Category: Warcraft

Annual Pass: A Post Mortem

Posted on by Gazimoff

I promise this article is going to be the last thing I write about the World of Warcraft Annual Pass. Once this is finished, I’m done with the whole sorry saga. To me, the whole process has been a great concept gone disastrously wrong, exposing how far a company will push their terms and conditions at the expense of customer satisfaction.

It’s also – and I’m being honest here – the symptom of a bet gone bad. Of calculating the probability of when key events would happen, and getting it wrong. While these events are still somewhat inside Blizzard’s control, it’s something I’m aware I’ve got to take on the chin.

But it’s not an emotionless decision. One doesn’t just turn their back on a games studio in the blink of an eye. It takes time for opinions to change, for the fan to metamorph into the cynic. It took this latest saga to realise just how far my opinions had changed about the studio and their commercial decisions.

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Sub-Humans and the Shallow End of Gaming

Posted on by Gazimoff

I know that a couple of other bloggers have mentioned this, but I think its important that as many people as possible read about this shocking tale.

Apple Cider Mage is a blogger that I’ve followed on numerous occasions. I’ve had a laugh talking with her on the Obscurecast podcast a few years ago, and as a fellow Mage blogger I’ve enjoyed reading her insight into the class. She writes with strength, conviction and passion and is an absolute joy to read.

She’s also been subjected to an ongoing campaign of harassment from a single person. For years, Apple Cider Mage has been the victim of abuse so bad that she’s been forced to take out a restraining order. Her tale of trying to fight against one man is frankly staggering and I seriously encourage you to read it. She’s shown tremendous strength and courage by continuing to blog in the face of it all, as well as posting about her ordeal. If you do a single thing today I’d ask that you read her tale and give her your support.

Standing beside someone who is being harassed like Apple Cider Mage is not an easy thing, but I implore you to do it in support of stamping out this kind of abusive behaviour. I’ve been on the receiving end of his crude tongue myself for daring to stand up for her, and you might make yourself a target for his particular brand of hatred too. But it needs to be done.

The guy tormenting Apple Cider Mage is a sick individual that needs professional help to protect himself from the ramifications of his actions. He simply cannot be allowed to continue spewing his hatred, not against her and not against anyone else. Society needs protecting from his abhorrent compulsion, not just the online gaming community.

The incredible thing about this is that Apple Cider Mage hasn’t given up: instead she’s put together a guide on how to deal with in-game harassment, including how to approach GMs and what kind of information to record. It’s something that every gamer should read just in case it starts happening to you.

Putting yourself on the internet shouldn’t make you a target for harassment. Apple Cider Mage must be allowed to carry out her online life without having to live in fear and intimidation. Show her your support.

My Annual Pass Regret

Posted on by Gazimoff

Warcraft Annual Pass Banner

Back in October last year I made a bold move and signed up to the Warcraft Annual Pass. I figured to myself that it’d be a great deal – I’d still be playing Warcraft, I’d get a free copy of Diablo III and I’d get access to the Mists of Pandaria Beta without having to strike it lucky or jump through hoops. All I had to do was keep paying what I was paying and keep my subscription alive for a year.

After a single quarter-year, I’m really regretting making that decision.

It’s partly a time thing – I don’t have the time to log into Warcraft nearly as often as I’d like. But there’s another aspect to why I feel I’m done with the current expansion pack. My opportunity to pick up the Mage Legendary Staff was cut short with the release of the Dragon Soul raid, with the resultant consequence that my desire to raid was deflated like a misfiring zeppelin. The next tier was little better for me, with Deathwing And Friends lasting all of two weeks until I’d managed to pug my way to LFR victory.

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Replacing the Superficial Intelligence

Posted on by Gazimoff

I have an opinion on Non-Player Characters. It emerged in the days of the first escort quest I attempted, when the computer-controlled NPC I’d be chaperoning would sprint ahead to certain death at the hands of hungry skeletons. If they weren’t sprinting ahead they’d probably stopped to admire a particularly intricate pebble and forgotten all about me. Either way you’re probably looking at death or failure, or more usually both.

At that point my opinion of NPCs was cemented: dumb as a bag of bricks.

Since that day we’ve had Warlocks and Hunters in World of Warcraft trying to order around pets and minions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Spin the artificial intelligence roulette wheel and find out if your trusty sidekick is going to help or just stand there like a lemon. And although things have improved over the years, the lemon is still on that scoring board.

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LFD: No Simple Answers

Posted on by Gazimoff

Looking around the blogsphere today reminds me of battle re-enactment. I can see the same people pulling on the same uniform and dusting off the same weapons to have the same good-natured scrap over something. The sheep-skin drums are beating, the blue and red overcoats are being pulled on. The beer tent is filling up as the two sides filter in and catch up on old times. The battleground? Looking for Dungeon.

The argument is that Star Wars: The Old Republic needs a Looking for Flashpoint tool in order to help groups form for both levelling instances and endgame content. There are currently a large number of players unable to experience this content, either because their guild doesn’t have enough players at the same level or because they’re too busy enjoying the stupidly good questing content.

