I Deathtard

What He Said

2009-08-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

As most of you are probably aware, Tamarind and I have gone into blogging partnership (blognership? blartnership? plogging?) over at Righteous Orbs (that's www.righteousorbs.com for those of you who didn't click the link).

To further confuse the issue, since I've been Paladining more and Deathknighting less, I'll be writing as Chastity, rather than as Temitope.

Confused?

New site, new name, new look. Same nonsensical opinions on all things WoW.

I, Dickhead

2009-08-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in a while, it's been a combination of work, other internet-type projects, and actually playing the darned game instead of blogging about it.

So anyway, today's Dickhead of the Week is ... me actually.

As you might have read over at In My Cissy Robe, Tamarind and Chastity have just hit 80, and we've started the long slow slog towards getting geared.

We've also got a new guild, which is one of those fluffy leveling guilds which is "going to start raiding soon" and attracts a lot of really nice people who don't really know what the hell they're doing.

We're two of only about four Eighties in our guild, and as a tank and healer we're much in demand. Our guild leader has been on at us for days to come to do some Heroics with him.

I really didn't want to do this. I really didn't want to be That Guy. I wasn't That Guy on my Death Knight - I didn't step into a Heroic until I was certain I could pull my weight. My gear isn't all that bad for where I am in the game - I'm only homing in on the Defense cap but I am low on health, and I need to actually sort out my glyphs. I could *possibly* tank one of the easier Heroics, if we had a well disciplined group of players who knew the strategy.

As it is, it was me, Tamarind who you might recall recently disenchanted all of his gear, and our intrepid guild leader plus two DPS we'd pugged.

I'll just say again that I really didn't want to be doing this. I don't want to get carried through instances by overgeared players (and anyway you *can't* carry an undergeared healer and tank through an instance no matter how much DPS you have). Yes, getting boosted through Heroics is the best way to gear up fast, but I don't want to gear up fast, I want to gear up in my own time with people I like, and anyway random dudes off the server have no responsibility to get me better gear.

So anyway, our guild leader was terribly friendly and enthusiastic, and insisted with have a go at Heroic Gundrak.

We picked up two DPS amazingly fast, and Tam and I flew to the stone and I went off for what I believe the community calls a bio break. I came back to find the mage we'd picked up complaining about my lack of hit points. Before I could say anything he went on to explain that a good way to get gear was to run level 80 dungeons.

If there is one thing that pisses me off in WoW, it's people thinking I need them to tell me how to play the game. I know that this is rather hypocritical of me (I keep telling our Blood DKs to stop using Blood Strike) but it really hacks me off.

So rather than saying "I know, you're probably right, maybe we should do HoL instead" I said ... well.

I said:

I am, in fact, aware of that. I've just hit 80 and I'm working on my gear as best I can. A guildie asked me to run this with him, and so I said I'd give it a go. So ... umm ... fuck you.

Then I left the party and flew away.

To make matters worse, the guild leader immediately leapt to my defence, which was a shame because the guy I'd just randomly shouted at was actually totally right. I'd also kind of forced Tam to back me up, so it wound up in this awful situation where the other guy left, I got invited back, and we tried to run Heroic Gundrak with a tank in mid-level Blacksmithing gear and a healer in quest greens.

It was, of course, a wipefest. It wasn't entirely the fault of my gear. We got slaughtered on Slad'ran because we didn't kill the adds fast enough and nobody moved out of the Poison Nova, neither of which I feel were my responsibility (particularly not once I was snake wrapped), but I was certainly part of the problem. Because I was worried about my mitigation, I had to spend half my time making sure I had absolutely everything up that could possibly be up (I really need to glyph Divine Plea) which meant that I had a longer setup time than I was used to, which meant my rotations were off, which meant I didn't hold aggro very well (particularly against the Naxx-geared Hunter). Because I needed to be careful not to overaggro, I had to avoid using Avenger's Shield unless I was sure I could take everything, which meant I was pulling with my taunt a lot of the time. In short it was full of fail.

If I'd known the instance better, if we hadn't been a pickup group, and if Tam and I hadn't been totally undergeared, we would have been fine, but I didn't, we were, and we were so it wasn't.

What I found most upsetting was that the guild leader defended me in a way that I was actually slightly ashamed of. He seemed to think that because we needed the gear upgrades it was the responsibility of the other players to help us to get them, and that's not how it works.

So for a moment there I was That Guy. The douchebag who walks into your pickup group and expects you to carry him through to a buffet table of free stuff.

If you're reading this, mage whose name I've forgotten, I'm really sorry. You were totally right, and I knew it, which is why I was so pissed off.

I was a dick.

A Big Bowl of Sprouts: Another This Post

2009-07-10T15:53:00.000-07:00

Elnia at the pink pigtail inn posted recently about Heirlooms, and the reason she finds them distasteful.

As I say in the title, the only thing I can really say to that is: This

Okay, that's not true. I do have more to say.

The other thing I have to say is this: Northrend is like a sodding great bowl of sprouts.

The reason Cold Weather Flying exists at all is because Blizzard didn't want people to "skip over" the content in Northrend. In 3.2 you'll be able to buy a Tome of Cold Weather Flying which will give you the option to ... umm ... fly in Northrend thereby skipping over all of the content.

But it's okay! Because you can only buy it at level 80!

Which means it will only be available to people who have already "experienced" the "content".

I've said this a lot, I'll say it again.

Fuck you, Blizzard.

I am not a fucking six year old. I am not in fucking primary school. I am a fucking adult and I can make my own fucking decisions.

I really like experiencing the content. I'm a complete altaholic, I recently rolled a Dwarvish Hunter in order to experience the low-level Alliance content in an exciting new way (with guns!). I do not need to be *forced* to experience the content. I do not need to prove myself by grinding my way to Eighty.

Either the leveling content is an important part of the game, or it's a speedbump on the way to eighty. If it's a speedbump, then ditch it. Let everybody fly in Northrend so they can get to endgame faster. Or alternatively if the content is good enough that it's worth experiencing on its own merits then - well let us fly through it anyway and we'll stop and experience the content in our own sweet time when we think it deserves it. But for fuck's sake Blizzard, stop treating me like I need to get to level 80 before I'm qualified to decide how I want to play the game.

Colour Coded For Your Convenience!

2009-07-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

You know what was a completely fucking stupid design decision?

Colour coding gear.

Okay, yes I know it wasn't really stupid. It was actually very sensible, but it leads to grade-A stupidity amongst the cretins who play this game.

Misneach Aggro Junkie posted recently about a particular wankstain he had suffered the misfortune of pugging with, who had spent the entire raid complaining that he (Misneach) was "in blues" and therefore "couldn't tank" a 25 man raid.

By "in blues" for what it's worth the guy meant "in a mixture of blue Heroic drops and Epics, none of which came from 25 mans because funnily enough, it is hard to get 25-man gear without going into 25-mans". By "unable to tank a 25 man raid" he meant "Def Capped and with over 25K Hit Points unbuffed".

I strongly suspect that had Misneach showed up for the raid wearing - say the Battlegear of Might or for that matter Corruptor Raiment and the guy wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Because purple gear is *always* better than blue gear. Doesn't matter what the stats on it are, doesn't matter whether it's designed for your class or your role. Doesn't matter if you're about to go into a fight with heavy elemental damage and you need a resist set, purples are always better than blues. Always.

I've been on the receiving end of this myself, although in a more positive way. Some of my (very nice) Alliance guildies were genuinely amazed that I can crack 2k DPS in "mostly blue" gear. It's nice that they think I'm awesome, but the reason I can do that is because I've ... well ... put quite a lot of time and effort into making sure that the gear I've got is the best for the job I'm doing (which is killing things with a big sword) - I could have swapped out my green belt for any number of Epics (some of them even Plate) but there's no sense in trading Strength and Hit Rating for Stamina and Defense even if it's a prettier colour.

The right blues are better than the wrong purples. The right blues properly gemmed and enchanted are a metric assload better than the wrong purples. The right blues properly gemmed and enchanted, combined with sufficient knowledge of the game to know what the right gems and enchants actually are, are so much more important than having "epics" that it beggars belief.

Desperately Seeking Ner'Zhul

2009-07-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

The thing about Northrend is that it's all about Arthas. They do their best to pretend it's all about you, but this just underlines the fact that no, it's about Arthas.

In a fit of pique I decided that if I wanted to play a game that was all about Arthas, I'd play Warcraft III. Which I did.

I suck at it, by the way.

I'm only halfway through the second mission of the Scourge campaign (which is at least giving me renewed enthusiasm for my Death Knight and making me really tempted to dual-spec Unholy) but I've started to notice something. Or rather, be reminded of something.

The Lich King, right. Isn't actually Arthas at all, is he? He's Ner'zhul.

I remember when I first played the game (and got about halfway through the Scourge campaign before realising I sucked and quitting) I was a little bit confused by this - I knew a little bit about WoW (mostly from the board game in point of fact) and I'd always thought Kel'Thuzad was the big bad of the scourge, not a minion of somebody else, and I'd been deeply confused by the fact that the Lich King was apparently an Orc, of all things.

Since then I've got more into WoW, and I've looked more into the lore and the background and it turns out that Ner'zhul is actually kind of awesome. Former high Shaman of the Shadowmoon clan, he was tricked into serving Kil'Jaedan, believing himself to be saving his people (this of course parallels the way he would later trick Arthas into becoming his servant, believing he was saving Lordaeron). Unlike Arthas, however, Ner'Zhul turned away from the Demon when he realised its nature, and it was his advice that saved Durotan of the Frostwolf clan from taking the Blood of Mannoroth (which, incidentally, is the only thing that made it possible for the New Horde to exist). Of course he also blew up Draenor, and he ultimately cared more for his own advancement than the good of the Horde, but that doesn't change the fact that he refused to hand his people over to the Demons, and it was as punishment for that defiance that he was transformed into the Lich King.

(The question of why an Orc from a shamanistic society ruled by a warchief would call himself a king is something that I don't think any of us need to dwell on too much)

By comparison, Arthas' story is rather less interesting. He shares a great many personality traits with Ner'zhul, but when you get right down to it Arthas was an uppity princeling who wanted too much too soon, while Ner'zhul was a leader in his own right long before his corruption and transformation into the Lich King.

