What to do with WoW sans Raiding?

'LFM DPS VoA25, /w Achiev and GS 5500+'

The constant refrain in the recruitment channels (ie. Trade) now on WoW tells the story of the game's progression. If you are not in a raiding guild, you have to resort to PUGs (which are plentiful nowadays) but PUGs have become far more picky about their membership now that they are armed with the tools to measure prospective members. Achievements and Gear Score. Now, of course, I could simply lie about the Achievements and link other peoples, but that would be deceitful and it doesn't feel right for me. So what to do? You could run dozens and dozens of heroics to get Emblems, but I have done that before and they are all pretty much dull now for me. Mindless and unchallenging.

Well, one question would be why do anything? Without access to raid content, you are gearing up a character to do what exactly? Stand around Orgrimmar and whistle? That has happened before when my lack of time commitment has jarred against raid requirements and it is essentially frustrating.

The answer to these questions came from the most unlikely of sources - the random battleground feature. This is a new PvP feature for the game which does for battlegrounds what the Find Group function did for instances. And its brilliant! The queues are lightning fast - under 5 mins max - and the rewards are plentiful. The bonus honour combined with the recent reworking of the PvP equipment system means that with a little application you can rack up some decent equipment pretty damned quick! In three days I have snaffled three i232 and i245 items (shoulders, bracers and legs) which are the equivalent to the stuff I could get through emblems but so much faster.

The battlegrounds are also quite fun. The asshole contingent are diluted now and I'm seen all of the new battlegrounds that I had missed before. Isle of Conquest is pretty dull but Strand of the Ancients is excellent and now rivals Eye of the Storm as my favourite battleground. Moreover, now when I play, I am improving myself for a purpose - to become deadlier (well, lets be modest, more annoying) than I was before.

I'm enjoying it - a lot - far more than I ever thought I could enjoy PvP. I'm even considering chancing my hand with arena somehow...but that might have to wait until the future!

HACKED!

My WoW account was hacked this weekend.

As I was playing it, the game froze and then disconnected and when I went to log back in, I suddenly had an authenticator attached to my account. Bugger.

So I had to do two things - first, get rid of whatever miscreant device had infiltrated my system and second, negotiate the choppy waters of Blizzard customer service. The debugging was pretty easy as a quick update and malware scan found the little bugger straight away. That got smushed. For securities sake, I switched to another computer to do my Blizzard business and then things slowed down a little.

I'm sure its not the case, but the Blizz helpline is apparently (according to the part of the website I looked at) only open during office hours on weekdays. Harsh. They do have a webform though, which looked fine, until it asked you for your CD-Key and the answer to your special question. CD-Key was easy ... Mr Pack Rat FTW! I needed to waltz around my battle.net account for a while to get a hint of my secret question. If I hadn't been able to do this, they would have required me to fax over a copy of my passport. Faff!

Anyway, I made my protestations and waited for the wheels to go into motion. Now, I hit the next snag. Phishing emails. I get around 2-3 WoW related phishing mails per day and they are just spam-foldered and daily deleted. How do you differentiate between the phish and the helpdesk? Well, Blizz have a nice way of doing it involving changed passwords and very plain information about each step of the process. Sorted.

So I'm back (now with added authenticator of my own) and everything on my character reimbursed. EVERYTHING. Even the scraps of fur that the twats had sold. I was impressed.

So, how do I feel? Well, a little silly for being hacked - although for the life of me I cannot work out how, considering my lack of internet adventure - and not in the least bit traumatised. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Its just a thing that has happened.

I think, in its own way, thats kind of healthy!

The Long Strange Trip is Over!

Today, I finally finished the 'What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been' achievement in World of Warcraft. Rather than wooshing around Azeroth on my Albino Drake, I now really do WOOSH around on my 310% Violet Proto-Drake. Moreover, it caps over a year of doing all of those little holiday quests that populate the game occassionally.

Some of the quests and achievements have been a lot of fun. Some have been downright bollock-burningly annoying. I've traveled over every inch of the map, delved into myriad dungeons, eaten bizarre foods, juggled near invisible batons, been riotously pissed, pledged my love and honour literally dozens of elders. Of all the things I have done is WoW, this act of sheer tenacity is the only one that I would even consider an 'achievement' - if you ever can have one in a computer game.

Of course, now I am going to have to find something else to do but Catacylsm will be out sometime this year and that may well start a longer, stranger trip.

Auto-PUG of Joy

I am, on occasion, amazed by the ability of World of Warcraft to reinvent itself and change in a way that drags me back into the game. I guess its why, five years on, I am still happily playing it. The latest innovation is the introduction of the auto-PUG (Pick-Up-Group)

Instead of spamming the trade channel with Looking For Group requests or waiting for enough members of my guild to come online and be in the same frame of mind as me to run an instance, I can now just stab two buttons and voila! I am added to a cross-server queue of thousands of other players all wanting the same. Within minutes I am teleported to the instance and the game commences. Twenty minutes later, the end boss is down and you walk away with 5 Emblems, some cash and other stuff. Its virtually anonymous, instant rewarding gratification.

Whats more, it seems to have made PUGing a lot more palatable. Students of expectancy theory will notice that the carrot of the emblems at the end makes the experience of having a player with slightly subpar DPS a lot more acceptable. Indeed, on many occassions not a word has been passed between the people I have PUGd with - its simply been a business-like execution of a laid down tactic.

