Tokenism

If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements.
~~~

Well, I've procrastinated enough this morning, and my extra hour for writing has frittered down to less than half. Unlike Belghast, I don't suffer from insomnia (normally a good thing), so I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I was up and dressed and when down to the dining area to get breakfast fairly early. Amusingly, I even saw a coworker who had clearly just tumbled out of bed to grab some coffee. Unfortunately, none of that has really brought me any closer to a topic.

Bad Luck Tokens

Belghast brought up a topic near to my gamer's heart this morning: the vagaries of RNG as a method for getting gear. He and a friend came up with the idea for "Bad Luck Tokens" that players might receive if they don't get any drops in a dungeon or raid. Accumulating several of these tokens would enable the player to buy gear from a special vendor, maybe not Best-in-Slot, but certainly noteworthy. I immediately thought of the various tiers of tokens folks get for heroics every day in WoW (or at least they did during WotLK).

Balkoth and I had a lively discussion a few months ago about this very topic, and ended up basically agreeing to disagree. You may guess what side of the argument I was on. While RNG has its place, the laws of probability will always leave a certain number of players out in the cold, so to speak. But too many people fail to realize it, because many more players eventually get the desired item—or something better that comes out in the next patch.

Anyway, gotta run. There are computer networks to put together today. I hope everyone has a good one.

What Raiding Was—and Isn't—for Me

I fear that I have come across as belittling end-game raiding in several recent posts. I don't. I know it requires a lot of individual skill and team coordination. But what end-game raiding is not, is something I enjoy doing.

I was involved in "casual" raiding guilds for at least a year, total, between TBC and WotLK. Those people provided a form of friendship as I went through some tough times in my life. WoW was my escape hatch, my pressure valve. I raided because that's what my online friends were doing. But we were all there for different reasons. Eventually, I had to take a break from raiding because business put me in time zones incompatible with our raid times, not to mention the interesting things to see and do in the places I visited.

When I first stepped out into Coldridge Valley in the summer of 2006, I was almost awestruck at the incredible world Blizzard created. The novelty and sense of adventure I experienced through Vanilla and two expansions was wonderful.

Raiding is not that for me. I eventually decided it was not how I wanted to spend my evenings. Repeating content over and over for weeks and months—regardless of how easy it became before we moved on to the next challenge—lost its appeal long before I came to the realization that my raid group didn't really need me. I was totally replaceable.

And that was OK, because I moved on to other things, other games. I haven't spent nearly as much time playing other games as I did playing World of Warcraft. Within a month or so after I quit raiding, I met my lovely bride, and things changed again.

I may be a bit of a gaming nomad now, but I am not alone in my wanderings.

Doom Raids and Dice Rolls, or Chasing the Loot Piñata

Today, I am responding to a continued discussion Balkoth and I were having in the commentary of my Guild Drama post from earlier this week. Since the conversation was dragging on, I decided to cheat and get another post out of the deal.

Some of this might not make sense if you haven't followed that thread, especially since some of the points Balkoth brings up are less about Guild Drama, per se, and more about Raid mechanics, and why I personally do not participate in raids in any game (all quote blocks from Balkoth unless otherwise noted):

I'm mainly curious in what's making you tick here since game design is something that interests me and I admit I find many of your desires perplexing. They make sense from an individual perspective but they would seem to be terrible game design — hence my questions to probe at the heart of the matter.

This is ME!

Before I take this any further, I want to point out that I feel Balkoth is operating from Whatever I Think Is Un-Fun Is Bad Game Design Syndrome. I have repeatedly stated what I enjoy about about MMORPGs and what I do not; even things that I used to enjoy that I do no longer—like raiding—and why. And I am far from unique in my opinion that certain aspects of raid design and gameplay are not enjoyable.

Keeping Up with the Proudmoores

Jeromai had brought up ArenaNet's personal reward system wherein each individual player gets a private reward for killing a boss. This works out generally well in Guild Wars, where "grouping" is often no more formal than standing next to someone and shooting at the same thing they are. We won't go into here how the lack of competition for resources and kills creates a friendlier player atmosphere in the game, in my opinion.