In Wrath of the Lich King there is no reference to Ner'zhul whatsoever. A bit of cursory googling around the subject reveals that in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, Arthas consumes Ner'zhul, essentially reclaiming his identity despite having sacrificed his humanity.

This, to be frank, annoys me.

This is going to get into difficult ground, because I'm about to do that thing that really annoying people do with Lord of the Rings, where I start drawing parallels between fictional races in a computer game and real races of people in the world. I fully admit that I might just be an aggrieved Horde fanboy who's trying to justify his indignation, but here's the thing.

What you have here is two characters. One of them is - and let's not beat around the bush here - a young, blonde-haired blue-eyed white man from a recognisably European culture. The other is an elderly shaman from a tribalistic society whose ancestral homeland and adopted homeland look an awful lot like Africa (what with the elephants and zebras and everything).

Somewhere along the line, somebody at Blizzard decided that the blond-haired white guy was more interesting to write about.

The thing is, I do actually get this. When I first played Warcraft III I was really annoyed that the Lich King was just some Orc I'd never heard of. Looking back on it, part of the reason I had that reaction was because I instinctively react better to stories about blond white guys from places that look like Europe than to stories about non-white guys from places that look like Africa. This is, in fact, a problem.

The book Arthas: Rise of the Lich King contains the following passage (courtesy of the internet):

“We are one, Arthas. Together, we are the Lich King. No more Ner’zhul, no more Arthas—only this one glorious being. With my knowledge, we can—”
His eyes bulged as the sword impaled him.
Arthas stepped forward, plunging the glittering, hungering Frostmourne ever deeper into the dream-being that had once been Ner’zhul, then the Lich King, and was soon to be nothing, nothing at all. He slipped his other arm around the body, pressing his lips so close to the green ear that the gesture was almost intimate, as intimate as the act of taking a life always was and always would be.
“No,” Arthas whispered. “No we. No one tells me what to do. I’ve got everything I need from you—now the power is mine and mine alone. Now there is only I. I am the Lich King. And I am ready.”
The orc shuddered in his arms, stunned by the betrayal, and vanished.

Now leaving aside the fact that Arthas is still saying "No one tells me what to do" like a spoiled child - how the hell is this Paladin-school dropout supposed to have overcome the will of Ner'zhul, who was a master Shaman *and* a master Warlock *and*, let's not forget, the freaking Lich King while Arthas was still whining to Uther the Lightbringer. I mean, I know DKs are OP and everything but what, was Ner'zhul in PvE gear?

The whole thing smacks of a rather nasty retcon. Blizzard (and, if I'm honest, most of the player base) loves the image of "Arthas the Lich King". The Fallen Paladin. The Great Betrayer of Lordaeron. So they had to get rid of Ner'zhul, because they wanted the face of the Scourge to be Arthas. They wanted the iconic image of Wrath to be a man with blond hair, pale skin, and blue-green eyes.

One of the things I love about the Horde is that they provide a way to play a different sort of fantasy hero: one that isn't a knight in armour or a wizard in a high tower. Yes sometimes the Horde cultures look a little bit offensive (trolls genuinely bug me) and there's a fine line between inspiration and appropriation, but on the whole I think it's a genuinely positive thing. But when Orcs and Tauren are sidelined in favour of Humans and Elves (even Blood Elves, this isn't just a Horde/Alliance thing) it sends the message that the cultures whose imagery those races draw upon are less interesting and important than the cultures who inspired the humans and the elves.

Or, to put it another way: "elderly orcish shaman tricked into betraying his people, then tortured and transfigured into a disembodied spirit of death, and fused into the body of a human prince and seeking revenge against both the living, and the demons who destroyed him" is an interesting and unique character. "Fallen Paladin" is the third most cliched character concept in fantasy.

Weekend Riddles

2009-07-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

Question: When is a Nerf not a Nerf?

Answer: When it's a buff.

Tamarind wrote a while ago about about an attempt to 3-man Blood Furnace with three squishy DPSers which ultimately failed because the guy playing the mage kept bitching about how it had been "nerfed".

Except of course it hadn't. It's just that the game was now balanced for Ulduar, which meant that all of us had access to powers that were well beyond anything characters of our level would have had back in the BC days.

It is a peculiar ... well ... peculiarity of the WoW-playing mindset that so few people actually notice this. Whenever a boss gets its damage cut or its health decreased, people cry from the rooftops that the game is being nerfed for the casuals. Whenever a class gets its mitigation buffed or its DPS improved, people cheer and say that it's about damned time (or complain that their own class needs buffing *as well*). Very few people seem to notice that these changes amount to the exact same thing.

I've been thinking recently about the "difficulty" of Northrend instances. A lot of people say that Wrath Heroics are too easy. I don't think that's actually the problem. I think the problem is that Wrath player characters are too powerful.

As about ten bajillion other people have said before me, Northrend instances all boil down to AoE, rinse, repeat. This isn't a problem in and of itself, but it's not like you're using AoE because it's the *only* way to deal with a situation (like you have a dozen mobs attacking you and you need to burn them all down right the fuck now or you're dead) you're using AoE because it gets you through pulls very slightly faster and makes your DPS numbers very slightly bigger.

Basically you're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but the problem is that once you've given somebody a sledgehammer, you can never make them use a nutcracker again. Once the DPS has access to powerful, reliable AoE attacks, and once tanks have access to powerful, reliable AoE threat, and once healers have access to powerful, reliable AoE heals, there is absolutely no reason to take trash pulls seriously, because "spam AoE" is not only the *easiest* strategy it's also the *best* strategy.

Just making the instances "harder" - in the sense of increasing the health and damage of the mobs - won't fix the problem. Northrend instances are already "hard" - at least in the sense that the mobs in them have loads of health and do lots of damage. The problem is that they're hard in a completely uninteresting way.

Take, for example, Skarvald and Dalronn in Utgarde Keep. Skarvald has a random charge that hits for about 8K on cloth, Dalronn has effectively no aggro table, instead firing Shadow Bolts at random members of the party. What this basically means is that your party is taking a bunch of random damage that you can't do anything about and either you're high enough level and sufficiently well geared to heal through it, or you aren't. Apart from the most basic strategic decisions (kill the wizard first) there's nothing else to the fight. The tank does his best to get the two untankable bosses standing in one place, and you shower them with your AoE spam until they die, doing your best to make sure the caster cops it first. There's nothing to pay attention to, nothing to interrupt, you can just either heal through it or you can't, you can kill them quickly enough or you can't. There's nothing you can do better, there's nothing you can do differently, you just spam your attacks until the bastards drop.

Whether what you're cracking a nut or smashing down a wall, you're still just swinging a hammer.

The problem is that high-level WoW characters have access to too many blunt instruments. Crowd Control is only necessary if you don't have the ability to kill five mobs as quickly as one. Kill orders are only necessary if you're limited to targeting one enemy at a time, and if the enemies have usefully different abilities that can actually make a difference in a fight. You don't have to sheep the healers if you can kill everything before they can get a spell off. You don't have to move out of fire if there's so much AoE healing coming in that your health isn't going below 90% anyway. You don't have to worry about aggro if everything is just getting nuked.

Making dungeons "harder" isn't the answer, there have to be limits on what the player characters can do. Otherwise they'll just go away, level or gear up a bit and then AoE everything into the ground like before.

Another "This" Post

2009-07-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

This

I've got more to say about the weird attitudes people have to gearing, levelling, and the fallacious idea that having better stuff makes you a better player, but for now, just this

Looking Stupider By The Day

2009-07-01T03:18:00.000-07:00

Datamined details on the ATC Raid

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

The leaders of the Horde and Alliance are morons. Tirion Fordring is a moron. Anub'Arak is a moron.

You Don't Know the Meaning of "Content" - More ATC Bitching

2009-06-30T07:33:00.001-07:00

So one of the bosses in the Argent Tournament Colosseum will be the Argent Confessor who requires you to relive "memories" of past battles, allowing players to fight souped-up level-80 versions of Onyxia, Illidian Stormrage and of course Hogger.

The reaction to this news is split perfectly between two different sorts of moron.

Moron type A says "lol brilliant, this is the best news ever" or even better "hooray, now I get to fight those bosses without wasting time fighting miles of trash".

Moron type B says "I already killed those guys, I don't want to kill them again, I pay Blizzard millions of dollars [1] for new content and they're ripping us off by recycling old fights".

Both types of moron make the same mistake, which is failing to understand what "content" is.

Having a boss spawn a mob called "Memory of Onyxia" is not the same as fighting Onyxia. I haven't actually fought Ony myself - I came to the game too late for that - but a quick look at WoWwikiki reveals that Onyxia was a three-stage fight, which called for careful threat management and stacking Fire Resistance to deal with a taunt-immune boss and massively disrupting fear effects which interacted with environmental hazards.

The list of retro-bosses you can fight in this encounter is huge, and ranges from the deadly (Algalon) to the comical (Hogger, Mutanus). There are two possibilities. Either the players are required to remember, and instantly adapt to, the strategy for any boss that could conceivably be spawned in this encounter, which would make it the single most challenging raid encounter ever, because you'd have to snap immediately into the appropriate strategy for Onyxia, or Illidian, or Algalon without missing a beat. The alternative, of course, is that she just spawns a level 83 Elite mob with the same name as an old boss, who does a bit of AoE and hits reasonably hard on plate.

Place your bets?

What people - and by "people" I unfortunately mean "people including Blizzard employees" - don't seem to understand is that content isn't graphics. It isn't pictures. It isn't scenery or dialogue. It's gameplay. This fight doesn't allow you to fight old raid bosses at 80, it allows you to *remember* fighting them (which is, I suppose, appropriate). It's equivalent of having the boss randomly emote things like "Hey, remember the Black Temple, it's been totally nerfed".

The problem is that you can't really do Onyxia any more. Even if you do it at level, a 60th level character now is flat out more powerful than a 60th level character in vanilla WoW (especially if you have Outland gear) - everything is designed for level 80 content. When this news first came out I thought that Blizzard were actually finally going to retune the old instances for level 80 so that I can actually access the content I fucking paid for but no, they're going to put the name "Illidian" on a generic elite mob, and people are going to think that's the same as doing the BT.

Darn.

[1] The Type A moron will always treat the combined income of any organization they have contact with as having come directly from their own purse.