On my side of things, this is perfect. I have unpredictable spare time - meaning that I cannot plan when I am going to be able to play or for how long. This is perfect for me, especially as it is accelerating my acquisition of equipment no end! Additionally, it has allowed me to grab a load of outstanding achievements which are well overdue. I've finally done Old Kingdom, Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone and Gundrak. I'm a happy camper.

The only fly in the ointment, I have to admit, is the attitude of some of the players (WHO would have guessed?). Its not the weaker players. Its the players who are blatantly from the top guilds churning out SERIOUS dps. Their tolerance of people who are less geared than them appears to be quite low. However, you will note, they have all been whining dps'rs. I have been blessed with talented, aggressive tanks and attentive, skilled healers. People I always take the time to thank at the end of the instance! (I am informed by Dave that matters are not quite so rosy at the lower level end of things - I can quite believe it)

That aside, this innovation is fantastic. Its delivering actual progression for me, at a pace that 100% suits me needs. Awesome.

The Last Ride of the Dungeoneers

Since Blizzard announced the new World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, there has been a resurgence of interest in the game from some of my friends who had previously dropped it. This precipitated a rather chucklesome event on Saturday night - the reforming, for one night only, of the Dungeoneers!

Now, lets remember that the Dungs shredded apart in quite some explosive nastiness and then lingered on for a while before they disappeared. Players had disappeared to all manner of servers so a reunion has never been on the cards. Take into consideration as well, that Silvermoon is a totally borked server now - its got something silly like a 95%-5% pro-Alliance balance. Orgrimmar is DEAD. The AH is DEAD. Its a ghost town on that side of the server and yet still a High pop server based on Alliance side only.

So we gathered - a truly motley crew. Kylea the Mage, the forgotten alt left on the server. Memnon the Rogue, another cast-aside character who was never worth the £15 transfer fee. Eek the Epic Hunter, the hero of our tale. We even had fleeting cameos from Hornihoof, loot-pilfering druid of old and of course (after chasing him from another server), Nathwest, erstwhile bankalt and ... guildmaster!

We all joined the guild again and proudly had 'The Dungeoneers' above our names. It was quite a cool moment, especially when someone passed by who recognised the name and literally stopped in his tracks to ask whether it was a reunion.

The original and still the best were back.

Well, the original anyway.

We had to suffer the embarassment of scrabbling together gold for training and skills.
We had to remember what the hell all of these buttons did and why we had things in strange places.
We had to remember that none of us were healers...

Still, we took the battle to Northrend and ploughed through Borean Tundra for a few hours. It was a lot of fun and we all nearly hit 71, which was nice. Of course, we probably won't do it again especially as Eek may well be transferring to another realm. It was however, sweet to just do the Dungeoneers thing one last time.

Line of the night

Eek: We have a guild bank!
Kylea: of course we have a guild bank. We stole it, remember?

Ah, memories

WoWPhone Cometh!

I have been waiting.

You could tell it was coming. All of the signs and portents have been there.

C&Ds to iPhone app programmers from Blizz. The move of the authenticator into app format. This morning, I noticed, the Anti-Christ had arrived.

The World of Warcraft iPhone Armory

(for further information - http://eu.wowarmory.com/iphone.xml)

Its ... well, I have to say its pretty fantastic. You get:

A fully functional and up-to-date talent calculator
All of your characters and any others you want to see
Achievements and their breakdowns
Item database to plough through at your leisure
The in-game calendar in all of its glory
And lots of other bits!

And what makes this all the more shocking is that it is .... FREE! I expected a $1.99 download maybe, but no - this one is free, gratis and for nothing.

So whats so great about it? Well, the armoury business is something that I expected to be done sooner rather than later. For me, its the Calendar that is the real shocker. As the Calendar is a 'living' item within the game, in theory, it allows in-game to out-of-game communication. It only works one way (ie. you can only read what is in the Calendar, not edit it yourself.) but it is a start.

What other living parts of the game could they do this for? Well, the bleedingly obvious one is the Auction House, allowing you to manage your AH buying from your iPhone. Would that disrupt the game? Not at all. You pay a flat fee each month and if you access the AH from your phone, Orgrimmar or Undercity, it makes little difference.

This could be the start of a very interesting phase in the development of the game. And it gives me a lot of new things to waste time doing between lectures!

In Search of AR-PEE?

WoW can be a strange beast sometimes. I have pushed what I can be bothered to do with Sunraven as far as it goes on our PvE server. I've got titles, I've levelled fishing, I'm got decent equipment and I am casually raiding Ulduar. There's not a whole helluva lot more to do apart from raiding and no incentive to farm, as I have more money than God. Even the Argent Tournament doesn't seem so much of a temptation, now that I have 50 pets, my Gruntling and a cool banner.

'A Cool Banner' is a very strange phrase. I've found that one of the things that I have been doing is gathering more and more roleplay-style bits of fluff for Sunraven, for no purpose other that something to do. So she has a nice wardrobe of dresses, the now-defunct Ruby Shades and some other tat. Its all fun, but with no real purpose apart from tarting around Org in a dress. Like I said, a strange beast.

However, it is a lot of fun and I decided that I would take this urge to play the game in a slightly different way and use it to try one final experiment on the dread WoW RP servers! I've been here before. I played a dwarf warrior on a RPPVP server for a while which was kind of fun, but got swamped by other things. I have tried twice again to start a Night Elf Druid, but they have failed miserably because I lost my temper with the RP-Nazis in the starting areas. This would be my last throw of the MMO-RP-G dice.