Needless to say, I agree with Jeromai's assessment. However, Balkoth begs to differ, because it "eliminates part of the raiding meta-game."

Except we're talking about a social group, right? Where you know what gear others have? And can see that some of their gear has changed? . . . You will remember what your guildmates have, though (especially if you notice that they recently obtained an item you want).

There is only a certain subset of player who care enough about the gear of others to bother to inspect them. Even in my closest Guild groups, I think I can count on my fingers and toes the total number of times I have inspected someone's gear with more than mild interest in a given piece of gear. In seven years of MMO gaming. And to know whether it's changed since the last time I looked? Not a chance.

No Wonder It's Called Playing Craps

Balkoth had asked whether I disliked the pace of gearing or the randomness to which I responded, "The Randomness."

So let's say the current averages you at 0.5 items per boss killed and you will, on average, get your ideal set in 50 boss kills. Would you prefer a system where each time you kill a boss you get 0.1 items and you're guaranteed to get your ideal set in 250 kills? You'd always make progress toward your goal...but you'd make it more slowly.

I'll ignore the fact that Balkoth changes the rate of progress between his two scenarios and go with the faulty reasoning of the "average." Most RPG designers use Random Number Generation to determine what drops out of a loot table on any given kill, in addition a host of other game events (fight damage, etc.) I saw an article a few months ago, I cannot for the life of me remember where, that discussed a problem with this system when dealing with a quest drop. The scenario follows as best I can remember.

Let's say the devs design a quest to collect a doodad off a specific type of mob. Since I can't remember, we'll call them "Zhevra Hooves." They build the loot table so there is a one in ten chance for the hoof to drop, and then place ten zhevras in the general vicinity of the quest. The assumption here is that by the end of the killing the ten zhevras, the player will have the hoof. The problem is that each kill resets the dice roll. The player's chances of getting the hoof are no better on the tenth zhevra than they were on the first. A certain percentage of players will get the hoof on their first kill and a certain percentage of players will not get a hoof within ten kills, therefore having to wait for the respawn. In fact, it's within the realm of possibility (though highly unlikely) that a player will never get that hoof. (Just for journalistic integrity: the actual drop rate for Zhevra hooves is about 31%, overall. The article proposed a way of increasing the drop rate based on the number of kills already done, but it hasn't been implemented in any game that I aware of.

Now back to endgame gearing. In the scenario Balkoth favors, he says the average of 0.5 items per boss killed leads to an average accumulation of an ideal set in 50 boss kills. By that I infer that there are 25 components in an ideal set; and that, at a minimum, a player would need 25 successful boss-kills to get the set. (This ignores the possibility that a single boss might drop more than one component of the set, but these numbers a complete ass-pull, anyway. I suspect that the true mean rate of gear progression is far lower than 50 boss kills, or even 50 complete raids.) Such a lucky person is likely being carried by a group of friends—who don't need any of the gear—doing this person a favor. Remember, it's not just about the loot dropping, but winning whatever system is in place to actually receive the loot over everyone else in the group. (Full disclosure, I have been carried in such a way, fairly recently.)

Since there is a discrete non-zero minimum and it's fairly close to the mean that Balkoth references, I'd guess that a majority of players might get their gear between 25 and 50 boss-kills, in that scenario. The reason I'd guess that is because there is no upper limit in that probability curve. It's entirely possible that some players would never complete the set in any number of boss-kills, certainly not within a reasonable number like 150. And the Game devs, with every new raid tier and every expansion, slide the goalposts further back, meaning this patch's ideal set will be next patch's vendor trash, at least for those hard-core souls on the bleeding edge of content. So for many players, maybe most., the slow, steady progress of tokens or currency is at least an alternative to "striking it rich" with dice rolls and loot piñatas.