Some Thoughts on Alts

2009-06-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Just to fill y'all in on a bit of background, Temitope - the eponymous deathtard and my only 80 - is actually my sixth or seventh alt (after an undead Warlock, a Troll priest, a belfadin, an Orc shaman, a belvish bank-alt, and a Drenai warrior (my only other Alliance character). I rolled Temi specifically to see how the other half lives, and like a vast number of other losers, I managed to get her to 80 faster and more efficiently than any other character (plate + self heals - mana = win).

I hooked up with a nice but new guild, and soon found that of our level 80 characters fully three quarters were Death Knights. This has made it impossible for the guild to break into raiding (we have exactly one healer) so I decided to roll a druid specifically to help my guild out with their healer/ranged dps/anybody who isn't a freaking DK shortage.

First thoughts: holy crap, low level WoW is *hard*.

Even in heirloom shoulders, there are quests in Darkshore that are *kicking my arse*. Cliffspring falls contains a cave full of Nagas which routinely tore me into tiny bite-sized druid bits, while I tried in vain to fill a little glass bottle with spring water.

The problem was exacerbated by the fact that I had virtually no tools at my disposal. I've got wrath, moonfire, some heals and a bit of bearform, and that's it. I finally managed to get the damned water when I got Swipe, which allowed me to deal with two things hitting me at once.

What this is all building up to is an observation about the levelling game, which is that not all classes level equally. More specifically, there are a lot of classes in the game whose core mechanics show up comparatively late.

Tricky as the first few levels of my drood have been, once I hit 20 I'll get kittyform, at which point I should be prowling and shredding my way to glory in short order. On the flip side, I've just started working on a Blood Elf shadowpriest and at level 22 I'm actually better off using Holy spells half the time (particularly because there's so much Shadow resist in the game).

Then there's my shaman.

My Orc Shaman is currently level 35. She's leveling Enhancement, but I'm one of those weird people who doesn't really distinguish between leveling specs and endgame specs. She's an Enhancement shaman, she likes to hit things with axes. She won't stop just because she hits 80, that would make her sad. Thing is, the whole basis of Enhancement Shaman gameplay is dual-wields and Stormstrike. Dual wielding isn't available until level *forty*.

I know leveling is easy, but it's the principle of the thing. The whole reason I specced Enhancement was because I like the idea of dual-wielding. I think it's my inner LARPer. It's really weird to basically not be allowed to play the spec you've picked until you're literally halfway through the game.

I had a similar problem with my Paladin. It's better now we've got the taunt and can use Exorcism on regular mobs, but for a good long while I was a tank who couldn't pull, which made the whole business of running instances rather complicated (party rogue sneaks forwards, throws a dagger, mobs come running and I hope to hell that Righteous Defence doesn't miss).

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, I just think it's an interesting observation.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled weblog.

In Praise of Trash Pulls

2009-06-25T02:42:00.000-07:00

The following is probably going to make me sound like a complete weirdo:

I prefer trash pulls to boss fights.

Yes I know boss fights give you the cool loot, and I know boss fights have exciting mechanics and scripted events, and I know that when you get right down to it every trash pull is the same, but that's kind of why I like them.

This might sound strange, but what I like most about WoW is the strategy. I know that the strategic element of WoW isn't terribly deep, particularly not when compared to serious wargames like Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis and certainly not when compared to classic strategy games like Chess or Go, but none the less there's an element of strategy there, and those elements are primarily present in trash pulls.

Trash pulls are simpler than boss fights, but that's exactly why I find them more strategically interesting. Go is one of the most strategically complex games in the world, but it has precisely one type of piece, one type of move you can make, and a set of rules you can write on the back of an enveleope.

On a trash pull, you have access to your character's entire box of tricks. You can sheep, sap, shackle, root, hibernate, banish, seduce, kick, bash, silence, and generally do everything game mechanically possible to negotiate the pull. Tamarind wrote recently about an attempt we made to three-man the Blood Furnace (slightly above level, admittedly) with a Frost Mage, a Demonology Warlock, and a Boomkin. It was, as the frost mage kept whingeing, remarkably easy. The reason it was remarkably easy was that that's how strategy works. That, in fact, is why strategy is cool. It's about defeating the enemy with your brain.

In boss fights, on the other hand, your bag of tricks is rudely confiscated by the video game equivalent of an overzealous hall monitor and you're forced to play the encounter the way it is "supposed" to be played. You can't Death Grip Svala Sorrowgrave under her own sword, you can't silence Novos the Summoner with a well placed Avenger's Shield (in fact, checking his link on WoWwiki Novos doesn't even have a damned Aggro table, so you can't tank the fucker either sooo what am I supposed to do in that fight again?).

To put it another way, trash pulls are all about preparation. Proper marking, use of crowd control and so on can make the difference between a wipe and a walkover. A boss fight is all about implementation. There's usually only one way to approach it, and success is mostly a matter of stats, rotations and Not Standing In Fire.

Strategy aside, there's also immersion to consider. It's been said time and again but if there are only two trash pulls between bosses, I don't feel like I'm exploring a fortress or a ruined city, I feel like I'm, well, playing a video game. I don't want every single instance to be a vast, sprawling monstrosity on the level of Blackrock Depths, but I want them to look like the things they're actually supposed to be. My favourite Northrend instance is actually Violet Hold for that very reason. Sure it's the model for the new "all bosses no waiting" school of instance, but it feels like what it is: a magical prison complex under attack by the Blue Dragonflight. Trash pulls make you feel like whatever you're attacking has a function beyond just spitting loot at you, and difficult trash pulls, where you can't just run in and lol AoE noob make you feel like these places are actually defended.

Perhaps we'll get really lucky, and Blizzard is going to pull a bait-and-switch with the Colosseum, so that after the jousting we'll collapse through the bottom into the ruins of Azjol-Nerub, and find them swarming with Scourge and Faceless Ones.

I kind of doubt it though.

Screw You, Argent Tournament

2009-06-24T04:40:00.000-07:00

More data about the Colosseum is coming out.

Where to begin.

It seems increasingly likely that it will involve jousting.

It seems pretty damned certain that it will be a static sequence of boss fights. Like the Ring of Blood. Or the Ring of Anguish. Or the Pit in Conquest Hold. Or Valhalas ... seriously what the fuck happened in Wrath, did their Outlook calender act up, causing them to schedule "implement arena quest" multiple times throughout the development process?

The details of the bosses that have been released so far are frankly laughable. Everybody has already mocked the fact that they include "not one, but two Jorgmungandr worms" but I'm not going to let that stop me joining in. Two worms huh? Wow. Feel the epic. There's also some scourge lieutenants which the Argent Crusade apparently managed to capture, but which will somehow take 25 Ulduar-geared raiders to kill.

Then there's the loot.

Weirdly, the loot is what annoys me the most.

All the Tier 9 sets are named after major lore figures. Alliance Warriors get Varian Wrynn's pauldrons, Warlocks get Kel'Thuzad's robe.

Thing is, these items have no connection to the people they're named after (except for looking a bit like them and being associated with the same class). If I want to get Defias Leathers I have to actually go into the Deadmines and kill members of the Defias Brotherhood. If I want to get Whitemane's Chapeau I have to actually kill Whitemane. But apparently I can get Kel'Thuzad's robes by fighting two (not one! but two!) Jorgmungandr worms. What the hell?

This isn't a big issue of itself, but it highlights an underlying problem with Blizzard's attitude to Lore and Progression (and for that matter "Content").

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw said of the text-based flashback segments in Lost Odyssey "that isn't interactive storytelling, that's just *reading*". WoW is in a similar position. We keep reading stuff about how the Battle Against The Lich King is Terrible And Epic but nothing you meet in Northrend really lives up to it. Okay, that's not entirely true, the Vyrkul are kinda cool, and Utgarde Keep is a decent introductory instance, and is unusual in Northrend in that it actually feels like a keep, instead of a loosely connected sequence of boss fights, but very little in the expansion makes you feel *part* of the story.

Oh sure, people spend a lot of time saying "you are awesome, you are a hero, you are doing all this really important stuff" but the moment it comes to the crunch, the second something actually needs to be done, you stand back and watch some other fucker do it (I am looking at *you* Tirion Fordring and *you* Darion Mograine). We spend a lot of time *watching* Lore happen and *reading* Lore happening (I'm looking at *you* Tribunal of the Ages) but we never get to actually *experience* any of it. And by "experience" I mean "experience through the medium of the game". When you go into Blackrock Depths, you really feel that you are in the heart of the Kingdom of the Dark Iron Dwarves. When you accidentally aggro the entire Greedy Guzzler by popping consecrate (not that this has *ever* happened to me) you really feel like you deserved to get your ass handed to you, because you just picked a fight with a bar full of dwarves on their home turf.

Increasingly, the Lore in WoW is something that is communicated to you through text blocks and cut-scenes, instead of being integrated into the actual gameworld. If I didn't already know the story of Anub'Arak, there's no way I would know from running Azjol-Nerub that he was supposed to be important. There's certainly no way I'd know that it was supposed to be the ruins of a whole ancient city.

By attaching the names of lore figures to loot that has nothing whatsoever to do with those Lore figures, Blizzard is making Northrend feel more an more like Warcraft III: the Theme Park. It even has fucking pony rides.

Endgame Raiding, Some Concrete Suggestions

2009-06-22T03:06:00.000-07:00

For somebody who has been in precisely one raid group ever, I'm posting a lot about endgame raiding.

My basic problem with the current state of endgame raiding is that it's clearly not hard enough to challenge hardcore raiders, but it is also clearly not *easy* enough to be accessible for, well, guys like me. My Blood DK *just about* cracks 2000 DPS on a good day with a following wind. This is partially because I kinda suck, partially because my gear kinda sucks, and partially because I keep forgetting to use my damned cooldowns.

Anyway, point is that I'm just plain not qualified to run Naxx in a pickup, particularly now that most people only *want* to run Naxx in a pickup with people who have already cleared Naxx and got the gear.

I think the basic problem is that Blizzard tried to make the *entirety* of Raid progression accessible to casual players. Speaking as a casual player, this annoys me. If I wanted to do progression raiding, I'd join a raiding guild and do progression raiding. I don't. I'm interested in raids purely as an extension of being interested in 5-man content. I want to be able to poke my head into Naxxaramas with nine mates and have a crack at taking it down, even though we only have one tank and our healers are undergeared.