Now in the spirit of managing expectations, I'll outline what I am looking for in this 'RP'. What I want is a crucible to experience the game world through a different pair of eyes. A different focus. So rather than considering what I do with everything focusing on what my mechanical output is and whether I am doing the game 'properly', I want to do it 'realistically' from an RP P.O.V.

So what does that mean? Well, my character is Vudunn, a male troll shaman. As a one liner background for him, he was raised by goblins in Ratchett and is seeking the true Troll home, guided by the spirits. He's an engineer - from his goblin background - and has a tiny little pyromaniacal streak, giving him the nickname 'Da Boom! Boom!' Nothing earth shattering there.

So in-game, I have tried to interact with and 'do' as many of the troll or goblin areas as I can, whilst avoiding as much of bloody Silverpine and Tarren Mill as I can. Its not totally possible - just mostly possible. I have a plan, about my ongoing quest through Zul Farrak, Sunken Temple, Zul Gurub, Zul Aman and into Northrend. Its all there, to be done.

I'm part of a guild, the Shadowbranch Tribe - an ad hoc tribe of trolls who have no home and wander Azeroth, searching for their home. Hey, thats cool, that fits with my backstory. Score one for the writing team! They are a canny bunch of people and they take their 'RP' seriously. So seriously that in-guild chat is carried out in the faux-Jamacian patois of the game. Which can be fun, but can also be very tiring when you aren't in the mood.

As with Sunraven, items become very important - because they form more who you appear to be, rather than what you are capable of doing. My engineers goggles are far more in keeping with my character than an early leather helm, so they have stayed. I have some kit that I wear 'off quest' which are my Shaman robes - I even have a cool troll shaman off-hand staff frill. Part of the game is looking for and gathering stuff like this and its a part that I really enjoy. I'm looking forward to trying to get my voodoo mask and robes at later levels!

However, I have yet to encounter the famed WoW 'RP'. It happens, apparently, in Silvermoon City. It happens in Dalaran and Stormwind. It doesn't happen in Orgrimmar, as far as I can see. It may happen tomorrow night, as I will be attending my first ever in-game, in-character troll wedding!

I have fireworks. Boom!Boom!

Odds and Sods

1. Last episode of Battlestar Galactica tonight. I will cry, its inevitable.

2. Playtesting has started for 'Beat to Quarters'. After months of reading, thinking and note-taking, its all spilling out onto the laptop, which is very gratifying!

3. Looked at how much material I have amassed for the D&H 1809 Miscellany and I was pleasantly shocked. Well over halfway done.

4. D&D4e continues to delivery large packets of awesome although we are running into some adult-life related scheduling difficulties. It had to happen eventually.

5. Still doing my once-a-week raiding thing in WoW and having a blast. Found a nice WoW-Life balance which is suiting everyone

6. I am sat next to a mountain of marking. I foresee much dullness in my future...

7. Off to Conpulsion this weekend, in Edinburgh. Its a funny old convention but its also one of the last areas that hasn't had direct D&H sales, so I should move a few units. Full day of sales on the stall on Saturday. Fun.

8. My Life with Smoothies continues apace. Whilst I may not be losing any noticeable weight, I do feel very virtuous!

9. Kids are coming up to their SATs. Topics around testing of children for no purpose other than to test the school send me into a seething rage at this moment in time.

10. The lawn has been mowed, the garden reclaimation plan is laid and the Council is giving us a proper segmented recycling bin. Woot!

I Am (or Am Not) My Character

Interesting times.

In the World of Warcraft, the next raid instance (Uldaman) has been previewed and the content is causing a bit of a stir. To get to the instance you have to take part in a massive battle using war machines to smash through enemy forces and then take down a massive tank. It all sounds rather epic and frankly quite innovative. However, it is ruffling the feathers of a fair number of players because they cannot 'play their character' - rather, they are in control of a war machine and have the abilities that it conveys. This is seen as devaluing their character and its achievements in gather loot and their achievements in learning to play their class. It could be seen as the final iteration of Blizzard's new 'bring the player, not the class' philosophy. Its all about the player skill rather than the precise build of the particular class they are playing. The comment, however, which prompted this post was this:

" This is dumb. You could just have a Level 1 in the machine playing it!"

Comments like this have always bemused me as I have never really understood the status games that come with being a higher level character in a game where (a) you can make alts, (b) levelling is so easy and (c) not everyone started at the same time.

I am reminded of something my old art teacher, Mr Pringle, told us - " You may or may not be more intelligent than I am, but I probably know more than you ... at the moment. Don't ever confuse knowledge with intelligence."

Or ... " You may or may not be a better player than I am, but I have experienced more content than you ... at the moment. Don't ever confuse level with skill."

Of course, this isn't restricted to WoW. I play in an online wrestling federation game called 'The Wrestling Game' (creative, I know). Its a good game and has provided me with nearly a year of great roleplay and gaming fun. However, the developers and admins just love a fiddle and recent changes to the way federations are ran are nonsensical to say the least. When I commented on this matter, another player replied.

"I don't see why a mid-carder like you should be angry or comment about something like this."

Putting aside the fact that I wasn't in the least bit angry (for once), I was shocked that my status within the federation (as 'King of the Mid Card') and my level within the game (18 out of 25 levels ) should somehow mean that the contribution I could make to the community and the development of the game was less! Obviously I lambasted the poor soul who made the mistake but it was an eye-opener to the particularly damning nature of people when it comes to status and computer games.

Its something I have never seen around a roleplaying table and I assume that this is because we are all familiar with each other in real life. Online, the only real measure that people have is their avatar personas, although in the case of TWG, I've certainly been my normal open self about who I am and what I do so its not as if I am some sort of faceless automaton.

