01/7/13

[WoW] Once More at the Level Cap: Looking Back at 85-90

Well, I’ve made it again and I am once more at the level cap in World of Warcraft. It took me longer this time than probably any one of their expansions to date, but I’m glad I made it. It may not have happened, in all honesty — I’d already tried and given up once before — but a good friend returned and I took the chance at trying again. The journey was filled with ups and downs and now that I’m here, I think it’s time for a bit of reflection.

Level progression was loose and easy but I can’t help but feel let down. Mists of Pandaria is an exercise in rigidity. Questing follows the same model we saw in Cataclysm but to a heightened state. Quest hubs will unilaterally usher you along the leveling super highway with every handful of quests buzzing you past another exit. Eventually hit 90 and decide if it’s time to get off. There are pitstops for lore and other distractions but each is extremely short-lived with little trade-off for the time spent. It works, and a lot of the quests are fun and well designed, but the general sense is one of being ushered through: You don’t want to wait too longer because something else (not better) is just around the bend.

I don’t think I like that. I don’t think I like the direction WoW has gone. Blizzard has always supported directed gameplay but this is beyond that. It is defined gameplay. Even exploration doo-dads, these lore items and junk pick-ups that are instantly traded in for cash, are only the bare minimum required to say Blizzard supports exploring. They don’t. Play as prescribed and call me in the morning.

I’ve mentioned in the past how impressed I was at the level design in Jade Forest. The single most disappointing thing of this expansion is that every other zone fails to meet that bar. Where are the instanced story sequences? Where is the voice narration? Where are the new quest types? I mean, the sniper bit in Jade Forest wasn’t tried-and-true MMO fare but it was at least new. Everything that came after was cut-and-paste from 2009 — plus vehicles. I would be willing to bet, even, that the reason players begin in Jade Forest is because some developer probably noticed its content was the most unique thing on offer in MoP. Playing through Townlong Steepes and seeing the crystal-snake from Stonecore pop out of the ground (because, why not?) really captured the sense of re-hash that pervades the experience.

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But for all that, I have never claimed WoW was a bad or unworthy game. There were some damn fun parts in leveling up. Pretty much anything that allowed you to kill masses of enemies at once sparkled. Smashing evil monkies with a giant yeti was a great time. As was the martial arts training sequence. All that needed to be a proper montage was Eye of the Tiger. Even playing standard Kill/Collect quests was a good time because what WoW does well, it runs with. Environments are over-saturated and beautiful. Mastering your class is easy to try and hard to perfect. The added movement for even the most basic battles also adds an element of reactivity previously only found in group content.

Normal mode dungeons are fun but lacking. By level 87 I had played through every one of them. By 88 I was avoiding them because, well, why bother? Apart from seeing the content, there wasn’t much motivation to actually get in until 89 when you begin preparing for heroics.

Another thing that bears mentioning is that the number systems are simply out of control. At level 10 you’re getting +5 stat armor. By 89 you’re getting +450 stat armor, multiple times over. I dinged 90 with almost 400k health. Levels require tens of millions of experience points and reading quests slows things down to the point where actually getting them is a drag. At that point, questing isn’t about “experience” or story or world. It’s about filling in a percent of a bar. 2% here, 1% there, gogogo to ding grats thx.

Numbers are so out of control they are choking out their very meaning. Tell me, what’s the difference between 350k and 400k HP? A raid-geared TBC tank. Or one hit. You choose.

Now that I’m 90, I will get back into the routine of collecting gear for heroics and LFR. I always enjoyed that aspect of the game. Tangible progression, cool outfits. I do wonder if I will make it, though, hating dailies as I do.

And with that, I would like to make a prediction. Without ever having completed daily #1 in MoP, and without regard to how fun any of them may actually be, I feel confident in saying that building the endgame on the back of daily quests will be viewed as the single biggest failing of this expansion.

I say this for two reasons. First, Blizzard have made completing them a requirement with the introduction of lucky coins (which give extra loot rolls). Pairing this with wider accessibility of raiding LFR has provided, people feel herded towards them. Second, and more importantly, the current implementation of dailies takes the raid problem and pushes it into the rest of the world. Don’t like repeating the same content ad nauseum? Well, instead of doing that once a week with a chance at progression, now you get to do it every day with the chance at none. Tell me players won’t get tired of that and I’ll tell you about this floating island I have.