The thing is, I *also* want the hardcores to have what they want, and there's no reason they can't. I don't want to play in their playground, or rather I don't right now, and if I ever *do* I'll want to actually play properly, with flasks and food buffs and ready checks and wiping five times a night until you get the bastard down.

So, for the three people that might actually read this, here's my solution for endgame content:

One: Divorce Normal/Heroic from 10/25

Blizzard has already done this with the Colosseum, and it's a very sensible move. There was a while when 25-mans were easier than 10-mans (or so I understand - one raid group ever, remember) but dropped better loot. This was dumb. By distinguishing "is easy" from "requires you to have lots of mates" Blizzard can solve a lot of problems.

Two: Take Normal Modes Back One Full Tier

I'm not being masochistic here. Because "Normal" 10-man raids drop better gear than 5-man Heroics, they form a link in the progression chain: Levelling ---> Heroic Dungeons ----> Normal Raids ------> Heroic Raids.

The problem with this is that it has the knock on effect of making Heroic Raids easier, because you can run them in "Normal Mode" gear instead of "Heroic/Badge" gear.

Again, I'm not being an "elitist" here (God I hate that word, it's used almost exclusively by wankers who don't know what it means) - I don't think that casuals don't "deserve" better gear, it's just that I think most casuals don't want "gearing" to be something they actually have to devote time to. I want to be able to run Naxx in quest greens, and as such all I want to get out of it is gear that is an upgrade over quest greens.

Dropping "normal" modes back by a tier removes the necessity for "hardcore" guilds to gear up on "normal" before attempting "heroic".

Three: Make "Normal" Modes Even Easier

Tweak "Normal" modes so that you literally can run them in a pickup group in quest greens. Casual players don't want to farm for gear, we don't want to wipe fourteen times on the same boss. We just want to play the game at our own pace.

Four: Incorporate "Hard Modes" Into Heroic Mode

This is the change that I think's really important.

Hard Modes don't seem to be working, and I can totally understand why. I've said many times that one of the defining differences between "casual" and "hardcore" players is that hardcore players play not only *well* but *optimally*. Hard modes very frequently involve asking players to play the game using a *worse strategy* (facing a Frost Wrym with no Frost Resistance, randomly pulling adds, and so on). I can totally see why Hardcore players wouldn't want to do this. You might as well tell people that if they think endgame is too easy that they should run the raids naked or with their talents set to 0/0/0 - yes it would make the game *harder* but it wouldn't provide the kind of challenge the players are looking for.

To give some more concrete examples, Sartharion, on Heroic Mode could have the Drakes moved to a position where they *can't* be killed before engaging Sartharion. This would force guilds who wanted to do the encounter on Heroic to tackle the three-drake fight immediately, without the option to gear up on the one and two drake fights first. Heroic-Mode Heigan could be healed for - say 20-25% of his health every time somebody died on the dance, meaning that if you didn't do The Safety Dance properly you'd be near certain to wipe. Sapphiron could have his (or is it her) Frost damage changed to Frostfire damage, eliminating the usefulness of Frost Resistance.

The basic idea here is to have two tiers of raiding content, one of serious progression raids for serious progression guilds, and the other of much, much, much easier content, for dudes like me who don't have the patience to take the optimal route through the game.

Of course, this could all be nonsense.

This.

2009-06-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

A little while back, ~~Kathleena~~ Kahleena over at Fel Deeds Awake linked my blog in a very kind post entitled "This, this, a thousand times this."

I've just checked her commentary on the 3.2 changes and feel it behoves me to return the favour.

Do You Want Large, Extra Large, or Titanic?

2009-06-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about Blizzard's current endgame policy, and I've come to a conclusion.

Raids don't need Hard Modes, they need *easy* modes.

Just to be clear, I don't mean that current raiding is too hard, I mean that the *baseline* for raiding should be higher, and that there should be options to go *down* as well as *up*.

The current raid content (from what I understand having not actually played any of it) is like soft drinks in a fast food outlet. In theory it comes in "Normal" "Heroic" and "Heroic Hard Mode" just like soft drinks come in "Regular" "Large" and "Extra Large". Nobody wants to pay for a small drink (and *absolutely* nobody wants to walk into a pharmacist and ask where they keep the small condoms). In fact "Normal" raids (from what I've seen, which is one Sarth-10 pickup) are genuinely easy - Sarth's basically an instance boss with more hit points and a few adds and from what I understand the "heroic" versions are exactly the same but with bigger numbers.

I genuinely think that the solution to this is to take the current "hard modes" and make them the *standard* version of the encounter (it should be fairly easy to make the "hard mode" acheivements a requirement for success rather than an optional extra - for example if Sarth and his drakes were linked so you couldn't pull one without the others) and to have an optional easy mode which removes those requirements.

Now I know that there's a sense in which this is exactly the same system with a different name, but I think there's a key psychological difference. I've said before that the problem with WoW isn't hardcore players (of whom I know many, most of them nice) or casual players (of which I am one) but rather wannabe-hardcores, who think that facerolling content means that you're awesome.

If "normal" modes were labelled "easy" then genuine hardcores could jump straight into the "hard modes" without feeling the need to gear up on normal modes first (Easy modes could drop gear equivalent to heroics, and have similar gear requirements), and the wannabe hardcores would have to either start off on Easy Mode, which would basically be admitting they sucked, or try the hardmodes straight away, which would involve directly confronting the fact that they suck.

Plus if you do it this way, you can make the "Easy" modes sufficiently easy that you genuinely can PuG them in Quest Blues, and make the "Hard" modes sufficiently hard that hardcore players feel challenged.

This Is Petty, But it Bugs Me

2009-06-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Lots of the news about patch 3.2 seems awesome. I don't even particularly object to the DK nerfs because, hell, we clearly needed it.

Unifying the badge system will allow people to get past the "can't run Naxx without Naxx gear" problem which is great. Anybody who complains that the time they spent raiding Ulduar was "wasted" because now other people can get the same stuff by running Heroics has *no fucking business* raiding in the first place.

I also really like the fact that the Argent Colosseum is going to have "Normal" and "Heroic" versions for both 10-man and 25-man content. I was really annoyed at the value judgment implicit in the old 10-man "normal" 25-man "heroic" distinction. Just because you can't get 25 people together doesn't mean you want the content to be easy. Just because you *can* get 25 people together doesn't mean you aren't a whiny scrub who wants other people to carry them through for free loot. Seriously, Heroic 10-man content is awesome.

What bugs me, however, is the fact that the new 5-man / raid / whatever is (a) connected to the fucking-argent-fucking-tournament and (b) a new tier of gear.

It's not a gameplay issue, it's a suspension of disbelief issue.

In Northrend I have fought Deranged Viking Giants and their genocidal leader, I have faced living rifts in space-time and ancient traitor kings. Current raiders have taken down the vanguard of the Lich King and an actual Dragon Aspect before moving on to take down the servants of the titans and one of the Old Gods of Azeroth

Where do we go from here? To a fucking sporting event.

Which will apparently drop the best loot in the game.

What the fuck?

I know that it's a game mechanic, I know that it isn't supposed to make any particular sense but seriously, if the Argent Crusade has all of these Tier Nine weapons kicking around, why doesn't it fucking USE them. Why are we being made to fight *each other* instead of fighting the actual damned scourge?

I can cope with the fact that the peasants in Grizzly Hills are tougher than archmages in the old world. I can deal with the fact that Arthas is going to be a bigger badass than Yogg-Saron and that King Ymiron could beat up Onyxia. But I can't take the idea of having a break from fighting the Lich King to play at being a knight.

This is basically my problem with the whole fucking Argent Tournament, it feels like Renley Baratheon in the Song of Ice and Fire series. They sit up there under the black skies of Icecrown with their comfy tents and their pretty flags charging at each other with pointy sticks. It's pathetic.

I do not play WoW to play minigames. I do not play WoW to fucking *joust*.

I would be less insulted if I didn't know that the Argent Tournament was Blizzard's idea of "content for casual players". Because clearly the fact that I don't play every day means that I don't actually want to play the game I *bought* but instead want to *ride around on pretty ponies*.

That Guy In My Horde Guild: Update

2009-06-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

I felt a bit bad about being so mean about the DK in my Horde guild so I decided to share an anecdote Tamarind had just picked up about a DK "Tank" in a heroic run who flat out refused to use Frost Presence because they "needed the health" from Blood.

It'll be a bonding experience, I thought.

"DKs can tank any presence" he said "it just depends on gear and what you do"

I wasn't sure about this.

"You only need to use Frost if you're having trouble holding aggro"

Well yes. This is true. But if you don't have trouble holding aggro when you're not in Frost presence then whoever is DPSing with you *sucks*.

"If you're blood spec, blood is more effective"

WHAT THE FUCK

Okay, let's do the math.

Blood Presence, with 2/2 Improved Blood Presence gives you 15% increased damage (good) and 10% increased healing received (not bad)

Frost Presence, untalented, gives 60% extra armour, 5% flat damage reduction, and something in the region of a 60% damage increase.

And then, of course, he gives his sage advice:

"You can use Death and Decay"

Wow. Amazing. A moderate amount of AoE shadow damage on a longish cooldown which you would be fucking using anyway, or so I sincerely hope somehow makes up for cutting your overall threat generation *in half*.

"Or Blood Boil"

Wow, so your deep insights into DK tanking are "spam AoE".

Amazing.

Just to check, you know that Death Grip is for something other than showing off, right? And that you have another taunt with a less cool graphic?

And then he tops it all off with:

"Let me worry about my DK tanking, you learn how to play your pally so you can hold Aggro on the first boss in Azjol Nerub".

Here are several things that you cannot hold aggro through, you fucktard.

1) Anu'bar skirmishers. They shed aggro and attack at random. No ifs, no buts.

2) Death Grip. Yes, that particular run included a Death Knight. No that Death Knight didn't feel the need to follow kill order. Why yes, they did like to death grip things outside of my consecration range. Why do so many people think that because *they* have a Taunt, that makes *me* a bad tank when they get the aggro they *literally asked for*.

3) Being webbed and having nobody cut you out, because they're too busy complaining about the fact that the fight is actually taking some attention.

But of course apparently I should have just used AoE. How stupid of me.