The choice seems to be between a Warcraft-style Looking for Dungeon tool, or not having one at all and just making do with shouting in the chat channels like some market trader. Neither is a great solution – one end leaves you frustrated with anonymous people you’ll never encounter again, while the other leaves you frustrated at the lack of response from other players as you sit doing nothing for hours on end. Either way you’re left frustrated.

The exception is if you have a guild that’s both large enough to support flashpoints (and populated with people who want to do that content) and which has people in broadly the same level bracket. If either is not the case then even with the best of intentions the guild is less of a guild and more of a social chat channel. But I digress.

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SWTOR: The Retention Rate Question

Posted on by Gazimoff

Earlier today I was listening to Talk of the Galaxy over on Galactic Public Radio, when they reminded me that the month of game time bundled with the full version of the game was about to expire and that subscriptions were just about to kick in. There was a little bit of debate about how many players would actually maintain their subscription after the end of the month, with the show hosts generally feeling that it’s a difficult thing to predict.

Trying to forecast renewal rates is pretty challenging at the best of times, mainly because there’s very few benchmarks on these figures for MMOs. The most common figure that’s announced is the total subscriber base, although sometimes we’ll hear about how those subscribers are distributed by market. We’re also not given churn rates, so we have no clue about the number of new subscribers coming in versus the ones that are leaving.

So what exactly is there to go on? Well, assuming that the best renewal rate BioWare can hope for is 100%, let’s have a look at what will help them keep that number high and what’s dragging it down like a lead weight.

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The Best Raids: Past, Present Or Future?

Posted on by Gazimoff

Last week a subject cropped up in one of the article discussions: is Warcraft raiding getting steadily better all the time, or has it reached a peak and is in decline. Answering this by itself can go either way – more people than ever are able to experience tier 13 due to the predicted arrival of LFR, but by contrast I’m observing more raidgroups than ever struggle with recruitment and retention.

Talk to your fellow raiders about the tiers that they’ve done and it’s likey that you’ll get some interesting answers depending on how long they’ve been playing. I did a similar straw poll on twitter recently. The top two raids were Ulduar and Karazhan by some margin, with Sunwell grabbing the third spot. Raids from Vanilla and Cataclysm barely got a mention.

I’ve asked the same question before and I constantly get the same answers. Ulduar, Karazhan and Sunwell. I’ve been trying to think why these instances are so well loved by so many raiders, and I can only think of a couple of reasons.

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To The Future!

Posted on by Gazimoff

What a year it’s been! There’s been a couple of major launches with both RIFT and Star Wars: The Old Republic attracting a lot of attention and enjoying success. There’s been a whole series of subscription MMOs switching to a free-to-play model and doing really well with it. And regrettably there’s also been a few shutdowns, with both Lego Universe and Star Wars: Galaxies switching off their servers.

I’m told that it’s traditional to spend today reflecting on the year just gone and make resolutions and predictions for the future. I’m not going to bore you with my own version of  the Year In Review – there’s some great month-by month roundups over at MMO Melting Pot. I’ve donned my Soothsaying Hat though (it’s very impressive) to bring some forecasts for the future, though I’m not confident they’ll all hit in 2012.

The last year has been a little strange for me. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for nearly seven years now and I keep on expecting for a game to replace it. So far none have provided more than a few week’s diversion, but now that I find myself playing Warcraft only to raid I think the switch can’t be far off. I’m currently playing both SWTOR and Warcraft, with the former grabbing the most of my gaming hours. I’m not sure how this will evolve in 2012, but I’m expecting one of them to lose out to Guild Wars 2.

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Firelands Raid: In Review

Posted on by Gazimoff

The Hour of Twilight is finally upon us and Patch 4.3 has arrived. I’ve already dived into the new Dragon Soul raid instance a couple of times and I’m having fun with it, although I’m very keen to get into the later boss fights there.

Before I get too heavily involved in new stuff I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the raid we wave goodbye to. Firelands, also known as Tier 12, left me with a bag of mixed opinions. It had some really outstanding and enjoyable fights in some areas, but was marred by a couple of pretty annoying boss mechanics.

To help me explain I’ve put together a short video going through each of the seven different encounters. It helps to demonstrate some of the things I’m talking about, particularly if you’ve not done the encounters yourself.

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The Supermassive Beta

Posted on by Gazimoff

How many beta testers does it take to change a lightbulb?

The rather surprising answer is 89.

  • Fifty to just carry on as if light doesn’t matter and continue killing swamp rats or whatever.
  • Ten to raise a ticket complaining about the complete lack of lightbulb operation and DEMANDING that it be rectified THIS INSTANT.
  • Two to proclaim that lightbulbs themselves are overrated, and that when they started playing MMOs all they had was candles. And they jolly well liked it.
  • Five to argue that lightbulbs could actually do with a buff
  • Six to counter-argue that it’s actually daylight that needs to be buffed, and that lightbulbs themselves are slightly overpowered.
  • One to troll the entire discussion by stating that “lightblbs r for lozers lol”
  • Fifteen to give up the mission in frustration, going on a textual tirade about the pointlessness of lightbulbs and asking who designs a stupid quest around lightbulbs anyway.

And one level designer who sighs inwardly as he moves the light switch to a more prominent location.

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