And I'm not just talking abstractly. Poor drop rates on RNG loot is a significant source of angst for many players. How many players like me have decided the loot is just not worth the time and effort? The grind through the first four or five bosses to get to the next one, to bash our collective heads against it until it's down, to get it eventually "on farm" and move on to the next because we're finally all geared up enough is simply not interesting enough, in and of itself, and then the rate of extrinsic reward is pathetic as well. In the case of WoW, the gold sinks of repairs and such were so onerous they had to create dailies, just so people could make the gold they needed to be able to continue raiding. And don't get me started on the disparities between PvE and PvP gear, and gear progression.

Yes, people will argue that the RNG of loot drops is what makes killing a boss exciting, but after killing a boss for the 20th time and still not seeing that sword you want, I don't think it's really excitement that you're describing.
~Dan Sz, Altoholism, "The Problem with Boss Loot"

This video from the excellent folks at Penny Arcade discusses the Skinner Box of RNG, and the difference between compelling gameplay and engaging gameplay:

"L2P" - The Warcry of the Hard Core

I also said, "In end-game raiding, the only progress is gear-based (especially if you're a guide student, not going in "blind" to learn the fights)." To which Balkoth responded:

I think you're seriously underestimating the difficulty of execution. Even something like "Dodge the lightning orbs on Heroic Jin'rokh" — that's a lot harder to actually do than it is to read in a guide.

Balkoth, I think you're terribly underestimating my ability to gauge difficulty. The Gatekeeper DPS challenge in Rift (with no other reward than unlocking Nightmare modes [EDIT: and some XP]) is simple: don't stand in the fire, purge at the right time, and stay away from the add—all while while maintaining a steady rate of damage on Oscar himself. Anyone who's actually done it can tell you how difficult those instructions are to execute. I'd estimate it took me at least 8 hours of actual game-time—and countless attempts—to learn the "dance" and complete the challenge. And that was after I made sure I had an "ideal" set of gear, not to mention "spell" rotation. Even then, my preparation was probably sub-optimal.

But my point was that unless a group is on the bleeding edge or going in blind on purpose, there are plenty of guides out there on every boss fight in every MMO. Raid leaders (and members) are expected to study them to learn good strategies for beating each boss. Execution is a different story, and folks going in blind will have to the learn the fights "the hard way." In all honesty, I prefer this method, because there is an element of surprise and excitement to the dungeon. But hard-charging loot hounds would rather get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Make no mistake, I love experiencing new dungeon mechanics, and mastering them. But then I want to move on. I want the challenges to be skill-based, not gear-based.

Think about this the next time you see some player character in truly Epic Pixels strutting their stuff in Orgrimmar, Destiny's Reach, or Meridian: Despite what may be months or even years of raiding, learning strategies and tactics for epic battles against nigh invincible foes, everything they're wearing boils down to good luck on some random dice rolls.
~Me

As a concrete example of a game in which I have found my "desires" fulfilled, I greatly prefer The Secret World's system of gear progression. While there are loot tables and RNG, the crafting system is set up in such a way that gear no one needs can be broken down into materials that can be combined into things the players do need. The endgame dungeons have tokens that represent steady progress toward better gear, in addition to the random drops. And then the mysteries, narrative, and other features of TSW—while not necessarily unique to the game, as shown in the PA video above—are engaging enough to keep me interested, without the top-end gear chase.

Perplexing Playstyles

There is no One True Game ideally designed to appeal to everyone. If there were, I suspect we would all be playing it. But there isn't, hence the proliferation of different games, not just in the MMORPG genre, but all forms of "play."

I've said it before: "You may not be an "always-on" hardcore player, but you clearly find enjoyment in doing different things in game than I do. And that's OK." [EDIT: I felt my style of play was being criticized.] I find that all too often devs and players forget that the R in in RPG stands for Role and not Roll. But I'm not saying you have to stand around a tavern speaking pseudo-archaic English; something I almost never do, either. If you're into min-maxing and raid progression through lucky rolls on loot, that's great. Not everyone wants to play that way.  I hope that clears up my perplexing position on Gearing and Progression.