Thoughts on 80

2009-06-17T03:06:00.000-07:00

Temitope reached level 80 a little while back. In some ways it's more fun than I'd expected, in some ways it's less fun.

My two favourite things in WoW are mindless grinding and instances.

I like mindless grinding because I can sit in bed in my pants, stick a DVD on, and rack up a nice stack of gold/herbs/cloth while watching The Office. It's relaxing.

I like instances because I like teamwork, coordination, communication and generally actually playing the game.

So in theory, level 80 is tailor made for me. I can grind dailies and run heroics and I'm set.

The dailies, I'm loving. It's a bit of an adjustment but I can see how it works: instead of saying "I need to do these five quests and I'll level" you say "I need to do these five quests and I can afford another Bold Scarlet Ruby". It works, it gives you a sense of progression, I'm basically pro.

What I'm less sold on is heroics.

I like to run dungeons for fun. But my idea of fun is not most people's idea of fun. My idea of fun is running Razorfen Downs in full black tie or three-manning Kael'thas. Most people's idea of fun at Endgame seems to be running through Heroic dungeons as fast as is humanly possible because they're only doing them for badges, rep, or gear. Instances while levelling were an end in themselves, instances at 80 are a grind, but they're a grind that requires just enough concentration to be annoying.

I've had some good runs, and my Alliance guild is trying to recruit more healers, which should lead to more guild runs with more coordination and (and I know this is hypocritical) fewer Death Knights, but until then I'm stuck running soulless PuGs with people who are just in it for the lewt.

Oceana Has Always Been At War With Eurasia

2009-06-16T08:05:00.001-07:00

WoWinsider pisses me off a lot of the time, not because of the content, but because of little throwaway things people say in their articles. For example, in today's Around Azeroth Elizabeth Wachowski says:

Remember the early leveling quests in places like Westfall and Redridge? Where you didn't have all this story and meaning, and all you had to do was deliver messages from one lazy jerk questgiver to another, or try to find a boar with an intact liver among dozens of boars with hepatic failure? On second thought, the early levels can go hang. Chasing Arthas across Northrend is way more fun.

I single this out not because it is unusual, but because it is depressingly common. There appears to be some kind of Ministry of Truth going around the WoW community, insisting that people cleave to the doctrine that Quests In The Old World And Outland Were Repetitive And Grindy Whereas Quests In Northrend Are Immersive And Story Driven.

This, if you will pardon my language, is complete fucking horseshit.

Let's take some common criticisms of Old World questlines, shall we?

First Criticism: They Just Had You Kill Hundreds of the Same Mob Over and Over Again

Whereas of course you never have to do that in Northrend.

Seriously, folks, killing shit and taking its stuff is what WoW is all about. It's the entire fucking premise of the game. If you genuinely find it boring to kill monsters for loot, find a new game. This one is *so* not for you.

Second Criticism: But They'd Make You Go Somewhere And Kill Something, Then Make You Go To The Same Place And Kill Something Else!

Which, again, never happened in Northrend. No sir.

And then of course there's all of the pointless delivery quests where you just talk to an NPC who tells to you talk to another NPC, which of course culminates in the biggest and most pointless delivery quest of them all.

But Questing In Northrend is Epic!

No, the Kolkar questline in the barrens is epic. You make a series of strikes against the Centaurs until, at last, you push them too far and they attack Crossroads, which leads to a pitched battle in which you can meaningfully participate and which happens where other people can see it instead of all this phased bullshit where you follow Thrall through the Undercity or watch Tirion Fordring have long conversations with Darion Mograine.

The Arugal plotline is epic. You gradually uncover more and more information about the work of the mad mage, slaying more and more of his minions, some of which will just eat you alive until you finally confront him in his fortress which by the way actually feels like a fortress, and not like a tiny hole in the ground.

But Northrend is Full of Lore!

Yes it is, and I love the lore, I really do. Particularly the bits relating to the Scourge and the Scarlet Crusade. I even quite like the stuff about the Titans and the Earthen and of course the Old Gods.

As you might have noticed there's quite a lot of Lore in the Old World as well, it just isn't rammed down your throat with the pommel of Frostmourne.

And before anybody says anything, I hated the fucking Wrath Gate.

I Do Hate People Who Brag

2009-06-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

So my Horde guild did a spanner-run through Azjol Nerub recently: a level 79 Paladin healing a level 80 Death Knight.

The Death Knight opined that Azjol Nerub was the easiest of the Northrend dungeons. Somebody else suggested that this was only true if you overlevelled it.

The DK insisted that no, they'd done it fine at level 70 three days after Wrath came out, and that he'd tanked it at level 73 on his Death Knight no problem and that he'd "just used Death and Decay" which he informed me "does AoE threat".

I asked what he'd done about the skirmishers, and he insisted that he hadn't had any trouble with them.

How bad a tank do you have to be if you can tank an instance where some of the mobs randomly drop aggro and become immune to taunts and not notice.

He did, however, helpfully inform me that I just had to watch my threat.

Raiding, Logistics, and the Problem with Progression

2009-06-15T01:00:00.001-07:00

In the marshmallow glow of hindsight, I feel I may have been a little hard on the Dickhead of the Week. I do, in fact, understand that running a raid with a bunch of people who haven't read the strategies and don't have the right gear must be infuriating. On the other hand, it's perfectly easy to say "sorry guys, I was looking for an easy, casual run, I'd rather not do this with folks who haven't done it before" instead of waving your bare-minimum Achievements around like a moron.

As well as "is that a real question, I'm so leet" guy, we also had somebody who kept insisting we should try Ulduar instead. Despite most of us being, to be honest, slightly undergeared for Naxx 10.

The thing is, I can totally see where she was coming from. Ulduar's the new thing, and we're being constantly told how what matters is seeing the content, man, seeing the content. Of course walking into Ulduar with ten guys in quest greens really would be a recipe for a big repair bill, but here's the question:

Why should it?

This is why I'll probably never get into serious raiding. I just can't be arsed with the logistics chain. I like the idea of more complicated dungeons with tougher bosses and more interesting fights, with more to pay attention to and more to co-ordinate. That strikes me as genuinely fun and interesting.

What doesn't strike me as interesting is having to grind Heroic UP until I get the damned Staggering Legplates, and grind dailies or farm herbs so I can raise the 60 gold a pop that it takes to fill out a red gem slot. I certainly don't want to be running Naxx every damned week just so that I can stand a chance at Ulduar.

A complaint that is constantly made about us casuals is that we "just want free epics". This is not true. I *don't* want epics. To be honest, I've have been perfectly happy to stay in the DK starting greens all the way to 80 (gotta dig the robe-and-cowl look). The reason I would actually like to raid is because I want to try some tougher fights, not because I want the phat lewts that drop from said fights. The problem is that *without* the loot from those fights, I can't do any other fights.

It's a basic flaw in the concept of progression raiding or, if you prefer, a basic flaw in Blizzard's insistence that progression raiding has to be *for everybody*. The hardcore raiders (that is to say, those who rate above 3 on the hardcoreness scale) find everything too easy, while casual players find that everything still has pointless, arbitrary requirements. The hardcores aren't happy, and the casuals still don't get to see the content.

Dickhead of the Week

2009-06-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

I recently hit 80 and, having spent the requisite length of time saving for epic flying, acquiring crafted epics and grinding rep with the Sons of Fucking Holdir, have started making tentative steps towards raiding.

My guild is basically a casual leveling guild, but we've got some 80s (80% of them Death Knights, make of that what you will) and one of my fellow renegades from the Scourge has started trying to get pickups together for the introductory raids.

We did Obsidian Sanctum yesterday, and it went quite well - we downed Sartharion on our second attempt, and I was only killed by Void Zones once.

The pickup started with somebody asking how many drakes we were leaving up, and I replied that since I had never actually so much as been in a raid group before, I'd rather we didn't leave any up thank you very much.

Everybody was completely stunned.

It seems to be utterly contrary to pickup group etiquette to admit that you haven't (a) done the raid before and (b) found it far too easy. Nobody is willing to ask if anybody needs - shock horror - to have the fights explained to them because nobody is going to admit not knowing anyway.

Today we tried to PuG Naxx, which is where I met the Dickhead of the week.

I don't normally name characters I complain about on this blog, because it's unfair, but I will say that the guy's name was a variant on the word "Elite" which I think is indicative. People with the word "elite" in their name are extraordinarily likely to be dickheads (newsflash guys, elitism <> merit, hereditary aristocracy is elitist, it doesn't mean the nobility have rigorous selection procedures).

When I asked who had done the instance before, TDotW replied by asking "is that a real question?"

I assured him that it was, at which point he laughed and, by way of an answer, linked an achievement.

The Undying perhaps? Or The Dedicated Few. Or maybe he could have just pointed to his Twilight Vanquisher title or linked Glory of the Raider

No, Dickhead of the Week linked The Fall of Naxxaramas.

Wow. I stand in awe of the fact that you have done the instance before.

I think he just thought that nobody should be PuGging something unless they'd already run it. To which I can only say this:

How much must you fucking suck at this game if you won't run a raid unless it's with people who have already done it. Is your DPS so shit that you need the entire raid to be in tier gear to compensate? Do you understand so little about the fights that you can't explain them to other people? Do you only want to raid if it boils down to free loot for you?

I got kicked from that particular pickup because - after waiting by the summoning stone for a fucking hour - I disconnected and they replaced me. They apparently wiped on the first boss, and the group collapsed. Later I got a tell from TDotW simply saying "Spec ap hit crit".

What I did not do was reply saying "fuck you, if you were as hardcore as you think you are, you wouldn't be in LFG" but I really should have done.

An Open Letter To That One Lowbie In My Horde Guild

2009-06-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

Dear That One Lowbie In My Horde Guild,

I appreciate that going through WoW the first time is hard. I understand that there are lots of things that are annoying or inconvenient. I understand that part of the reason you join a guild is because people help you out with stuff. I am more than willing to send you spare crafting mats, potions, or anything else I have lying around that might be handy. If you ever need pages from the Green Hills of Stranglethorn, I'm your man.

If you want to run an instance, I have a variety of low-to-mid level alts, and I would be more than happy to heal your RFC run on my 22nd level Shadowpriest, or your RFK run with my 35th level Enhancement Shaman. It'll be fairly easy, it'll be kinda fun, and it might teach you a thing or two about how the game works.