Sorry for the snark. Dailies are fine as a limited option. They are not an endgame and nor should they be anything more than a temporary gateway. Even with lots of options, over an expansion cycle they will all get seen, all get played out, and the less fun ones will be pushed to the side while the better ones become objects of scorn. Players need movement. They need progress. It doesn’t matter how good your quest is, after completing it 30 times, it becomes a chore before going outside to play.

Overall, I’m happy I made it to 90 and I won’t be surprised if the game opens up a bit. Despite my conclusions above, I expect to actually enjoy some of the dailies because I won’t be doing them to death. My plan right now is to begin tanking with my Death Knight (the game does a good job of getting you gear ready) and get the extra few points I need to begin heroics. Then it’s raiding through the LFR to see the content through.

Now that I’ve pushed through and am 90, I need to get back to RIFT and see more of Storm Legion. Plus, TSW, a game I bought, am extremely intrigued by, but keeps getting pushed to the side because I should probably get these sub games in before my time expires. How about that?

12/21/12

MMO Radio – Episode #1: A New Beginning

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Welcome to the inaugural episode of MMO Radio! This is the place where MMO and table top gaming collide to bring you the week’s news and hot topics in a fun half-hour format. Together, Adam “Ferrel” Trzonkowski and Chris “Syeric” Coke bring three books, hundreds of blog posts and podcast appearances, and thousands of in-game hours to bear against the topics of the week.

This week we look at the recent layoffs at Trion and what that might mean for RIFT, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria versus RIFT: Storm Legion, B2P as the new payment model for MMOs, and how being a dungeon master is a lot like leading a guild. We may also have inadvertently stumbled into wife swapping and red lace. Maybe.

If you were a fan of our old show, The Multiverse, or are just a fan of MMOs or DnD and are looking for a fun way to spend half-an-hour, this is the show for you.

Please consider leaving us a 5-star review during this most-important time. It will truly help us!

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Adam’s Links: Epic Slant Press, The Books
Chris’ Links: Game By Night, Hooked Gamers, Vagary.TV

12/14/12

Mists of Pandaria: Playing the Hotbar Game

Over the last week, I’ve spent a decent amount time in Mists of Pandaria plugging along at my 88 Death Knight and 12 Monk. I’ve been having good, if not particularly surprising, fun. I love the painterly quality of Pandaland, hate how Disney playing the starter zone feels, and love how efficient questing is. It’s like mainlining XP straight to the vein. (To note, I don’t think I would like the “three quests 100 feet from the giver” model in most other MMOs. WoW gets away with it because the world is openly a means to an end). While many aspects of the game have evolved, the fact that combat hasn’t stands out.

Dodging and movement have become qualities people have trouble living without. Once you have experienced them, it feels odd and off-putting to go back to a game without. Mists of Pandaria has done its best to circumvent this problem by building reactionary elements into the leveling process. This, in fairness, is great training for heroics and raiding but can’t compete with games designed with movement in mind. WoW might reasonably be called a “classic MMORPG” at this point. Its art holds up but its gameplay is quickly becoming something current developers are avoiding.

When movement means so little, ability selection and timing are elevated beyond all else. Optimizing your class comes down to mastering rotation and priority, hitting this flashing ability in the fewest milliseconds possible. What is interesting is that it’s not a deal breaker for me, and given enough time, I actually come to enjoy the groove. I get a sense of tunnel vision towards my hotbars that is anathema to raiding but quite spellbinding for leveling. Of course, it happens that from time to time you look up to see your rapidly depleting health, but hey, that’s why your screen flashes red.

I’m being facetious but it’s true. Most of WoW is a hotbar game. Raiding comes down to doing it with your eyes closed. Leveling is the training session, but ironically, memorizing the steps comes down to doing exactly what you shouldn’t do in raids. Pandaren zones aren’t enough to overcomes all of Cataclysm, all of Wrath, and all of Burning Crusade. Sorry raid leaders.

The fact that this hasn’t turned out to be a deal breaker further solidifies my idea that there is no fundamental problem with the “core attributes” of MMORPGs. Players have just segmented into different audiences. Some people want new systems. GW2 delivered, and that game is so fundamentally different that it doesn’t even feel like the same type of game. Unless you outright hate classic MMO gameplay, Guild Wars 2 will likely fail as any type of “replacement.”