So remember folks - its not about the size of the man, its about the size of his EPICS!

Get Off Your Arse, You Big Horned Druid!

When I first quit WoW, I took Gorthaal (my druid character who I have had since Day One) and retired him to a nice green hill in the tauren starter area. It was a moment of pleasant reflection.

Cut to the present day and Sunraven (my rogue character) has hit the plateau that all characters must come to eventually. All of her equipment is top-tier 'pre-raid' stuff. All of her skills are levelled to raid quality. She is a raid character now and really, there isn't much to do with her except batter Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum. Now thats cool because I have started getting some raiding under my belt with her and it is fun.

So I considered whether to start an alt. No. I just couldn't do it, not again. I tried a warlock but it didn't work. I'm not overly interested in a death knight. The answer was simple. Reactivate and transfer one of my old characters. The choice was between Gorthaal and Kylea (a mage). I chose Gorthaal. I value £15 of Duty & Honour profits far less than I do the month or so it would take to level a new character so it makes a lot of sense. The deed was done this morning, including an enforced name change to the more familiar 'Gorthe'. He lives!

Barely

I made the decision not to go Resto (because I've had that pain already) and not to go Feral (because I have been there, done that, too). That left Boomkin. Supercool. Not the joke-spec it used to be at all. HOWEVER, my casting gear was positively NEOLITHIC. Like Molten Core and Zul Gurub stuff. Even after some conspicuous consumption at the Auction House, things weren't looking that much better. And then I remembered that I could wear cloth and a new-look Gorthe appeared. He's still patchy all over the place but he can rattle off a fair bit of damage and take down three mobs at the same time, which is what I wanted. And there are lots of shiny new buttons to press as well. Lots of them!

In fact thats something that I have enjoyed so far. All of the versatility of the druid class is beginning to come back to me and he's like a little Energiser bunny when he gets going. Healing, damage, Innervate, running, swimming - its all there. Sort of a perpetual motion levelling machine. With shit equipment. Very shit equipment. But no worries, I'll soon have that sorted.

Will Gorthe be my main? No way - there are simply too many excellent druids in the guild to ever consider that. However, as a ranged dps option, he will be there - and as my casual character, he will get slowly progressed until he can hold his own.

Its cool to see the Old Man of WoW out for a run again. Well, a waddle at least!

Phasing and You!

One thing that I haven't mentioned recently is that I have started playing WoW again, casually. Sunraven has been transfered to a PvE realm, joined a guild with some old faces and levelled to 80. Wrath of the Lich King, the new WoW expansion, has proved to be a very entertaining little buy and I have been continually impressed by both the improvements to the game and the depth of the content. However, last night I realised that I had missed one of the most important features new to the game: Phasing.

It was like being punched in the jaw.

Flashback to the early days of WoW. I remember Gorthaal, my druid, battling hard to free the Crossroads from the threat of the Bristleback Motherf*ckers and their seek-and-destroy hyena allies. No matter how many I killed, no matter what rewards I gained, no matter what level I returned to rain hell and damnation on them, they were still a Clear and Present Danger to 11-14th level characters in the vicinity. My pwnage was for naught.

Jump to Age of Conan. Gorth, my Bear Shaman, rescued the City of Tortage from the evils of some nasty dude during the instanced Night period, whilst doing all manner of jobs for people during the Day period. My Night was my Night and my Day was shared with everyone else. In the Night my actions were persistent, in the Day they were not .... until the end of level 20 when I owned the bad guy and the place changed. Under the veil of loading screens, transitional NPCs etc, we had the vestige of a persistent world.

Back to today, well, I won't talk about Wrathgate but I will talk about Shadow Vault. I was on a mission - infiltrate the Shadow Vault for the Knights of the Ebon Blade and deal with it's undead denizens. Fair enough. Kills a few, grab some items - standard fare. However, I then had to convert some NPCs onto the side of the Ebon Blade. OK. And now me and the NPCs attack the Elite Boss Man. We own, naturally and I get sent to tell someone far away that Shadow Vault has been taken.

Now in old WoW, I would return to find that Shadow Vault was still held by undead, my new allies are now enemies and everything has been reset.

Not now. Now I return to find a thriving Ebon Blade supply camp. My new allies are now Vendors or guards. There is a flight point and a Quartermaster and even, I believe, an Innkeeper. The game world has changed.

There are other points in the game where this happens. It doesn't happen everywhere though but when it does it is very subtle indeed. No loading screens. No transitional NPCs. Its just like a story unfolding before you.

This, I believe, has been one of the things that has been requested of MMOs for some time - a truly persistent reality. Of course, this is still a single perspective reality but it goes some of the way. I was truly stunned by it last night because it meant that, in the story, for once, I had really made a difference.

Good stuff.

RPG or MMO? U Decide!

In his fandomlife.net blog, Ian mentioned that our session of Red Box Hack (detailed below) was very much like a face-to-face version of WoW. We created a WoW zone, we had characters which developed into WoW archetypes and we followed a WoW style quest path. A number of threads of Story Games have asked the question - 'Why has RBH taken off so quickly?'. I've been trying to unpack both these things for the last couple of days and the answers I have come up with are very, in my opinion, illuminating.

I have a couple of oft mentioned beliefs around this topic. The first is that WoW does D&D better than D&D does D&D. The second is that a lot of our roleplaying hang-ups are tied to the hobbies wargaming background.