But I am not going to give you free Frostweave bags. Those things go for 600 gold on the Auction House, and making that much gold requires me to grind dailies for about three hours, or farm ore and sell it. I don't want to spend three hours of my time saving *you* a trip to the nearest vendor. If you need bags, I am happy to make you up a nice set of wool or linen ones, if you'll send me the mats. Do not ask me for a free gift of 600 gold. It's rude.

Similarly, you do not need to run instances to level. There is literally twice as much experience in the game as you need at this point. If you have run out of quests in your current area, go to a different one. I would be quite happy to tell you where the best place to go next is for your particular character, and how to get there. If you want to run an instance because you want to run the instance, great, I'll get on my 26th level Resto Druid and we can have a shot at Shadowfang Keep or Razorfen Downs. Heck, I could get out my bank alt and we could try to do Deadmines if you like.

But please stop asking me to boost you through places. It'll take about an hour of my time, end to end, and that's an hour in which I could be doing dailies on my main or questing on my alts, both of which will directly and personally benefit me substantially more than following a 72nd level Paladin through the wreckage of the Scarlet Monastery will benefit you.

People like you, That One Lowbie In My Horde Guild, are what gets casual players a bad name. Every time something gets nerfed, or the requirements for something get reduced, people look at guys like you and say "it's because of the casuals" and when people demand Frostweave bags at level 28, I begin to think they have a point.

Love and hugs

Temitope

On Entitlement (more about 3.2 Mount Changes)

2009-06-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

Something else that caught my eye about the 3.2 mount changes.

As well as making mounts require less gold and fewer experience points to acquire, apparently 3.2 is also going to reduce the casting time for mounts to 1.5 seconds.

Curiously, nobody is complaining about this.

Could that be because people only worry about "dumbing down" when it makes the game easier for *other people*?

3.2 Mount Changes and the Myth of "Difficulty"

2009-06-11T04:06:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you've noticed, but Chess is getting totally dumbed down.

They've made it so that everybody gets to use the same pieces.

I know. It's totally stupid. Garry Kasparov works for years honing his skills and perfecting his abilities, but now they've changed things so that any noob can pick up a chess board and use all the same moves as him.

Just how easy are they trying to make this game?

And don't get me started on the double-move rule for pawns. They totally nerfed the early game. But no, casual players didn't have the skill to make the same pawn move twice in a row.

Umm ... yeah. So in case it's escaped your notice, Blizzard has made mounts easier to get (or will be in 3.2) - regular mounts at 20, Epics at 40, Flying at 60 - with cost reduced accordingly.

Naturally the hardcore community are up in arms about this.

Or rather the "hardcore" community are up in arms about this.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the problem with WoW is not casual players (of which I am assuredly one) or hardcore players (of whom I have met many, mostly very nice people who take the game seriously and aren't dicks about it) but wannabe hardcore players.

Wannabe hardcores are the bane of WoW. These are the douchebags who ask you to link DPS meters in low-level instances. These are the guys that think that DPSing means doing as much damage as possible, completely ignoring party buffs, debuffs, or little things like whether you pull aggro. These are the guys who got boosted through every instance and still think they've "cleared the content". These are the guys who think that their skill at the game is measured by their character's gear. They're the guys who tell you to "hurry plz" in instances, because they don't actually want anything except the loot at the end. They're the guys who say that people should have to "work" for in-game rewards, like playing the game for long enough to hit level 30, or ground enough gold to buy epic flying somehow means you possess anything other than lots of free time.

Wannabe hardcores whine every time Blizzard makes the game "easier". And by "easier" I mean "less time consuming". Apparently getting your mount at level 20 will magically make it easier to heal Razorfen Kraul. Being able to fly in Hellfire Peninsula makes it easier to avoid the bombs in the Blood Furnace.

If the only metric by which you can judge the difficulty of a game is how many arbitrary hoops people have to jump through to get stuff done you suck. It does not take skill to gain XP. It does not take skill to farm gold. All it takes is time. If you don't realise that, it's because you have no idea what a "challenging" game is actually like.

I, Ferraro

2009-06-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

I honestly didn't intend this to be a wow-feminism blog. I'm not totally comfortable with self-defining as a feminist anyway - it's too easy for men to use the "feminist" label as a way of insisting that everybody is sexist *except them*.

That said, in my last post I linked briefly to a WoWinsider (now WoW.com) article about a girl called Ferraro.

What I pointed out at the time was that Ferraro was a not-terribly-interesting WoW blogger who had the peculiar talent of looking pretty.

Except she, in fact, didn't.

As WoW Insider explains, Ferraro turns out to have stolen the hawt chick pictures (and, peculiarly, a number of personal blog posts) from another blogger.

This is kind of fucked up, but I can't help but think that this is a case of the internet reaping what it sows.

Specifically, "Ferraro" clearly pretended to be a hot woman in order to increase the profile of her (or, as many are speculating, his) WoW blog and it worked like a charm.

The reason it worked is twofold. Firstly, women are still judged almost exclusively on their looks and secondly, female gamers enjoy the dubious benefits of lowered expectations.

Paladin Schmaladin was - as I understand it - a fairly useful Pally blog. This makes it no different from about ten bajillion other fairly useful Pally blogs on the internet. Putting a hot woman on it turned it meant that instead of getting compared to five hundred blogs on the same subject it was being compared to ... well ... none.

Now as it happens, it looks like Ferraro went a good deal further than stealing a few pictures, essentially taking the whole online identity of TechDarling author Sarah Townsend, but in a sense that strikes me as a sensible (if creepy) way of creating a false online persona. Copy-pasting personal posts adds an air of authenticity to your alleged hot-gamer-chick identity which it would otherwise lack.

Terry Pratchett, in one of his later books, talks about a time in the history of Anhk-Morpok when it was overrun by rats, and the then administration attempted to solve the problem by putting a bounty on rat-tails. This led to the rat infestation getting even worse, until Lord Vetinarii solved the problem by uttering the famous proclamation "Tax the Rat Farms".

If there is a simple, obvious reward for doing something, people will do it.

I, Ferraro

I was halfway through this post when I realized something.

I do exactly what Ferraro did. I do exactly what Ferraro's readers did.

Specifically, one of the reasons I play female characters in WoW is that if you have a female avatar then people are nicer to you. I've even seen this as advice on the Auctioneer website: make your bank alt a hot female character, and you will be able to negotiate better deals.

There is an unconscious part of my brain that kicks in the moment I look at an attractive female avatar. I will automatically cut the players of female avatars more slack than the players of male avatars. If a male Hunter fires off a multi-shot before the tank can pull, or leaves his pet on Aggressive I'll write him off as a moron in two seconds flat. If a female avatar does the same thing I'll forgive and forget.

It's a stupid, sexist way of looking at things, but it's incredibly common, totally instinctive, and easy to exploit for your own benefit. All Ferraro did was play on the fact that an attractive female face elicits a positive reaction from an audience. Copy-pasting somebody else's life is *weird* but it was undeniably effective, and I'd feel more comfortable condemning him/her for it if WoWinsider hadn't just run an interview the entire *basis* of which was "look at this hot chick".

More Stuff About Sexism

2009-05-27T04:50:00.000-07:00

The only article on this blog that has any actual comments is the one I wrote a while back about That Noblegarden Thing.

Part of the reason it has so many comments is that it, unfortunately, degenerated into a bit of an argument between me and a guy called James, in which I called him a sexist, he insisted that he wasn't, and I insisted that he was, and that all of the things he kept saying to prove he wasn't only showed exactly what a big sexist he was. To be honest I was a bit over-aggressive but the advantage of doing this kind of thing on your own blog is that you have that luxury.

The particular sticking point, I think, was his insistance that he wasn't a sexist but that he "appreciated the beauty of the female form".

What I didn't have the time or patience to explain to this guy, but which I think is worth a post in its own right, is precisely why "I appreciate the beauty of the female form" is in fact a totally sexist thing to say.

Issue the First: There are Exceptions to Every Rule

It's a common complaint amongst racist dickheads that black people are allowed to use the "n-word" and white people aren't.

In the same way, I'm going to start off by saying that it is, theoretically, possible to actually "appreciate the beauty of the female form" without it being an offensive, sexist, insulting thing to say. If you have made an extensive study of - say - the portrayal of women in the visual media, if you have read The Beauty Myth and know what the term "male gaze" actually means, if your idea of "beauty" isn't defined entirely as "things men traditionally find nice to look at" and if you understand that "the female form" is not a synonym for "boobs" then you might be the sort of person who can "appreciate the beauty of the female form" without being a creepy Nice Guy dickweed.

On the other hand, if you've got those sorts of credentials, you'll probably describe your interests in a less stupid way.

Treat Me Like a Woman

Just to reiterate for those who aren't sure, I'm not a woman (although I sometimes get mistaken for one online, because I can't find my way around Halls of Stone without a map). I'm a man.

One of the perks of being a man is that I have the de facto right to define what it means to be a woman. Just to be clear, by "right" I really mean "privilege" - I'm not claiming that it's a right in the moral sense of the word. It's one I'd be happy to give up (in theory, at least, I rather suspect that I'd miss it).

As a man, I enjoy the right to define what is and is not feminine, what body shape, style of dress, and even patterns of behaviour are "attractive" in a woman. Furthermore, the extent to which I consider a woman attractive is the only judgment I need make of her worth.

This is why men have to be very careful making generalisations about women. When you say "I appreciate the beauty of the female form" you are reinforcing your right to define what the female form is and should be.

I Think I'll Be Sexist Today!

Nobody wakes up in the morning and says "you know what, I think today is an excellent day for being a sexist asshole". Nobody *means* to be sexist. The whole problem with sexism is that you can be sexist *without meaning it*. I've made this point before, but the motto of segregation in 1950s America was "seperate but equal" - it was not, in fact, supposed to be racist at all. Similarly I've heard a great many racist comics insisting that "I don't make racist jokes, I make jokes about race".

Intent has no bearing on prejudice.

I am sure that when people say "I appreciate the beauty of the female form" they don't intend to be reinforcing harmful ideas about what women are "supposed" to look like, but the fact is they do. I'm sure they don't mean to be reinforcing the idea that women exist only to look nice for men, but the fact is they are.

