers don't really increment in large numbers. 50k dps can be anywhere between 50,000 and 50,999 and that is a huge difference. It provides a bit more challenge when it comes to theorycrafting.


"Squishing" item levels seems like a better solution. The idea is to go back to previous expansions and reduce the differences between max item levels of those expansions.  An example will be that an item level 70 piece of gear from Burning Crusade won't be as big an upgrade over a level 60 classic item. While current content inflation will happen as normal, the numbers won't be drastically high as the items they are compared to isn't very powerful. 


The effect will be that current gear will have their item levels lowered significantly and damage/health affected appropriately. Yes, it will make it feel like everyone was nerfed if this is implemented. And yes, going down to 20,000 health from almost 200,0000 would be a bit of a shock, but this solution gives a lot more room to grow, and when a new expansion arrives, the items from the previous can go "squish" to make room for it.  I would take the initial shock of a nerf over eventually fighting a boss and chipping away at 1,000,000,000 health. 

So I'm gonna get nerfed again? Screw that!

Are there other solutions? One thing that could allay issues with high numbers would be making encounters more complex. Heroic Shannox is actually a good example. He does not have a lot of health compared to other bosses in The Firelands. Were he a straight up tank/spank fight, he would be dead in 2 minutes. The fact that you don't need to kill his dogs means that his health is all you need to bring down but, in order to do that, the whole raid needs to execute the fight properly. Just standing there and focusing on killing him will lead to a wipe as Rageface takes out people one at a time. 


Of course, fight complexity can only go so far and gets limited as more and more people opt for 10man raiding. Not so much you can put into a fight if there aren't enough people to do it. 


 Perhaps another solution would be some combination of "Squish" and leveling out the stat curve to make it more linear than exponential. There may not be any need to lower the baseline significantly so there would be less of a shock. It would make it harder to solo older content if this happens, but it would make things more manageable in the long run. 


I have no doubt that Blizzard will be addressing this matter and hopefully in time for Mists of Pandaria. However they decide to do so is up in the air at the moment, but the sooner they do it, the better. Other games will also need to pay attention to this as they will encounter this very same problem down the road. Their respective solutions may be different, but at least it would be something they will address. 

Mechwarrior Online: Joy oh Joy!

There is now do doubt that this site is not about breaking news. I only learned about Mechwarrior Online from Massively and even that is a link to the GamebreakerTV webcast. I have heard some mention of it here and there, but I didn't really give it mind...probably because I think it's too good to be true.

But there it is. It's true.

Now this is where the bigger nerds get to beat me up - I did not read a lot of the BattleTech/Mechwarrior novels. Much of my exposure to the BattleTech universe has been through the tabletop RPG, boardgame, technical readouts, and Mechwarrior video games. But the stuff I did do, I had a LOT of fun with. I remember one boardgame skirmish where a player was laughing at a situation where his 100-ton Atlas was being fired upon by a 20-ton Locust's machine gun. Then the Locust scored a critical hit. Which hit the Atlas' reactor. The Locust did die, but the Atlas was crippled for the rest of the skirmish, being unable to move more than 1 hex per turn, and was effectively useless.

These were the kind of situations that made BattleTech so engaging even though luck played a huge factor (much less in the later games). This translated well with the BattleTech computer RPG (The Crescent Hawk's Inception) and the added roleplaying elements of finding a good team just made it more immersive. Many times I ended up shelving a favourite mech until I had the resources or expertise to repair it.

Then there was the concept of customizing mechs. This was always part of the game world, but implemented early on as mech variants (i.e. different weapon configurations). This was kept as set configurations (limited on the availability of the weapons) until the later Mechwarrior games when you can put any type of weapon limited only by weight or allotted space.

But what made the BattleTech world really immersive was the fact that it was easy to relate to. Technology in BattleTech/Mechwarrior was not completely otherworldly. Mechs were lumbering behemoths that was in constant danger of killing it's own pilot through overheating. Projectile weapons like machine guns or missile launchers were the norm and the more powerful laser weapons just exacerbates the heat issue. There were also no alien races. Humans are split into feudal factions that have some cultural resemblance to our own.

In the Mechwarrior games, piloting a mech was anything but graceful. The mechs simply felt huge. There were no instant turns, run/walk toggle, or even automatic targetting. The things can't even jump without jets firing and landing was another matter. Got your leg shot out? Then you can see the mech limping and barely able to move. Heat sinks damaged? Gotta find some water and stay there if you want to use your laser weapons. I remember blowing up my own mech when my ammo exploded due to overheating. Also, nothing can really make you swear in despair more than having your mech shut down and seeing 15 missiles headed right to your cockpit. I can probably go on and on about what I loved about the franchise (and what I hated), but that would just take too much time to do.