The first one can be seen as a little glib but from a 'kills things, take their stuff, get harder so that you can kill harder things and take their stuff' point of view - that being the core mechanic of D&D - WoW simply presents a more accessible, better presented and more integrated and fundamentally more fulfilling play experience. Note that I have not mentioned roleplaying in that lot. Controversially, from my memories of Red Box D&D and my crumbling AD&D books I cannot remember a whole helluva lot of guidance on roleplaying. To mentions of story or plot, motivation or arcs - it was just 'find patron, kill monster, take stuff, level'

However when you try to inject roleplaying into WoW it all takes a horrible nosedive into madness. Name-Nazi's report players for having names that they believe are not in keeping with the rules. The very worst excesses of faux-Shakespeare come out as everyone gets a little Kenneth Branagh on their ass. And strangely, all of their personal quests have stopped being to confront the Lord of Molten Core and now rotate around Outland. Hmmm.... It just doesn't work in the same way.

Addressing my second point, what D&D also suffers from is a heavy reliance on some very pointless rules. Movement, Range, Encumberance, a Vancian magic system that would never have made 'Mage' a choice to be given at a Careers Day etc. The problem with all of these is that they tend to be quite abstract things. In WoW they are not - you move as fast as you move, you carry whatever you can until your bags are full, you are either in range or you are not and you either have the mana and components to cast a spell or you do not. The machine engine does the work for you - no book-keeping needed.

What 'out of the box' D&D and WoW do share is a very straight forward adventure structure based around questing. Get quest, go here, go there, go back again, go here, kill Big Monster, get treasure. Thats basically it. Where WoW wins again is that D&D has these annoying things called Wandering Monsters whereas WoW has mobs which you can run around (unless they are bloody hyenas or murlocs!). Wandering monster serve no purpose except as a resource depleter.

So whats this got to do with Red Box Hack?

I believe that Ian is spot on - the design of RBH is like an MMO transfered onto a tabletop. Its stripped down all of the shite from out of the box D&D and replaced it with transparent and easy to handle subsystem. Range is simply a matter of arenas and movement is similarly a simple matter of move or fight. Encumberance is now a case of 0,1,2 or 3 'slots' being taken up by weapons or armour. Spells and abilities are constantly available but limited in scope.

And it is at a table - and that makes all of the difference. It takes that simplicity of execution from the MMO stance and places it down onto the familiar gaming surface, thus allowing us to inject the personal into the play. This happily removes the pitfalls of RP servers that I outlined above. So MMO playability and personal social interaction in a face to face environment? Sounds appealing... I think so.

I firmly believe that RBH has tapped into the fun that we all remember from our youth playing D&D and WFRP and Rolemaster and a number of other old school dungeon bashing systems - a fun that we are increasingly familiar with from the MMO side of things. Its a testimony to the breadth of the hobby that a game which is so unashamedly rooted in old-school play is so popular in the face of the more serious, self-reflective, heavily narrative structured games that are being published by the same sources at the moment.

We all need a bit of fun once in a while! Whether RBH will be able to maintain this momentum into the future or whether the joke will run thin quickly is another matter altogether.

Neil

OK, So I Cried...

Tonight, I took my WoW characters on what was likely to be their final journey. Likely, not definitely. It was actually quite an emotional experience. I felt I should tell the girls that 'Daddy wouldn't be playing WoW anymore' because they really enjoyed parts of me playing the game. At first they were laughing and joking about it but then they became quite concerned about the fate of Kylea and especially Gorthaal.

It's strange, because those are the two characters that I have really grown attached to. Indeed, the first thing I did tonight was clear out some of the chaff from my account. So goodbye to Barklee (my bank alt, made utterly useless by the enchanting nerf in the expansion), Madusa (my warlock experiment) and Gorthadin (a paladin, if you didn't guess). I was going to delete Swallow and Spit, but I thought better of it. She's a babe. Not one flicker of emotion crossed me when I typed 'DELETE' into the box. They are nothing.

Gortessa was my shaman, a figure of much mockery from me. At the time, I loved levelling her but she was such a pain to play - I simply fell out of love with her. She became the worlds best equipped bank alt. So it was fitting that she donned her armour and took vigil above the Orgrimmar bank.

Kylea used to be my alt, but she increasingly became my main. For someone that levelled as a resto druid for 60 levels, the sheer unbridled power of a mage was intoxicating. As a toon she really kicked ass, but she never really clicked with me as a character. She is now sitting on a flying oasis high above Nagrand, with her feet up, relaxing.

Gorthaal however, is another matter all together. Maybe the Tauren 'nature' connected with me somewhere hidden and deep? Maybe the role of the healer that I did for so long was my true calling? Maybe it is just because Gorth is my first character and my memories of his adventures are so vivid, even from Day One, EU Opening. He's been the workhorse character, slow and steady winning the race. He's the toon people associate me with. In essence, in WOW, Gorth is me. I wanted him to, in a very soft 'Toy Story' style ending, to have a peaceful place for his digital retirement. Little was I to know what would happen.

I was hijacked by Nathanial, aka Mark, my mate from the pub and the guy who took over the GM-hood of the Dungeoneers from me and he said 'You didn't think you were going there alone'. I nearly cried. In fact I did have a tear in my eye. In near silence we flew to Thunder Bluff and then rode through Bloodhoof and into Red Thingy Mesa. I found my hill and sat down. We chatted for a moment about my quitting and then with a /salute and a/sleep, Gorthaal finally got his rest. And yes, I found it sad. And that was really strange - it is just a game after all? No, it's more than that, it's a community and a representation of you within that community. It is more than just a game.