There is nothing wrong with liking to look at conventionally attractive women. There is nothing wrong with liking to look at women who aren't necessarily conventionally attractive but who you personally find hot. What is very wrong is pretending that your personal predelictions benefit anybody except you. If you say "I appreciate the beauty of the female form" you are basically saying that women should feel flattered to have you perving at them.

But They Love It!

It's true that most people like to feel attractive. It's true that most women appreciate compliments. I've certainly never seen anybody get upset at being told their new haircut suits them.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure most women also like to hear things like "I read your last blog post and thought it was really interesting and insightful" or indeed (since this is ostensibly a WoW blog) "thanks for kicking the heals on that last boss".

I don't like JK Rowling, but there's an interesting post on her official website where she talks about how she once met a friend at a charity event, and the first thing that person said to her was "you look great, have you lost weight?". This she found infuriating and offensive, because she had, amongst other things, published two books since she last met this person.

It is a fact, and an undeniable fact, that a woman's physical appearance is given primacy over any and all qualities she may possess. Anne Widdecombe was more frequently attacked for being ugly than for having people give birth in handcuffs, Sarah Palin's "barbie-doll" looks are used as a direct attack on her politics. People do this all the time and they do it without thinking about it.

Women like to be complimented on their looks, but frequently compliments on their looks are all they get.

To take a recent, WoW-related example, consider this WoW insider article from their "fifteen minutes of fame" column. The *entire* focus of this article is that this girl who keeps a WoW blog (which isn't unusual) and acts as a playtester for Blizzard (which isn't unusual) *is hot*. Not only that, but the introduction goes to great lengths to express how surprising we are meant to find the fact that this woman is actually good at the game.

What I Look For in a Woman

Although James strongly denied being sexist, he did admit to perhaps being shallow except that he "values more than looks when it comes to a woman".

Such magnanimity.

Now let's be clear. I wouldn't go out with somebody I didn't find physically attractive. I don't watch a lot of porn but if I did, I wouldn't want it to include people who I didn't find physically attractive. Looks are extremely important to me in a prospective sexual partner.

The thing is "prospective sexual partner" and "woman" are very different things.

And I know it's just a linguistic shorthand, but it's a linguistic shorthand that reflects a real social trend. People genuinely act like wanting to have sex with a woman is the highest compliment you can pay her, while not finding a woman sexually attractive is the direst possible insult.

This whole thing sprang out of the Noblegarden achievement which required you to turn female characters into playboy bunnies. This led to a whole bunch of people saying "zomg! why are you so hung up about sex!" - I'm not hung up about sex. What I'm hung up about is the fact that "sex" and "women" are treated as synonyms. It's not just about bunny ears, it's about the fact that female characters in WoW - as in most fantasy and indeed in most works of fiction - are designed to appeal to male gamers who want to look at hot women, not to appeal to female gamers who want to identify with powerful women.

It is perfectly okay to fancy women. It is perfectly okay to like to look at women. It is not okay to pretend that women somehow benefit from this.

Instance Like a Dick!

2009-05-21T05:17:00.000-07:00

In response to Tamarind's recent instancing woes, I thought I'd post a helpful guide to Instancing Like a Dick. Just in case there were any of you guys out there who wanted to, but weren't sure how best to go about wasting my time.

Tanks

Remember you are the most important player in the instance. Without you, the other guys could not run. This means that you should (a) focus on keeping yourself alive at all costs and (b) make very certain that everybody else does exactly what you tell them.

Remember that healers are voice activated. They only heal you when you tell them to. Remember also that if your health bar never drops below 90% this has nothing to do with the guy in the robe, and everything to do with your *awesome tanking skills*.

Make sure you have recount installed. After all damage == threat, so you have to make certain that you're doing as much DPS as possible. It's also important to encourage your DPS to do their best by telling them that their DPS is shit compared to yours.

Remember that if somebody else gets attacked, that's a good thing. Your primary job is to stay alive, and if the mobs are attacking other people, it means you're doing your job better.

DPS

Don't install Recount. Somebody else will have it, so make sure you ask them to link it at every opportunity.

Remember that your job is to do as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is to AoE as much of the room as you can.

Remember that you are competing with the tank. It's up to them to hold aggro, it's up to you to try to take it off them. This will show how truly imba your DPS is. If you have taunts, use them.

If you're wearing plate or mail, you can survive being attacked, so off-tank (again, remember to Taunt!). It's a proven fact that having two targets to heal makes healing much more efficient.

Remember what gear is good for your class. To my fellow Death Knights, remember that we can wear any kind of armour - sure we don't need the Mp5, but Spellpower boosts a number of our most important abilities, so don't be afraid to Need on cloth.

If you use a pet, make sure they're on aggressive, otherwise they might stop attacking, causing you to lose DPS.

Remember, if you wipe, it's because the healer sucks.

Healers

Remember, healing is easy. You don't need to break for mana. You certainly don't need to shift out of Shadowform. Your job is to heal "when needed".

Remember that Death Knights and Paladins have the ability to heal themselves. This means they need even less healing than Warriors.

Don't forget to install Recount (you'll need it when the DPS ask you to link it). Remember the key to good healing is to pump out as much damage as possible while having as few deaths as you can reasonably manage.

If you pull aggro, run AWAY from the tank as fast as possible.

If things are going well, shift to DPSing full time. They don't need the heals anwyay.

If things are going badly, shift to DPSing full time. They need the extra damage.

Follow these simple rules, and you'll soon be Instancing Like a Dick with the best of them!

Self Unbalancing Gameplay

2009-05-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, blogger and one-hit-webcomic-wonder Shamus Young wrote about an idea he called "Self-Balancing Gameplay". The idea of this was that in any "RPG" style game, the fact that your character gained experience and equipment, allowing you to become more powerful and better at killing things effectively allowed players to choose their own difficulty setting. A hardcore powergamer will blitz through the start of the game until they get to the area where the monsters are tough enough to challenge them, while a meandering casual will dither around grinding rabbits until they're tough enough to take on the big bad world.

It's a decent enough theory, but it falls down in practice because gamers don't actually think that way. In practice the hardcore powergamers will squeeze every last drop of loot and experience out of the starting area, before going on to do the same for the next area, and the next, and the next. The power-gamer will, at every stage, make things easier on himself by optimising his use of resources. The casual gamer, on the other hand, will get bored of killing goblins after five minutes and see what's over the next hill, at which point they will get their face chewed off by Enraged Goblins and Goblin Savages.

It leads to a peculiar paradox: hardcore players do things the easy way, casual players do things the hard way.

Never is this more evident than in WoW.

Read any WoW levelling guide and it will say the same things: avoid instances unless you've got a regular group, do the green quests because they'll go much faster and net you nearly as much XP.

This was not how I levelled any of my characters (which might explain why my DK - my highest level toon by a long way - is only level 78). By the time the quests I have left in a location have gone green, I am *bored* with that location. I want to go and see the next bit. So I'll always be doing yellow or orange quests, for which I will be low level and undergeared, while the serious players blitz through the content having a much, much easier time of it. My first PC (on a now-deleted account) was a Forsaken rogue who spent *forever* getting slaughtered in the Tirisfal pumpkin patch at level four, because I couldn't be arsed to scour Deathknell for leftover supplies, and wanted to take the filthy living down a peg or two.

This is also the reason that balancing endgame is so impossible. A common complaint amongst serious raiders is that you can stumble into Naxx in quest greens, and still have a chance of beating the place.

The perception of endgame is that there are two camps of players: the "hardcore" players, who want a serious challenge that takes time and effort (0r "have no lives" according to the casuals) and the "casual" players who just want to see cool content (or "get free epics" according to the hardcores).

I can't speak for the Hardcores. I'm not one by any stretch of the imagination. I can't speak for casuals either, because we're a varied bunch. I can talk for myself, and this is what I'll say:

I want a challenge. I want a dungeon that requires everybody involved to pay attention, use their abilities sensibly, and have a strategy. I want to use CC and interrupts and kill the healers first, instead of just AoEing everything into the ground.

On the other hand, I don't want to have to run the same dungeon ten times just so I can get the right gear to do the next bit of content. I want to be able to go into Naxx in quest greens, because I want my ability to succeed at the game to be based on how well I play the game, not on whether the RNG gave me the right loot on my last dungeon run.

But of course, if a dungeon or raid is tuned so it's a challenge for me, it's going to be trivial for "hardcore" players, who will have optimised at every stage, and wouldn't dream of going into a new area with anything less than the best gear available from the old one.

The problem is exascerbated by the fact that the standard reward model in RPGs is loot which makes your character more powerful which, in turn, makes the game easier. This pretty much inverts Young's idea of "Self-Balancing Gameplay" and turns it into Self-Unbalancing Gameplay. More "serious" players will not only tend to play with greater skill but they will *also* have better stuff - meaning that the "Self-Balancing" mechanism of gearing actually starts to work the other way.

Blizzard's response to this is to add "hard modes" to their instances, but this isn't a solution either, because hardcore players won't just do the hard modes, they'll do the easy modes, then the heroics, then the normal hard modes then the heroic hard modes, moving step by step up the gear ladder so they never face a proper challenge because doing it any other way to a "hardcore" player would be completely illogical (unless you were racing for a world first, which some people did, only to find their achievements were removed because they did it "wrong").

If it was just a question of "people who want it easy" versus "people who want a challenge" the whole thing would be straightforward - you have two dungeon settings, one noticably more difficult than the other. The problem is that what you actually have is two sets of people, both of whom want a challenge, but who are willing to do vastly different levels of preparation before facing that challenge.

Anyway, I need to finish the last couple of levels to 80, so I can blunder into Naxx in my quest greens...

That Noblegarden Thing

2009-05-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

So I've just come out of wow-blog retirement to post a couple of comments elsewhere about the whole "Shake your bunny-maker" issue. This post, if you're interested.

To be honest, there's a lot about WoW that makes me uncomfortable. Savage cannibalistic trolls that talk like stereotypical black men, for example, sit right on the borderline of "not okay" for me. "Shake Your Bunny-Maker" was another one of those elements - the fact that the achievement specifically singled out female characters made me a bit uncomfortable. WoW is usually quite good at not gender-restricting things (you can get the "Blushing Bride" achievement by kissing anybody in a dress, male or female) and this seemed like an unfortunate decision.

What really upsets me, though, is the community reaction.