Mechwarrior Online will have really high standards to reach. While there hasn't been a Battletech/Mechwarrior game in years, nor has there been anything that matches the experience since then, the developers will need to build up on what's already been made.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Piranha and Infinity Game Publishing can pull it off. In the meantime, all this hype has led me to MekTek and their Mechwarrior 4 distribution. I'm just kicking myself right now for not even knowing they existed until today. So much for resting on the weekend.

WoW: Blizzard is Evil™ Edition

I am so glad for sites like WoW Insider and MMO Champion. They make data gathering for ranty sites like mine so easy.

With that aside out of the way, Blizzard is just totally evil. Not in the megalomaniac villain sort of evil, but the "business evil". The kind of evil where you know it is nothing but a cash grab, but you can't resist it because of one or more compelling reasons. One cannot fault them for it though because, well, they are a business after all. For every company, despite all the repeated "for the players" speech or PR quote they do, they all have to watch their bottom line.

So why is Blizzard "evil" this time? Behold the Annual Pass! You sign up and you get a bunch of free stuff. A new mount for World of Warcraft, a free digital copy of Diablo III, and guaranteed access to the next WoW expansion beta. All the other stuff is great, but that last one really caught my eye. 

I am still on the fence with regards to purchasing the next expansion, even if I have already accepted the pandas invading WoW. My hope was that I would be lucky enough to get a beta invite to try it out before I decide. And this is where the annual pass comes in. If I want to make sure I get beta access, I should get locked into a subscription for a year and there is already speculation that Mists of Pandaria™ can go live sometime Summer 2012. If this is true, then I'm basically paying for the game whether or not I buy the expansion. If this is the case, I would not be able to play any of my max level characters except for fiddling around the new systems. And I certainly would not be able to make a Monk or Pandaren character.

So basically, getting the annual pass makes getting Mists of Pandaria™ pretty much a sure thing. Unless it gets released late Fall or Winter 2012.

How evil. But also incredibly smart.

Will I get the annual pass though even after seeing all this mindbending evil? The magic 8-ball says "most likely". Man, that toy is kinda creepy.

WoW: Death Knight T13 - Huh.

So MMO Champion has datamined the death knight's T13 set from the latest PTR update and I have to say I am underwhelmed. It's not a bad looking set, and, if it was released/available when the others were, it would have been more acceptable. However, Blizzard has indicated that the original T13 was not up to snuff when it was rendered so they started from scratch. They went on to say they wanted to make a really great set that fit the death knight theme and I have to give them that this set does that. However, a lot of expectations were raised when the Q&A panel was asked:

Where is the Death Knight tier 13?

Its really awesome and you will see it soon

It's hard not to anticipate from that that the death knight tier 13 would be on par or better than what they did for warriors or hunters. Like I mentioned earlier, this isn't the worst set for death knights, but the first impressions from it was that it was rather bland. So what is really wrong with it?

It's really all about the helm. The rest of the set seems right and I do like how the shoulders look, but the helm is what everyone looks at first. The helm is where the first impression is from and where one would like people to stop and look at the fearsome death knight standing there. As it is, the first thing I saw was a bearded man. After some adjustments in MMO Champion's model viewer, it looked better, but I cannot unsee the beard. The female example looks like a bearded lady.

Now I know what they are going for with the spiked front of the helmet. It's supposed to be a ribcage for the skull theme of the helm. But it also makes the horns look a bit out of place. Granted, it looks fine in the front view, but the forward angle and length seems a bit much.

The biggest problem with the set is that it was released almost a month after the others were available. Even at the Blizzcon art panel, they had an image that shows every class except the death knights. This raised expectations even more. Surely something that takes this long would be an epic set that would blow away the rest. It became almost certain that Blizzard would put something that would "wow" their death knight players. It would immediately be known that death knights will have an awesome set.

Then we have the MMO Champion datamine. Huh.

I have to say, once again, that it is, in no way, a terrible set. It simply did not have the impact that was expected, certainly not in the way when the warrior or hunter sets were introduced. The general reaction was closer to when the paladin set was found. I remember the round of mocking laughter at the "bird boy" set, but, after a while, it did grow on people and I personally find it a set I would like to kit my paladin with. The same is likely going to happen with the death knight set. As understated as it is, it does fit the death knight theme and will likely look a whole lot better in the game than through model viewer pictures.

Even if it doesn't get accepted widely as a good set down the road, death knights do have to be glad that Blizzard didn't try to make a counterpart for the warducks.