Finishing Elites and Facing Oscar

It's Thursday morning, and I am just barely getting to what happened on Monday. (I told you, someone turned me into a newt!) Early Monday evening, I got together with Galactrix, Gigabyte, and Scooterz to run The Darkness War Elite instance on LoneStarBelle. I've been through it a lot in normal mode, and the last boss fight in particular has long given groups fits. Xander joined us not long after we started, and the bosses went down like clockwork. I think I died maybe once, due to an add.

Since we made it through The Darkness War so quickly, Galactrix suggested we run the last instance I needed before facing the Gatekeeper, The Facility.

This one had a few surprises for Scooterz and me, but we made it through fairly easily, wiping only once on the last boss.

I am ready for Nightmares, right?

Only one hurdle to endgame dungeon running remains, Oscar, the Grouchy Gatekeeper. I chose Furia, or the DPS challenge. According to some, DPS is actually the hardest version of Oscar's Challenge.

As I said to Mogsy and Mario yesterday, my build rocks; my footwork, not so much. I think have the right stats, but either my hardware or my wetware is not up to the task yet. The DPS fight is not overly complicated intellectually. But my reflexes aren't quite up to snuff, and I tend to step in a circle at just the wrong time.

Here are my current stats, and my current Deck. I just realized this shows the "Volatile Current" passive, which is useless without "Shock." I was playing with Shock, but was trying to increase the number of "Strike" attacks to take advantage of the "Strike Force" passive. I need to replace VC.

Granted, I've only spent a portion of two evenings in the attempt. I missed Secret Monday with the Knights of Mercy. Tuesday, I went out to eat with my daughters, then spent a chunk of the evening battling Oscar. Last night, I ran a quick "Enter the Filth" run and spent some time working on this blog and reading some short stories from the superb series "A Bumbling Colonial in London" starring Frank Calhoun.

Now I open the comment forum to you, Dear Reader. Do you have any pointers on beating the DPS Gatekeeper?

Secret Monday: . . . and What Are We Doing in This Handbasket?

This week for the Knights of Mercy Secret Monday event, our fearless leader, Maric (aka "Solaris") needed to finish just one more elite before taking on Oscar the Gatekeeper: Hell Eternal. Since we had five people on and LoneStarBelle needed the dungeon, as well, I jumped at the chance to join up. Mogsy and Mr. Mogsy jumped on a bit after we started and did their own thing. We're tiny but mighty.

We started out with me in the healing role—using my new Necromancer Deck—and Chucho tanking. That worked OK for the first couple boss battles, though Piddy-Cent's mega-DeePS got him one-shotted a couple times. Unfortunately, since the Necromancer depends heavily on Assault Rifle damage to set up leech heals, but many of the later bosses have damage reflecting shields, Necro was not an effective combination. LSB doesn't have enough healing gear to support a Blood/Fist build, so Pid took on the healer role, while I switched to AoE/DPS Support (a role I am very comfortable with).

It took a while to get through all the fights (with several wipes). But in the end, we were victorious! Tententacles (Chucho) commented on how great it is to run through these dungeons with a patient group of people. I find my patience lasts much longer when folks are pulling together than when they are playing the blame game. I know I had to re-examine my build a couple times, and discovered that LSB has a 10% Purge chance on a certain passive ability I'd never looked very closely at. Chucho had plenty of self-criticism, but he did a fine job tanking. I wish I could have healed better. Thanks go out to Chucho, Piddy-Cent, Solaris, and WickedTryx for a fun run through Hell.

You've seen the other pictures, but here is my ensemble for Monday de la Mode. I call it Kentucky Kick-Ass: brown and white strapless blouse and corset; hat and jeans from the New West outfit, all available from the "Secret Store"; brown ruffle heels from Pangaea; and sunglasses from the Lumie Bounty Hunter Deck.

The League of Extraordinary Knights

The Knights of Mercy did a bit of Elite dungeoneering last night, after a sort of hiatus where we killed oodles of Guardians in a mad rush for vanity items. Of, course two thirds of TSW is vanity items, so there is that.