Some samples:

This sort of hippie feminist crap just isn't taken seriously anymore and certainly shouldn't be.

Of course I imagine if it was male characters 18+ no one would care (despite the existence of the Playgirl magazine) and no one would get to cry Sexism! Yay for the double standard.

As a male player I think it is sexist because it is not focusing on male characters. Come on, seriously this sexist/racist crap is being taken way to far.

Anyone who dwells in the sociological implication of two lines of text and five minutes searching around Dalaran is an idiot, pure and simple.

True equality is the day when anyone can make any joke towards anybody and nobody will care or take it seriously

You know what, short of violence and affecting choices, I don't understand what makes people get up in arms so much over racism/sexism etc ... If someone attacks someone as an act of discriminatory violence, I'll be the first to act, but short of that, suck it up.

Instead of trying to change the world for your daughter.. u should quit this game and get a job and take care of her.

Now a days people take things too serious and sap the fun out of harmless things for the population as a whole

I don't mean to diminish the cause of equality for women, but debates like this one do that all on their own.

And so on ad nauseam.

Ironically, the author of the post from which all of these comments were taken makes the comment on her own blog that "gamer guys don't tend to be mysogonistic". I wonder if she said that before or after a bunch of gamer guys jumped all over her for raising the *possibility* that something in a video game might be sexist. She gets a lot of support on her personal blog, but it's mostly from people praising her for having the "good sense" not to be personally offended by something. For example:

I would just like to say that this blog post is, perhaps, one of the most intelligent and rational things I have ever had the pleasure of reading. At the risk of sounding sexist (oh noes!), I have met only a handful of women who possess the requisite intelligence and (and this is an important 'and') rational character to agree with your reasoning

Dear Internet:

Sexism is a fantastically complicated issue. So is racism for that matter. Just because you don't think you're sexist, that doesn't mean you are not, in fact, sexist. The fact that you are married, or have a girlfriend, or a mother does not mean you are not sexist. Not even being a woman makes you immune to sexism - sexist ideas and attitudes are universal. That's. Why. They. Are. Bad.

A lot of people genuinely don't understand why other people were offended by the achievement. A WoW blog is a slightly weird place to be talking about the ideas of privilege but that's what we're dealing with here. The reason Mr "This racist crap has gone too far" and Mr "At the risk of sounding sexist" don't understand why people were offended by the SYBM achievement is because the issues that led to people finding them offensive are outside their experience.

As a man, I have spent my entire life having people tell me and - more importantly - show me that I can do anything I want. I could be a doctor or a lawyer or a bestselling fantasy novelist, I could be a game developer or if I really wanted to be, the pope. As a geek, I can also live a rich fantasy life in which I am a knight or a sorcerer, or the warcheif of the Horde.

Women don't get this. Yes little girls get the same "be all you can be" speeches at school, but there isn't the same follow through. Girls are still taught that their primary function is decorative, that while they *can* grow up to be doctors and lawyers and writers, it's important that they do it while looking sexy. Girls of the geeky persuasion find their fantasy lives similarly curtailed - in fantasy as in reality a woman's function is to look hot, not to be powerful or influential or effective. Geek girls are stuck playing the sidekicks in men's fantasies, not living their own.

Look at WoW Lore. Arthas Menethil, Thrall, Varian Wrynn, Tirion Fordring, Kaelthas Sunstrider, King Ymiron, Kel'Thuzad, Gul'dan, Illidian Stormrage, Edwin - blooming - Van'Cleef. Pick an archetype: the noble hero, the wise leader, the batshit-insane leader, the cunning rogue, or the arrogant, duplicitous bastard, there's a male character doing it. When it comes to women - well there's Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner and ... that's it really unless you count Princess Theradras. And Jaina's main defining feature is being romantically linked to a bunch of male characters, while Sylvanas was recently shown to be incapable of realising that demons are not always trustworthy.

In WoW, like in most fantasy, like in life, the default assumption is that anything useful that needs doing, anything pro-active is done by men, and that the job of women is to stand on the sidelines cheering them on, preferably while wearing as little as possible. The reason that some people were so upset by Shake Your Bunny Maker was not because it was grossly offensive by itself, but because it was yet another symptom of a world where women are just expected to stand there and look pretty.

(this post is a response to:)

Cosmic Geek: My actual opinion on Shake your Bunny-Maker

"Blood Never Dies"

2009-01-22T05:04:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd follow up on my earlier post, which complained about the rallying cry of the Frost DK, with another one complaining about the (even more annoying) mantra of my own preferred spec, the egregiously misleading "Blood never dies".

My last post, in part, was a lament about how people don't seem to understand tanking any more, about how people seem to think Frost DKs can tank just by being Frost DKs. This post is going to be about how people don't seem to understand DPSing or even *healing* any more either.

The problem with Blood is that it's kind of a spec for assholes. It's a straightforward spec which does a lot of physical damage, and lets you heal yourself so you feel totally indestructible. It's like having all three Paladin specs rolled into one - you get to do loads of damage and be hard to kill and heal yourself (and "yourself" is probably all you care about, which is sort of the problem).

Blood's big selling point is that it's strong on self-healing. There's Blood Presence (which everybody can use, but Death Knights seem to be allergic to using presences that don't match their spec) and Blood Aura, which together provide 8% of your damage dealt as healing. Then there's Rune Tap, which allows you to heal yourself for 10% - 20% of your maximum health every 30-60s, Vampiric Blood, giving you a small health buff and a bonus to incoming healing, Bloodworms which creates little maggotty things that heal you and Vendetta, which heals you when you kill something.

This is all great in the solo game. A blood DK can laugh at anything that's labelled "recommended players, 2" because their self-healing should keep them in the game if they're remotely able to stay focused. In an instance it all adds up to about thirty seconds of extra survival if you're lucky.

The problem is that most Blood DKs, coming into a dungeon from soloing, think that their self-healing is *the shit*. They don't worry about pulling aggro because, hey! they can heal themselves. If they're not DPSing (either because somebody actually asked them to tank, or because they're running the classic "four DKs and a priest" party where everybody just death grips away) it won't occur to them to switch to Frost Presence so they can live a bit longer(because blood is the DPS Spec! and I need the healing from Blood Presence!).

Unfortunately, the presence of Healers in a dungeon situation only feeds into this problem. It's remarkably easy to look at the way your health bar stays topped up and think "wow! I'm taking hardly any damage". It's even worse with Blood DKs, it's all to easy to look at those Renew ticks and think "wow, my Blood Presence is really pulling its weight here". In one of my early Ramps pickups, the resident Blood DK was roundly mocked for nearly getting knocked down to his last few HP by trash mobs after playing the "Blood Never Dies" card, only to reply "yeah, but I healed myself." Which didn't go down to well with the Shaman who had, in fact, healed him.

Again, the problem seems to come down to a failure to tell the difference between soloing and instancing. A soloing Blood DK can fight masses of mobs, stay in Blood Presence, and keep himself topped up with Rune Tap no problem. An instancing Blood DK can't. It's depressing how few people can tell the difference.

"I'll Tank, I'm Frost"

2009-01-22T04:22:00.000-08:00

So as I said in my first post (which was quite a while ago now, I've been levelling through outland), I've been running a lot of Pickups, many of which contain two or three Death Knights.

Because of this, there's some confusion over who should tank any given instance run, and the cry I hear far too often is "I should tank, I'm frost".

Now okay, I'll cop to the fact that Frost does have better mitigation than the other DK trees, and I'll admit that, being blood-specced and liking to do a little tanking now and again myself, I'm a bit biased (and I'll admit that my mitigation isn't quite what it should be right now, because I've not yet invested in Toughness - it's next on my list, I swear, and I'm still basically in a leveling spec).

However, the reason that Frost Spec has such good mitigation is because of talents like Lichborne, Frigid Dreadplate and Frost Aura, when I've inspected people who use the "I should tank, I'm frost" line, they usually have at most one of these talents. They tend to put the rest in things like Runic Power Mastery. A lot of them also seem to *only* have points in Frost, not even bothering to take Antici ... pation from tier 1 unholy.

Now I know that we're pre-endgame here, I know that with a decent healer you don't actually need that brilliant a spec, particularly if you're tanking Hellfire Ramparts at level 66, so it probably shouldn't bug me as much as it does, but I think it underlines a serious problem.

The problem is, everybody knows that you need a "tank" to do a successful instance run, but a depressingly small number seem to know what a tank actually is or does. This is probably partly because the term itself is misleading: a tank is a armour plated weapon of war designed to crush the enemy with overwhelming force. A WoW "tank" is an armour plated guy whose job is to stand there and get beat on while everybody else kills the enemy. I've been in several instance runs (particularly in early outlands) where we've had a frost "tank" who has basically just soloed their way through the dungeon, and expected everybody else to do the same (to be fair to the individuals involved, it actually works reasonably well if you've got a lot of Death Knights and you're a bit high level for the instance). Similarly I have occasionally (once I've convinced people that not being frost really isn't an issue) been asked to tank instances by people who never the less think that a sensible and disciplined pull is one where the three DKs in the party all try to Death Grip different targets. I've even had people suggest that it's better to do it that way because that way the damage gets spread around instead of one person taking all of it which ... well ... I sort of thought that was the point of having a tank, actually.

The thing that bugs me so much about "I'll tank, I'm frost" is that it highlights, for me, the fact that for a lot of people "tank" has become a label with no real meaning. It's almost fascinating to watch, it's like seeing the evolution of a superstition. People seem to believe that bringing along a player with the mystical "tank" label attached to them will somehow keep everybody safe. Years from now, WoW historians will look at the practice and say "strange as it may seem, the apparently arcane tradition of 'tanking' may have had its origins in a very real aspect of gameplay."

I, Deathtard

2009-01-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

So I've started a WoW blog.

I got into WoW in a big way recently, mostly because my girlfriend did, but it has rapidly pushed all other computer games off of my harddrive, and swallowed a large part of my free time.

I originally rolled horde with a bunch of my friends, but see what life was like on the other side, I rolled a Death Knight on the other side of the fence and it turned out to be an absurd amount of fun.

I'm currently furiously leveling my Blood-specced Death Knight through Outland, doing large numbers of instance runs in (frequently) all DK groups. It's an unusual way to play the game, and I've started this blog to keep track of some of my more interesting or infuriating WoW experiences, both as a DK and otherwise.