And so it ends. Just over two years of a wonderful gaming experience. I spoke at length with my wife about my cancellation and why I had chosen to do it. I think I might just not have the time or rather the regularity of time to be able to really PLAY another MMO ever. However I do not regret the experience one iota. It's been a fantastic experience, with the highest highs and the lowest lows. The worst bit? That has to be the split in the Dungeoneers and the seismic changes that made to so many people's games. The best bit? It's hard to say - seeing Ragnaros and Ossirian dead was great, being able to take part in taking down Azuregos and Kazzak was cool. No, the best bit was probably when Dave, Andrew and I took PAIN to the Alliance in Arathi Basin. Great pvp memories.

Now, it's time to concentrate on my writing - fanfic and roleplaying games - and to squeeze every drop of fun out of the kids before they grow too old to care.

One last time though.... FOR THE HORDE!!!!

Neil

Breaking News: WoW Cancelled

I cancelled my WoW account this morning, with 1 day left on my subscription. More on this later.

Neil

All Good Things...

...do indeed come to an end, and it would appear that my time with World of Warcraft is hurtling in that direction. Life (well, work mainly, which I refuse to identify as life) is making it impossible for me to consider the time and energy needed to commit to endgame raiding in The Burning Crusade. My time is too precious to grind reputation and spend hours at a keyboard in pursuit of 'teh phat lootz'. I have better things to do, it would appear.

I would have quite happily toddled along with the game, if I had been able to stay attached to my current guild, 'If In Doubt, AFK Out'. However, Iain, the guildmaster, has just announced that the minimum requirements for membership is the ability to commit one night a week to raiding. One night? That can't be hard, can it? Well, at the moment, with me crawling in from work at 7.00pm after logging 9 hour days without a break, yes, yes it is. There was a possibility that there would be some sort of 'friends' status extended, but it appears that was just a rumour. It's a serious business, endgame raiding, and you don't need people clogging up your guild list with their part-time avatars.

I could seek another guild. I could return to the Dungeoneers - I'm sure Matt/Grimvok would have me if I paid him with enough red wine. I could seek membership of some other random faction of freaks and misfits. I could try to start my own guild. OK, that last one was a joke. However, in the end, I don't think it would be a good idea. I'm very jaded with the entire guild experience, especially the 'guilds within a guild' nonsense and the absolutely dire levels of communication that these things seem to engender in everyone. It really isn't worth the hassle.

So, I have to decide what to do with Gorthaal, Gortessa and Kylea - oh and the pre-pubescent Gorthadin of course. Will they become dormant? Will they go to the great ebay auction in the sky? Will they be passed onto a friend? Will they just tootle around Azeroth wondering whats happening?

Who knows...

Neil

Forging a New (Virtual) Reality

Things have been pretty frantic over the last few days and it has been pretty damned good. Lets start off with World of Warcraft. I had a potter for a few hours on Saturday morning but other than that I haven't touched it for about a week now. And guess what? I've hardly missed it. OK, thats a little shy of the truth - I'm not missing the game, nor am I missing the people, but I have got those odd feelings of compulsion and a little guilt regarding the guild. However the actual gameplay is just not needed. Thats very strange, especially considering the amount I have played the game. I don't know how long my WoW holiday will last, but at the moment it's going fine.

So, if I am not playing WoW, what the hell am I doing with my time?

Roleplaying has taken to the ascendency in a major way as of late. A couple of weeks ago we played a session of Pendragon that, I believe, most people around the table would rather forget about. I haven't mentioned it specifically in 'The Bottom of the Glass' because so much was mentioned about it elsewhere. I would rather dwell upon the way that, I believe, it acted as a little wake-up call for many of the people around the table.

Maybe we had become a little complacent? Maybe we were a little too full of our own cleverness? Maybe we just forgot that we were there to ROLEPLAY? I have no idea. However our last session was nothing short of magical. Nigel excelled himself in the GMs chair by taking things a little slower, slipping in some tried and tested GMing tools and making the game focussed wholly on the characters. Around the table the banter and near constant WoW side references stopped dead. We played. We played in-character, we expanded the story, we energised the setting. It was just brilliant. Moreover, we also established 'Steak and Cinema Sunday' - a Sunday once-a-month where we have something to eat and then see a suitable gamer-esque movie. Our first one will be '300'.

Subsequent to that session we have been abuzz with relationship mappings, ideas for storylines and other hints and help. Really, it is 'Ask not what your GM can do for you, but what you can do for your GM' at the moment.

Omniverse continues apace and we had our first real face-to-face playtest session. It was amazing. I cannot really describe the buzz of seeing people you respect taking your little game very seriously indeed. Questions were asked, debates were had and you know what - they 'got it'! That was the best bit, they seemed to understand and buy into the ideas I had put down. Oh, I know it was only character generation but it made me feel magnificent.

A smorgasbord of gaming and related pursuits seems to be my fate at the moment. And that, readers of my sometimes rather pessimistic blog, is a VERY GOOD THING INDEED!!

Neil

DING!

Last night, amidst the wonderful vista that is Netherstorm in Outland, Gorth finally 'dinged' 70. It was late, so I received a light smattering of 'grats' and then settled into the knowledge that my month long journey of discovery had come to an end ... and the new endgame was looming before me.

However, the question that was preying on my mind was not where to start with this new challenge, but whether I want take part in it at all!?

As I have been questing my little head off, I have been watching in the background as my guildmates take part in a neverending series of instance runs and reputation grinds to get 'keys' - and these keys allow access to other instances which are harder and then more keys and more instances. You get the idea?