First, the helicopter ride. I never seem to get fight pics anymore. It always starts with an innocent trip. Everyone's lost in their own thoughts, or tired . . . or slightly bored. For some reason, Thermic (Mr. GC) is never in my field of view. But look at those awesome outfits:

Laeyn Lafitte (MMOGC) and Dex-y Dieu-Le-Veut (Scooterz)

Chucho Arjan Singh (Tententacles), Sikh Red Agent Man
"No, Herr Eichenherz, I expect you to die."

"What? I can't even see her with this stupid eye patch on!"

Dancing in their seats.

One more gratuitous shot.

For some reason, the Elite Ur-Draug ("Cthulhu") kept hitting us harder and harder with every wipe. During the third encounter, we had him down to 5k health when disaster struck. And it only got worse from there. Right before the last fight (we finally downed him), MMOGC (the tank) left the instance and returned, which seemed to solve the issue for her. I still got caught in a cleave that hit me for almost 19k. That's about 15k overkill, considering my DPS-oriented glass-cannon build, and also about 7k more than any tank I've seen could survive. (Chucho was RIGHT, dammit!)

Buuuut, they clearly didn't need me, because they mowed him down while I was stuck in the penalty box. So here we are gloating over his carcass, while the Orochi'copter waits to pick us up. Either we're the most elegant group of Draug slayers in the game or a cadre of Bond villains:

The League of Extraordinary Knights

QOTD: Evolution of a Raider

So here is the challenge that comes with raid balancing. On the one hand you have the raider me from 7 years ago looking for content to constantly devour while wanting to be the absolute best. On the other hand you have the raider me from now that just wants to go in, kill a boss, then go to IHOP for the early bird special.
~~Gloria Boria, the sole resident of  Corgi Island

{sigh} I raided for far less time, but this is still how I feel. I also just came to the realization that I'll never be an MVP on any forum.

On "The Decline of Hardcore"

My friend River, of High Latency Life, wrote a guest post on Syp's Bio Break about how he worries that there aren't any more hardcore gamers in MMOs. Hopefully mine will be up later this week. This is my response.

You know happened to all the hardcore gamers? They grew up and got adult responsibilities. This is not a rant, just an observation. Hardcore gamers are like "hardcore" high school athletes. You could extend that to college athletes, too, I suppose. When you're young, with little responsibility other than getting through school, you have plenty of time to play games. Maybe you're involved in football, or band, or tabletop roleplaying, or maybe even first person shooters or MMORPGs. Heck, maybe you smoke a lot of weed.(Don't do drugs, kids.)

Only a few very lucky people get to continue that utter devotion into adulthood, after they graduate from high school or college. Maybe they become professional athletes or musicians or gamers. That's hardcore. The rest of us get "real" jobs that restrict us to one degree or another from simply doing what we like. We get a significant other that, more likely than not, does not share our enthusiasm for our hobby. We might have kids or ill parents that demand our attention. There isn't time enough in the day.

We're lucky to get a few hours in the evening to relax and play our games. We may get bored with the same old games, and move on to new ones, forever trying to reclaim that feeling we had when we were young and playing hardcore with our friends.

But our friends have grown up, too. If they haven't or we haven't, then we probably grow apart as our interests and responsibilities evolve.

I was in the Army for about four years, and then was lucky to get a job where I knew a lot of the people from my tour of duty. However, the further I get from my time of service, the fewer new people in the office are friends I knew. That doesn't mean that people aren't enlisting and then getting out when their tours are done. I am simply ever more removed from that time myself.

I am sure there are just as many hardcore gamers out there as before, River. You are just no longer moving in those circles, and neither are your friends. There is also the dilution aspect. There may be just as many hardcore players. But as the genre becomes ever more mainstream, they become ever less prominent in the sea of casual gamers who only need a few hours of relaxation after work is over and the kids have gone to bed.

QotD: Factions and PvE

World of Warcraft has single-handedly made me hate the idea of factions in MMORPGS.

~~Gloria, Corgi Island

I was reading this post on Corgi Island about the idea of cross-faction raiding in WoW, using RealID. (Fun new WoW blog, BTW, if you're interested.) I posted a comment which I am re-posting here with some elaboration.