WoW: The Pandas are Coming

I have dreaded this moment. It is probably a good thing I didn't attend Blizzcon as I probably would have just left after the expansion announcement. But is it really that bad? Are having pandas ... er ... pandaren really that devastating to the World of Warcraft? Is it really worth ragequitting the game because of this rather dubious addition to WoW lore? 


Actually, after the initial shock wore off and I managed to think about it,  the answer is no. 


Yes, the addition of the pandaren is a bit hard to swallow, and the lore behind their appearance in the game may seem forced, but it is definitely better than the draenei. A mist-ical (get it? wow, tough crowd) land shrouded in magic is definitely more acceptable than goat people crash landing their spaceship on Azeroth. But in the years since their introduction, they've become an accepted, and even a preferred, race for players. 

Panda or not, this is an awesome picture

Pandaren also serve another purpose; the World of Warcraft needs to stand on it's own. WoW has relied heavily on lore from the Warcraft RTS games and the story can stretch so far. As of 2011, Illidan has been killed, Kil'Jaeden locked from Azeroth, Arthas is dead and Deathwing is soon to follow. The list of threats stemming from the RTS lore is running low. 


That's not to say World of Warcraft was only keeping to lore born from the RTS games. The game has introduced a lot of lore it can claim as it's own and has been very successful (mostly) in making all that very immersive. Beloved and hated characters like Highlord Bolvar, Garrosh Hellscream are WoW inventions. The increasing insanity of Sylvannas, while not a WoW-born character, brings further depth and the promise of interesting events to come that will affect Azeroth. 

Pictured: Freshness

The lore additions of World of Warcraft has been weaved into, and expanded, the RTS lore and has been, for all intents and purposes, gradual. Mists of Pandaria takes a huge leap into lore of it's own making. An entirely new continent, new races, new stories not stemming from anything found in Warcraft of the past. The pandaren and Pandaria are a shot of freshness and are there to show there indeed are more stories to tell in Azeroth. It's Blizzard's way of showing that the World of Warcraft is more than just what we have already seen in previous games. 


Yes, they could have done an Emerald Dream expansion, and maybe it would have made more sense. Yes, they could have maybe sent us to bring the fight to the Burning Legion. But with the reveal of Pandaria, now we have to think "what else does Azeroth have to offer?". The last line in the reveal trailer said it quite nicely: "Azeroth's limits have yet to be revealed".  There is now confidence that there can be more after Pandaria. 


So I have accepted the pandaren as a good race for the World of Warcraft. The models look great and the environments shown look like they can be quite immersive. But why am I not convinced that I will play this expansion? 


Maybe I am not sure I will like this story arc. The promise of returning the focus to the horde/alliance war is nice, but I would have preferred fighting for lands already taken and lands to be conquered. Pandaria seems like a detour kind of like how Outland was. Perhaps it's because I don't know too much about it. After so many years, the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor do feel like a second home. I still feel badly for the loss of Southshore and I take my time to look over it during my archaeology runs. After Deathwing falls, it just makes sense to me to kick some Horde ass and take back some of what we've lost. Or, if Horde, press the offensive. 

Do I look like I snuggle?

Maybe there will be all that in Mists of Pandaria and maybe it will be awesome. With the information now though, I just don't know. With luck, maybe I can get into the beta and see for myself if I will purchase this expansion and snuggle with the fuzzy bear men. 

WoW: Hollow's End Returns!

Another holloween season and another Hollow's End event in World of Warcraft. Naturally, the Headless Horseman's loot has been updated to ilvl 365 but great news to those who need those last few masks for the achievement: you can get them from the vendor.

There is also a new pet (pic from MMO-Champion) - leave it up to Blizzard to make something cute and creepy at the same time. 



The cat costs 150 tricky treats. Now these are relatively easy to come by, my paladin has around 30-odd of those in the bags now. In an eeeeeeevil Blizzard way, these treats can also be obtained in the handful of candy bags from the inns. So in their eeeeevil Blizzard way, they've found how to get people who have already done the achievement to do it again.

A few other things of note:

• Masks no longer take the helmet slot. They instead put a buff with no duration on the character to put the mask on. It doesn't persist through death and is still really, really ugly.
• The new quests are pretty fun to do and the Wickerman dousing WILL get you flagged for PvP. Some horde chased down my paladin after getting the dousing done. no one bothered my Death Knight. Sheesh, not even ganking love.
• The sword from the loot bag has some use even for non-agility users. The pumpkins are now level 85 and they can do some damage. Having my army of ghouls and pumpkins attack a boss was pretty funny to see.
• Setting fire to your own faction's Wickerman gives a reputation and xp boost.
• All those rare items that caused frustration for completionists that could not get their title for years? Those can now be bought by using tricky treats. Not cheap, but now a better means to complete the achievement instead of just pure luck.