I have had no desire to instance during The Burning Crusade at all. The ridiculous dichotomy of the druid has hit home hard. I have levelled as a pure feral form and I am death on four paws. Its fantastic. However, when I have to shift over the healing I really am a stand-in medic at best. To become an effective group healer again, I would have to return to Restoration spec and that makes all of the wonderful fun I have had disappear. I'll readily accept that I am a far better healer than I am a tank or a dps player but still... returning to the tree and losing my wonderful damage potential makes me sad.

The schedule is another thing that I simple cannot find myself getting enthused about. The idea that I would put whole evenings aside to run dungeon-after-dungeon to get eventually incremental increases in the equipment my avatar wears seems .... well, ridiculous! I've been there and done that. I've dedicated countless evenings to the pursual of items like the Staff of Dominance or the Cauterising Band. Even then, the acquisition of the items was always less important than the fun and frolics that was being had with the people I was playing with.

Sadly, my increasing feeling is that 'AFK' is not really a fun and frolics guild. The people in it are great folk, and really good players but therein lies the problem. There's a certain degree of focus, a certain tenacity and a certain level of expectation within the guild that increasingly doesn't seem to match the way I feel about playing the game. I certainly don't want to be holding a spot in a guild with such high endgame aspirations if I cannot dedicate myself to matching those aspirations. Thats not fair on the people in the guild or those that wish to join it.

In the end however, it also comes down to time and how I spend it. I have a lot of things on my mind at the moment, namely work-related nonsense. I need to look closely at how I use that time and how I make it work for me. Is spending four evenings challenging to get one upgraded piece of equipment in a computer game really what I want or need at the moment?

hmmmm....

Neil

The Burning Crusade: One Week Later

Well, nearly a week - lets not quibble.

I spent most of the weekend pounding into the content of The Burning Crusade and I have to say that in the most part I am mightily impressed. Theres obviously been some lessons learned regarding the way the game is played and the good and bad points of the previous content.

Presentation and graphics have really been improved. The game simply looks better and that feeds into the weird feeling of Outland. There are some simple tricks being used - like not making all of the terrain flat - that add to the weirdness factor. The re-skinned mobs look great, especially the voidwalkers and ogres. There's also quite a lot of good lore within the massive (and I mean MASSIVE) number of quests that can be had, which makes the progression that little bit more immersive. I'm still not quite sure why we are throwing our bodies against Hellfire Citadel, but it's fun anyway. As I travelled from Hellfire Peninsula to Zangermarsh, the scene changed again and we enter more story-quest based stuff. I am actually intrigued to find out why the lakes are being drained by the naga of all people and what it has to do with the Sprogshroomthingy people.

There are some subtle changes within the quests. There are still the standard four types of quest: kill X mobs, goto X NPC, collect X items and explore X areas. However, in Zangermarsh you have a guided 'Explore X areas' quest where you are turned into the druid stormcrow form. AWESOME stuff. There are some 'hidden' rep collection things going on as well, which make some of those random pieces of chaff that you gather more useful. Oh, and an escort quest that runs. Yeah, just read that one again! Brilliant.

There are some downsides. The decision not to put any class trainers in Outland was a clever one - if only to make a reason for the mains to travel back to Azeroth. However it is a pain in the arse, making a well-stocked bank alt almost essential to act as an agent for the main character. The auction house has gone mental, as predicted. However this is partially fuelled by the vendor inflation in Outland. When leather scraps can sell for over 1g a stack, the normal price is going to well exceed that expected of such menial crap.

The worst downside is camping. Oh boy, the boss mobs are camped to fuck. There are a load of boss kill quests in Zangermarsh and you have to queue to kill these guys. However, not everyone has the same morals regarding this. There are queue jumpers. There are AOE spammers - including the infurirating paladin consecrate tagging method. It's just maddening. The respawn times really need to change on these mobs.

So, how's Gorthaal doing? He dinged 63 last night with maxed out First Aid and Skinning. Leatherworking is at 326 and he has a whole new set of feral gear with an AP of just under 1300. He still has a shedload of quests to do in Zangermarsh and one of two bits and bobs to do in Hellfire Citadel. I think when he finished Zangermarsh, I'll bring Kylea in and run her through as well. Hell, I'm even tempted to give Gortessa a run out!

All in all, I approve wholeheartedly of The Burning Crusade. It's revitalised the game for me in the short term at least. Whether the new endgame has any longevity is another matter altogether.

Neil

Bittersweet Expansion Thoughts

After a little technical difficulty (amazing what the slightest smudge on a CD can do to an install...) Gorthaal and the rest of my cabal of characters entered the age of The Burning Crusade. It's been a moment myself and millions of other World of Warcraft players have been waiting on for over a year. Was it worth it? Yes and sadly no.

My first half hour of play was spent re-speccing Gorth from full Resto to full Feral. I will fully admit that I seem to have made a terrible mistake over the last few weeks, putting the end-game adventures of the guild before the preperation for the expansion. Having +768 healing does -nothing- for you if you are questing. You cannot heal the mobs to death! That left me feeling rather gimped in my new feral form. Where I had managed to assert myself as consistently one of the top three raid healers in the Guild, now I'm back to 'token feral guy with good equipment'. Of course, this isn't wholly a bad thing - I can pitch-hit pretty well as a healer still, but it feels a little sad.

Anyway, that sadness was mitigated wholly when myself and Dave teamed up for levelling once again as a gallant duo of feral druids. Oh boy! Being able to happily deal with two or three mobs at the same time is a very nice feeling to have. Seeing us take down a level 60 elite, in cat form, in seconds, was even more satisfying. It's nice to have the power back.