Gloria mentioned in her post how silly it is that she can't muster all of her Real Life friends together to run a raid, especially given declining populations in WoW, added to the fact that the "War" in Warcraft has been largely absent for the past couple expansions anyway. World PvP is dead, partly because of the population and partly because of changes made by the development team. *cough* Southshore/Hillsbrad *cough*

I've heard The Secret World has (will have) inter-faction PvE. With three factions, supposedly PvP can be more easily balanced because the weaker sides and always gang up on the strongest sides. (Can we call that the DAoC Doctrine?) But then, when the shit hits the fan in the PvE story (Lovecraftian horrors consuming the world?), players of different factions can put aside their differences and work together for the greater good. This is something I've always felt was missing in WoW; and it was worse in Rift, where I always felt the two factions had no business fighting each other when their world was facing an existential threat.

What Kind of MMO Player Am I?

I do entirely too much soapboxing on this blog and not enough storytelling. But like most people, I have an opinion; and this is my personal venue for expressing it. A lot is being said in the gaming Twitterverse and Blogosphere with regards to community. Scarybooster has made several posts lately about the quality of the community in various games. Something inspired MMOGC to post about honorable PvP. And Syp, just yesterday, made a post about dealing with Anti-hype. I should have read his advice before getting into a squabble myself on Twitter yesterday. Haters will keep hatin'. Fanbois will keep . . . uh . . . fanning?

The world has a label for those people play certain games: Gamers. Athletic-game players are usually not included in this term. The net nanny at my office blocks gaming news sites, but not ESPN and the like. Reminds me of the way Dex Jettster referred to the Kaminoan "Cloners" in hushed tones in "Attack of the Clones." Much like the terms "Muslim" or "Christian" actually encompass hugely diverse groups of people of differing opinions and philosophies, this broad term, "Gamer," encompasses many different styles of gameplay, from tabletop role-playing and war games, to video-game console first person shooters, RPGs, and massively multiplayer online games. Within MMOGs, you have gamers who prefer player vs. player combat, and others who are so-called end-game raiders. You have casual as opposed to hardcore, long-time veterans and newcomers. Also like the religious terms, the groups encompassed by the term "Gamer" are often at each other's throats over what is the one true way to play the game. Sometimes a player's choice not only of gameplay but their game choice, itself, is derided by other gamers. Frankly, I am sick of it.

I quoted Robert E. Howard in a post in early September:

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

This is more true today in the Internet age than it ever has been in the history of the world. I read in either the book Collapse or Guns, Germs and Steel, both by Jared Diamond, that the people of New Guinea are both smarter than the average American and far more polite. This is because they are more likely to die in a homicide than any any American or European could dream of. Of course, we're not talking about dying in your sleep with a knife in your back. As Captain Malcolm Reynolds once told Doctor Simon Tam in the TV show Firefly:

Diamond said that strangers who meet in the New Guinean jungle complete a ritual wherein they recite their ancestry until they determine whether or not they are distantly related. If they are not related in some way, one or the other is probably not walking away from the scene. If forum users ran the risk of death by their comments--myself included--Internet dialogue would likely be far more civil in tone.

Why are we so quick to disparage someone's intellect or character because of their preference for one game over another? So I don't like Lord of the Rings online and you do. Do I have any right to call into question your mental acuity or parentage? So I prefer PvE leveling and questing to PvP or end-game raiding. And I somehow less of a gamer--less of a person--as a result?

Wolfshead, in a rant about the deficiencies of Rift on Syp's BioBreak, closed with the following:

"There is nothing ahead that has me excited about virtual worlds. I’m tired of the hype. The caliber of the “community” that is dominated by selfish spoiled kids, teens and adult slackers is at an all time low, the game design predictable and stale. The typical virtual world of today feels like a MacDonald’s playground. When I started playing MMOs 12 years ago I couldn’t wait to get home from work to log on. I haven’t had the feeling for years."