That’s why I believe action- and hotbar combat have to co-exist or, more likely, a blend of the two will arise and trump them both. I don’t find players to be quite so polarized as the Internet would make believe. Most, I think, are probably a little tired of the old but would prefer something “familiarly new.” It will be fun to see where MMOs are two years from now when all of our speculations begin surfacing in actual design.

You know what the new design of WoW really does show? Blizzard must have thought we were pretty inept before now. That a difficulty spike of “occasionally move over here” is worth noting is a pretty telling design attribute.

10/17/12

WoW: MoP Jade Forest Review and Other Miscellaney

It’s been a while since my last update, so I thought I’d check in and let you all know where I’m at. My main game has been WoW: MoP lately but I’ve dipped my toe into more than one water, so let’s jump right in.

Jade Forest Review

While “review” might be a bit overkill, I’ve played through the zone and feel comfortable sharing my thoughts. I think it’s safe to say that Jade Forest is a very well done zone and provides a great introduction to Mists of Pandaria. Each quest hub now represents a set of six or so quests that give you a nice chunk of story and usually keep the thread of the main storyline going along at a steady clip. This is a nice change from previous expansions where a dozen quests kept the story; this is much more concise and easy to follow. It also allows Blizzard to deliver story in chunks of real movements. For the first time, I found myself questing because I wanted to see what would happen next and not just to kill more furlbogs. I also had a great “wow!” moment at the end of the zone when the Sha of Doubt finally reveals itself. The lead up to that was fantastic and one of the best bits of storytelling ever seen in WoW’s quests.

Unfortunately, quest design didn’t evolve nearly as much as story in that not at all. This is why I think reviewers nailed the game so hard. Quest progression and story delivery have evolved, and even combat has had some shake-ups (while still being a 1, 2, 3, mechanic, button-mash), but what you’re actually doing hasn’t changed a bit. There are a couple outliers, like the sniper quest and other instanced story content, but the open world doesn’t get more exciting than the bombing runs first introduced in ’07. I really hope this improves as I continue through the game.

Still, WoW is WoW, and I’m having fun with it. Jade Forest is a good introduction to what I’ve always said is a good game. At this point, though, it’s an old game and virtually everything in RIFT’s Storm Legion (other than story) is showing it up. Will I stay subscribed after this month? I really don’t know if 90 is worth it when there’s such other offerings on the market.

Guild Wars 2 – No Pressure, No Login?

Guild Wars 2 is a fantastic game, no doubt about it. I like it a lot, but its systems really don’t compel me to keep logging in. There’s just no pressure to do so. While having no quests and (almost) meaningless levels is a good idea, it also means that it’s firmly an “at my own pace” kind of game. I log in here and there to play with friends or do a story mission, but I’m sitting at level 30 and don’t see myself hitting 80 before the end of the year. I’m slow like that.

What does this say about the game, though? I mean, my own experience aside, lots of people have stated similar opinions whether they’ve capped out or not. I have to think ANet isn’t exactly happy that so many people have fallen off when this was, relatively speaking, THE game of the last few years. Then again, they got their box price, so maybe it means more to us than them. I’m more worried that this will mean less content updates and more boxed expansions, similar to Guild Wars 1.

And maybe someone can explain this to me. GW players say that the game had great support. Every time I checked their site, I’d see balance updates and maybe a chunk of content for a holiday. The once and maybe every six month quest pack. Did they just not update their site enough? Bury real content additions under layers of “Buy Guild Wars” banners? I don’t really consider balance patches and holiday events as content. That’s more… “we’ve got to give them something, plus PVP!” type stuff. If they do that with GW2, they will fail.

Other Games, Other Gigs

I’ve been playing a handful of other games recently. Borderlands 2, Dishonored, War of the Roses, BF3: Armorer Kill… lots of stuff. And another game I’m not allowed to tell you about yet (but it features zombies and is a lot like a mod you might have played… stay tuned). Suffice it to say, all of the above are excellent, especially Dishonored. If you liked Deus Ex or Bioshock, you need to play that game. It’s GOTY material.