The expansion areas themselves are pretty damned good. The graphics are sweet, the mobs look fantastic and there seems to have been a change in the way that the quests have been structured thats a little less linear and has a bit more storyline. One thing which struck me is that very early on you get the chance to do a 'bombing run' which is immense fun and shows off the flying graphics really well AND you can repeat the quest for fun. Thats a nice little sideshow. I slipped through Hellfire Penisula and Zangermarsh and wandered around Shattrath City for a while and did a load of quests. I ended the night about 75% of the way to 61st level, which I was very pleased with.

However, the competitive soul in me is CRYING about the people who are levelling faster. Goddamit, I used to be the levelling machine. I was the one that was first to do everything. Not you guys. Me! Oh what a seriously flawed little munchkin I am!! However, on the other hand, I really want to experience the quests and the content a little more. It's worth it - which I will come onto later - and it's what I have been waiting for. But still, every DING! I see in guildchat makes me tug inside. Faster Faster Levelling Master!

Similarly, I felt really left out last night knowing that guildmates and RL mates were plumbing the depths of new instanced content together. I guess after months of doing everything as one massive group and sharing the highs and lows together, I'd forgotten the nature of 5-mans.
Maybe it's just a case of so much to do and so little time before it becomes passe?

Anyway, whats good? Well the drops and rewards are pretty spankingly awesome! FINALLY Blizzard seem to have some understanding that quests should have decent rewards - and these are DECENT, obscenely so. There has been much documentation about it, but I will say it again. Greens that are better than Epics. Thats all that needs to be said. I got my fair share of decent drops last night too, which was kind of cool. Don't know quite what I will do with them though.
Of course, this nirvana is balanced by other factors. Everyone is there. I logged onto my bank alt in Orgrimmar and there was nobody there. OK, thats a slight understatement. There were about eight characters there - mostly bank alts. The place was dead. The Alliance could have come in and had a party in Thralls knickers and no-one would have cared. That seems a shame.
Similarly, I realised that the expansion has rendered a load of the old content dead-in-the-water. Loot powers the game and the quest rewards in Outland outstrip almost everything you can get in Stratholme, Scholomance, Dire Maul, BRD, LBRS and URBS. They are simply distractions now - stuff for people who like quests to do once or twice before they hit the real content in Outland. It's like if there were a dozen instances you could have chosen from at 50th level instead of Sunken Temple and Mauradon. Blizzard might as well close the Molten Core server down. Who will want to grind their rep in Zul Gurub for a chest piece that gets replaced by a quest reward in two days time at level 61?

Now, I can see the reasoning and the hard decision that has had to be made. I can understand that Ragnaros has been defeated, Nefarian thwarted, Ossirian spanked, Cthun blinded and Kelthuzad burned. The old threats are gone and new ones have come around. Thats great, but the instances are still there. Hakkar is still stood on the top of his bloody pyramid for anyone stupid enough to get him.

I feel sorry for those people buying the game for the first time. I doubt they will experience the highs and the lows of the level 60 endgame like we did. They will not leap around the room like a silly prick when they first see Onyxia killed. They will not have that moment of sheer achievement when we downed Ossirian. They will not see what we have seen and do what we have done.

And that seems quite sad.

So hurrah for the Burning Crusade. Its brilliant in it's own way. But sorrow for World of Warcraft because I think it might have lost a little bit of it's soul...

Neil

Walls Come Tumbling Down

Anyone who has had a passing interest in the state of Horde PvE on Silvermoon over the last few months will have witnessed some quite apocalyptic times. Virtually every major end-game guild has splintered, broken, sundered and split. Sometimes it has been quite amicable and sometimes it has been very very painful indeed. New guilds have come and gone, mixing and matching members of the other guilds. It has been a very turbulent time.

However, it has thrown up one marvelous achievement. A metaphoric shoot of hope growing through the ashes of the pre-Burning Crusade destruction.

The High End 'Elite' PUG!

See, the new smaller guilds so not quite have enough people to run a full MC run. Some don't have enough people to do Zul Gurub. However, they do have burgeoning friends lists and more than enough people scattered around guilds who can vouch for people to join their raids.

So what does this mean? It means that the horrid guild snobbishness that prevailed has been forced to disappear. I was lucky enough to be on a Molten Core run with players from half a dozen guilds - including some that had previously been plundering Naxx and AQ40. I was thrilled that there was no 'looking down the nose' and no patronisation. These players who have gone far beyond where I have simply seemed to assume that I - well, tbh, we - knew what we were doing and could get on with our job. And we did.

Now there are plans for PUB Blackwing Lair runs (!), regular MCs, a frantic schedule of ZGs and some AQ20s. I even saw a PUG AQ40 yesterday!!

So what makes this era of inter-guild cooperation so bizarre? Well, two things really. Prior to the Great Sundering, a lot of guilds (including my own) were very stand-offish about being included with other guilds. We were superior to many and inferior to most and we knew our place in the hierarchy. Now thats all gone to pot and the 'strata' of player that you place yourself next to in comparison is less guild based and more activity based. Hell, it's like which team you get picked for at school.

The second thing is the loot rules: ironic in that this was the silliness that caused the downfall of the Dungeoneers. The accepted rules are simply stated at the start of the raid (usually 1 epic per person unless all pass, and T2 priority to mains) and everyone unquestioningly agrees. No mess, no fuss, no points, no lists - just need and greed.

*shakes head*

Who would have thought eh?

Neil