I thought for a second he was going to yell at all of us to get off his lawn. The number of people playing MMORPGs today has skyrocketed, thanks much to World of Warcraft, but also other games based on popular Intellectual Properties like Conan the Barbarian and Star Trek. I personally communicate with several people who never played an MMO before Star Trek Online launched. Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the same. These people have differing expectations and outlook than the relatively very few who played the first MMOs. Thousands of people who have never played an MMO will buy it and play and love the game. I plan to play; and though it won't be the wondrous experience I had when I first logged into WoW, I look forward to the fully voiced dialogue and various storylines I will experience.

Many have derided the emphasis on single-player questing in SWTOR and other MMOs. "What happened to the grouping we did in early WoW and other true MMOs?" they say. I have rarely been on the same level as players in guilds I have been part of until I reached max level. If someone has needed or asked for help in an area of the world I was playing in, I helped. I was sociable, but few of them turned out to be lifelong friends. I currently play Rift with my lovely bride; and we occasionally play WoW with a few friends I know in real life. We are doing our own thing and being peripherally sociable with the Rift guild. Why force me to group up if I don't want or need to? Because of the time that I started in WoW, mid-2006, there were not many players around to help me when I needed to complete group-oriented quests, and they sat in my questlog until I could finally complete them on my own, or I just dropped them. I've done end-game raids and enjoyed them. However, the endless repetition for meager reward got to me, and I ended up dropping out of that style of play. I prefer to learn the stories of the areas I am in. Raiding is all too often a matter of learning when to stand where to avoid damage while maximizing our own. Some call this skill, and I suppose it is, but not in the same sense as actually learning to fence, or play the piano, or build a house.

There was a Google+ discussion yesterday about the merits of gentle "grinding" in the new game Glitch, and how it can be therapeutic. Many players, who PvP or otherwise want an intense game to give them an adrenalin rush, cannot fathom this preference, even if it is occasional on the part of "casual" players. I understand it, even though I rarely feel the need to indulge in it. Again, I am in it for the story and for the visuals. I rarely watch television any more, because I prefer my virtual worlds and their interactivity, even if they are themeparks. Do I think some go too far "on-the-rails"? Yes, but that is a matter of degree, and my opinion differs from many others.

Tobold Stoutfoot has opinions I don't always agree with, but in two recent posts, I think he hit several nails right on the head. The long term veteran players are probably not the target audience for modern MMOs. I can be considered mid-term myself. I am just about done with World of Warcraft after 5+ years, but I still enjoy the basic gameplay style. I have long thought that the vast majority of people playing WoW and other MMOs are not reading or posting in the forums, nor are they reading or writing blogs about the games. As Tobold said, listening to the extrememly vocal minority in the forums broke WoW, perhaps irrevocably.

"Nobody ever listened to the needs of the silent majority, who actually liked leveling, and would have liked the expansions to lengthen their leveling fun, and make it more challenging."

I can remember the first time on my priest (Rowanblaze) that I defeated several wolves my own level in combat while soloing in the eastern Hinterlands. This and a thousand other awesome memories have I of WoW, both soloing and playing with others, even raiding and PvP. Despite what some people say, I find Rift to have similar challenges, even though I am almost always playing in a duo with my bride. I have learned to tank and enjoy it, though I am by no means an expert. I doubt I'll have much interest in the large Raids at endgame. But the recent addition of duo instances sounds fun and perfect for this spousal leveling team. I am hoping--and there good signs--that our playstyle will be accomodated in SWTOR, as well. Rift's unified storyline decreases its replayability. I enjoyed learning about the different races and factions in WoW with unique starting areas for every race. SWTOR's unique starting areas and branching storylines for each class promises a similar experience.

So to answer the question in my post title: I am a mostly solo--or small-group--PvE quester, who enjoys the support roles more than pure DPS. I am a carebear, not a cutthroat. I value a good story above heart-pumping gameplay. I play MMORPGs to relax, not to get excited. I am an altoholic. I like roleplay and can become attached to my characters. I want a challenge, not an impossibility. I like WoW, Rift, STO, and anticipate playing both SWTOR and Guild Wars 2. If you think I'm dumb for any or all of that, I honestly have no time for you.