I’ve also picked a couple other gigs. I’m back at Vagary for one — I took a LoA earlier this year to handle some personal issues. I’m also writing for Hooked Gamers now, too, as a PC Reviewer. Here are two recent reviews: Cortex Command (bad) and War of the Roses (good). It’s likely that my work for those sites will take up more of my time, but I’ll be keeping up here as well.

Hey, you know what game I haven’t been playing? RIFT. Despite an extremely generous offer from their team to get a tour of the expansion, I’ve been staying away in preparation for the expansion. Now I’m in lull mode, the calm before the storm, you might say (bada bing!). It’s going to be good, guys. I just don’t want to spoil it for myself and knowing it’s just around the corner is keeping me at bay until it’s finally here. You get that way? You want to play the new version of something so much that the current version just doesn’t seem good enough (when it really is)? You’ve got to give it to them for community outreach. Trion is really something special. Shout outs, Elrar!

Anyways, that about wraps it for now. Stay strong, internets. November isn’t long!

10/9/12

Trying Mists of Pandaria After Six Months Away

I recently picked up Mists of Pandaria to while away the remaining hours before RIFT’s Storm Legion expansion. To be perfectly honest, I’m pretty surprised to be writing this right now since I didn’t think I’d be trying it at all. Word of mouth means more than marketing or silly Panda decisions after all, it seems, so after too many trials and tribulations, I finally got the game installed and ready to go.

Technical Difficulties

Getting the game going again was a lot more difficult than I expected. I spent two days stuck on “Updating Setup Files.” This has never been an issue in the past, so I chalked it up to the digital download not agreeing with my system. I even went so far as to install my WotLK disc only to get the same hang up an hour in. As I later discovered, AVG had disabled the Windows Secondary Logon service, so when I got that turned on, everything was honky dory. Blizzard really has streamlined the download-play process and deserve a nod. Good job, little monsters.

Unfortunately, I’ve experienced numerous crashes and bugs since then. The MoP DX11 update doesn’t agree with nVidia’s latest drivers, so I was forced to downgrade to DX9 to play for more than an hour. For some reason, I can no longer hit ESC to bring up the menu, too, so there’s that.

Pet Battles

It’s amazing how much has changed in the last six months. I was lucky enough to have a couple of friends still playing who could help me get back into things. Pet Battles were one of the first things I wanted to try out. As it happens, I totally forgot some of the cool pets I had, and I was able to bypass the starter pet completely and begin things right with my Onyx Whelpling (Nine out of ten adventurers agree, dragons are cooler than birds).

People weren’t kidding when they said this thing is like Pokemon. It’s a carbon copy, right down to having to visit a special NPC to have your pets healed. On one hand, I love this since I was a big fan of the Game Boy games. On the other, it seems really odd that the player doesn’t have any way to heal their pet when they regen thousands of health each second.

I don’t know if I will be putting a whole lot of time into this system up front. It’s neat but it also feels like having to re-level all over again and it seems a bit grindy for the month I’m planning on staying. Still, I hit level 4 with my dragon-friend and will surely play around with it more.

Narration

I’m a big fan of the cinematics this time around. Not the trailers really but the in-game scenes. It’s better done than any expansion to come before it and is really about time; MMOs are notoriously bad for their narrative elements, WoW being high up on that list. It’s also neat how much more voice over is included in this expansion. You can really tell that Blizzard is trying to answer the new emphasis on story that’s come about since Cataclysm.

Pandaria

Ah, the stories continent of kung-fu pandas. I’ll be honest, I think the Pandaren race is the single stupidest addition to ever come to WoW. It’s a joke beyond jokes and reeks of desperation akin to a teenager with a flipped collar hoping to stand out from the crowd. It works but not in a good way. Anyways, that said, WoW is a pretty silly game in general and has a whole lot in common with a cartoon. Accepting Pandas in that context really isn’t that hard. Moreover, I think they’re really more of a vehicle for the Asian themed continent. So I’ll take them and do my best to keep them in my peripheral vision an no more.

The game itself is pretty in timeless way that only WoW has been able to pull off. The polygon count is low in comparison to other games but it really doesn’t hurt the experience since the engine is so good at blending it all together.

The gameplay is what’s bothering me. I’ve halfway to 86 and I’m still not comfortable with it. It just feels incredibly simple. Now, my Death Knight was never that hard to play but it seems much less involved than ever before. I open combat with a sequence like this: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4. Every time… unless one of those twos becomes an Alt+2 for AoE.

What’s worse, though, is that spell effects are so out of control and mobs so prone to come in packs that’s it’s hard to tell what I’m even targeting unless it’s three times my own size. It makes combat feel horribly detached an unimpactful. Oh, I’m dying? I wonder why. No way to tell with so many colors exploding everywhere, may as well spam my heal.

I’m going to try to turn down my spell effects but that shouldn’t be necessary. The game simply shouldn’t let you turn things up so high that it destroys the experience. I don’t know if I’m spoiled by new games or just getting used to things again. Maybe it’s both. We’ll see over the month, I guess!

The other problem is that the quests just don’t feel worth reading. After playing SWTOR, and GW2, and RIFT where exposition is more than 250 characters, seeing that half-paragraph explanation just makes me want to skip it and hope the game tells its story by playing through it. I feel like I’ll miss something doing that, though, and it makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Even though I’ve only played for a handful of hours, I’m feeling like this return is very hit or miss. I am reserving judgment until it’s fair to hand it out and am keeping an open mind. Will report back when I’ve had more time with it!

10/22/11

A Rebuttal to My Last Post and My Response [Mists of Pandaria]

Maxivik left a great comment on my last post and I wrote a response I thought I’d share here. I think it better explains why I was probably the most cynical about WoW I’ve ever been. The rebuttal!

Maxivik Said:

I am pretty stoked about this XPac. Removing the big bad villain at the end frees me up to enjoy other aspects of the game like dungeon challenges, horde v alliance, pokemon etc. It removes one of the big “grind” like aspects of end game. At the same time, there will still be raids to do. I like the apparent lack of focus this seems to be bringing to the game.

As far as talents go, I welcome any change from the cookie cutter builds that we have now. Today I got to decide between a total of two talents when I respecced my resto as we hit hard-mode rag (last hard boss available with current path). What I am hoping to see is more utility vs regen vs throughput etc decisions for healing talents.

I can’t wait to roll a Pandarian Brewmaster, I think it’ll be hilarious. As far as I’m concerned they fit better with lore then the squid face (Draeni, who were the cause of countless “hard core blizzard people” to “quit” wow in BC… ).

My response:

I should probably clarify a little where I’m coming from with this attitude; it’s probably the harshest reaction I’ve published here and that’s for good reason: I like the game. I do. It’s given me more hours of enjoyable game-time than probably all of my single player games combined. As far as I’m concerned, the core of WoW is still solid and appealing to many, many players. I might even come back with the next patch to see the Raid Finder in action.

My animosity really stems from how cocky they were just one year ago. I recall someone asking when a wardrobe system would be added to the game and one of their head guy says, “What I want to know is who wants to play dress-up online,” or something like that. They didn’t even pretend to consider player’s ideas during the QA. I mean, come on guys, we can see your heads from outer space. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway.

Today we see a WoW that’s still king of the hill but maybe not by so much. A lot of what was new and appealing when Cataclysm launched now looks outdated compared to new and upcoming MMOs. Then Blizzcon comes around and we’re seeing a full expansion based on “a joke race” that would “never be added to the game.” I also have a general vibe that this expansion does more to bring the game up to par with the rest of the genre than really offer much new, pet system excluded. The MMO landscape faces major change as this year ends and 2012 begins and if ever there was a time to draw people in and hold them, this would be it. Does Mists of Pandaria do that?

All of that said, I don’t doubt the expansion will be good, silly race aside. If you don’t take it too seriously, there’s some neat stuff coming and giving players more to do at level cap is good. Challenge mode dungeons, I’m sure, will be fun in the same way dungeons have always been fun. If you don’t care much about the wider outlook, this expansion announcement is probably great. I can’t help but to look at things from the wider view, so I see the “we’re still cool, we’re hip, we’re with it” type undertone.

But maybe they just don’t give a damn and are throwing some of their old sticking points to the wind. If the final product turns out to be a blast then I’ll have totally misread the thing and will probably re-sub to see what I’ve been missing.

To be clear about one thing, though, and not just for you, Max: If you’re playing the game and are enjoying it, that’s great. It’s a good game as my /played will easily show.