Endgame?

Why, oh why, do certain gamers (and devs) think that “The game doesn’t even start until the end-game content”?

I had a friend and coworker say this to me back in 2007. He played Vanilla WoW through the Naxx runs. Twenty hours (plus) per week spent raiding he said, and this back in the days before tokens meant steady gear progression. You had to hope the piece you needed dropped AND that you had enough luck or DKP to actually get it instead of that stupid hunter. Much of that time in the raid was spent waiting around for someone to repair, eat, pee, something besides actually playing the game. But the fights were EPIC!! Doing the Heigen Dance with 40 peeps, someone was sure to die. But then he was finally brought down. After 40 (50?) attempts. Then on to the next boss.

Oh, and every week they got to start over again, killing Heigen and all his friends. Whheee! Isn't Endgame fun? This was WAY better than the varying interweaving stories and quests--some monumental, some mundane--where the devs had spent 98 percent of their time--leading up to this Legendary Epicness.  All you people who came afterward can never be as über 733T as those few who were level-capped at 60 for nearly three years. My friend quit the day The Burning Crusade was released, because he couldn't keep up with his own addictive tendencies. We've lost touch; I wonder if he ever came back.

How is doing the same content over and over (only a bit harder these next 100 times) better than seeing new stuff you’ve not experienced before, learning new abilities, and generally becoming more badass? And no, getting that über helmet or sword doesn’t make you or your toon more badass, especially in the not-so-old days when getting THE BEST gear was essentially a slot-machine style game of chance.

What happened to the RPG in MMORPG? You know, Dear Reader, that I am not an avid in-game role-player. But I do play for story. The fall of the Lich King was an epic event--that occurred 1000s of times behind the closed walls of an instanced dungeon that many players never saw in person because they didn't want to or couldn't take the time to do THE SAME FIGHTS OVER AND OVER, to get a little better than last time so they could move on to the next boss and start the process all over again. That is not story, that is tedium. We were (yes, I did raid, got to Professor Putricide) doing the fantasy equivalent of playing Madden 20XX. Repetitive, story-less, soulless.

Gordon, over at We Fly Spitfires, feels almost as strongly as I do about endgame item progression. Actually, I think he is a little more articulate about it. Also, a chunk of this post was a comment on someone else's blog on this topic on 28 December. But I can't remember whose. : / If it was yours let me know and I'll cross link.

Rotface

We just don't seem to have enough DPS for the second wing of ICC25. Not that my healing is outstanding; but as a disc priest, I'm throwing out a lot of mitigation buffs. I though I had gotten a screenshot of the last fight or at least Rotface. But the last shot I took was the giant tree in the middle of Lady Deathwhisper's battle. Anyway, you can see my UI if that interests you.

ICC 25

In all this excitement, I forgot to mention that I ran 25-man Ice Crown Citadel with my guildmates last night. Great run, we beat each of the first three boss encounters on the second attempt, and the fourth boss encounter on the third attempt. Pretty good for the first time as a guild.

I enjoyed the raid immensely, though I have yet to figure why I don't heal at the same rate as the other healers, according to "Recount." Between my rotation, talents, and gear, I am deficient in something. I understand that, when I use my Discipline spec, many of my talents are devoted to damage mitigation rather than healing. But when I shift to Holy, I am barely better off. <Sigh> Only once has anyone said anything and then only obliquely. But it still bothers me.

Festergut

Well, we got Festergut down tonight. And some lesser Valkyr boss too, don't know her name. Not so much luck with Rotface, though we did much better on the last fight when I had switched to Holy spec. It's hard do that because one of my go-to spells is Penance, which I lose by switching specs. Plus I am not really geared for Holy, so I don't have the haste items I should.

Ice Crown Citadel

OK, so I haven't been raiding for about a month, between travel and STO, but I went into ICC last night with some guildies (Mutiny!) and we went through the first four bosses "like budda." It was nice to see the fights running smoothly, something which wasn't happening a month ago, and which contributed to my WoW ennui. This trip through was much better; and I am excited for tonight's continuation.