Guernication

My thoughts on games and the issues around them.

Author: Guernica

One of the nice new features in WoW's WotLK expansion is Achievements. This system runs exactly the same as Microsoft's Live Achievements - complete certain ingame objectives and you get points. I'm really looking forward to seeing this implemented in WoW.

There are achievements for exploration (visit named zones within the four continents), killing bosses in dungeons, completing quest chains, and equipping leet gear. There are points available for obtaining lots of vanity pets (the little novelty companions that follow you around and occasionally do some entertaining idle animations) and mounts. I'm particulalry excited about the PvP achievements though. As well as the endless grind for your welfare epics you can now also spice up bg's and world pvp by trying to win shutout matches, racking up massive amounts of damage/honour kills/healing, and completing various other PK-flavoured tasks.

In contrast to Live's system it does seem most of the WoW achievements cannot simply be boosted - there's very little chance an Alliance team could persuade a Horde side to throw an AB just so they could get a perfect 2000:0 score.

One thing that does seem to be missing from WoW's scheme though is a point to all the point's. I mean - I have 3000 achievement points - what does it get me? A couple of the achievements reward you with a title - an ever-popular option for WoW players. But apart from that..... nothing.

A major part of WoW's fun is getting hold of gear and adornments, such as the aforementioned vanity pets, to show off around town and in BG's. Rare mounts and armour show you have achieved a level of success in instances. Wearing the current season's gladiator gear instead of two seasons' past shows you have real pvp skills, not just the ability to play hours of AV's. Why not include items that can only be obtained through the redemption of Achievement points?

Exclusive mounts, tabards, buffs could all be quite nice. The latest invite-a-friend scheme allows you to allocate bonus levels to your lower level toons - why not allow players to buy levels through achievement points? After all, most of them require a certain level of dedication and investment in time, so why not recognise that by making the long haul to 80 withnew characters a little easier? (Surely Blizzard are going to have to speed up the journey from 70 to 80 anyway to save us from a plague of Death Knights in the endgame? Otherwise the LFG channel next summer will resound to the cries of 'Tank LFG for anything!)

So, its a good idea and this meta-game will breath fresh life into much of the content, both new and old, when WotLK is released. But it could do with a bit of polish at the back-end. Give us more reason to labour at the tasks you set, Blizzard, and make Achievements something we really want to get done, not jsut a pointless stat, good only for trade-chat battles.

I just got through with the Death Knight starting zone quests - at least on the Alliance side. My first DK was a Tauren - nostalgia for my Tauren hunter, currently stranded on the US servers (come on Blizz! Allow cross-zone servers!). A couple of days ago I decided to try rolling a Draenei though. I've hardly played Alliance at all so I figured I'd see how the other two-thirds live.

Not a big deal of difference to report about the two sides from those first two days of play. There was a lot more German and French chat going on - more than I've ever seen on a Horde toon. But I doubt that's significant. What was obvious though was that there were no Horde DK's in the starting area. Don't ask me how they do it but it seems that the same starting zone on the same realm can be configured to only show Horde or Alliance players. I'm guessing this is something like the effect you get in Outlands when phase-shifting but its a nice touch.

Another nice surprise was finding that once I had finished the DK questline I found I now have access to every Alliance flight point in the game. There has been a lot speculation and grinding of teeth over DK's starting at a disadvantage when it comes to professions. Well, we can at least take comfort from the knowledge DK's will be able to fly to any zone they need to if they have to level up a gathering prof.

But this freedom of movement has given me another opportunity - to see the Alliance cities (I visited all the starting areas during the Midsummer Fire Festvial bonfire desecration orgy). Today was my first visit to Ironforge and later on I'll be flying over to the other capitals. I have to say that although I am a diehard Horde player, I am impressed and, as I was during the bonfire tour/ordeal (did anyone else try desecrating all the opposite faction's bonfires with a level 22 toon?), amazed at how much content there is in the WoW that I have never seen before.

This is the thing that keeps me playing WoW where other games only get my money periodically - there always seems to be something new to see or do. I found the game totally changed when I switched to a melee class after years of being a hunter - the mobs blink and have pretty colours! And now I'm seeing all the cool stuff the allies have been seeing for years (Deeprun Tram has an underwater observation area!).

This does make we wonder though how new games can compete against WoW's massive amounts of content. We read last week that Blizzard noticed a significant number of players leaving the game to try AoC. A lot came back though and there has been coverage in the press of player's complaining that although AoC starts out well and is a well made game there is little end-game content it quickly gets boring.

'What did you expect?', replied the dedicated Conanists. Their point, and its one I can sympathise with, was that a new game will be more detailed at the lower end of the game than the endgame. One of the beauties of MMOs' is that they develop over time. They are launched with content for new players to do to get them into the game and invested in the world and their toons. But then the dev's can use the continuing subscriptions to pay for more content to be added in.

But players are very very good at playing the leveling game now. Anyone that's played an MMO for a while probably knows how to quest-stack and maximise the return for their time. Grind is unfashionable - who wants to stand in a field slaughtering wildlife for hours just to level once every few days? Plus there are so many guides on the netz there are next to no bottlenecks or obstacles to leveling.

So I have to wonder how any new game is going to compete with a game like WoW where there is such a vast quantity of things to do. Its like Joost - the p2p PC TV system that is struggling to launch at the moment. Its a great idea on paper - you choose the TV you want to watch and host enough small fragments of shows on your pc that everyone in the network can quickly acces whole files. Theoretically this would be paid for by advertisers who would in return be able to target their offerings to the individual viewer. The problem is there's nothing on Joost you would want to watch. A few episodes of Robot Chicken, some NHL, and a few swimsuit models. Bleurhg. I've watched Joost twice this year - when my TV aerial was down and I had watched all my DVD's too many times. New games can come out slick as spit - gorgeous graphics, smooth combat, interesting crafting, you name it. But their players will drift away once they reach the level cap and find no more challenges.

We learnt from the Blizzard podcast this week that the original WoW release had 2 hours of music included. Nowadays the client has 16 hours. Taking that as an indication of how much the game's content has grown, it is really hard to see how any new game is not only going to release to favourable comparisons but add in new interesting and challenging content quickly enough to keep its playerbase coming back for more and still saying 'wow', not choosing WoW.

A quick note from the WotLK Beta. Haven't actually played too much of it recently for reasons I might blog about later, but I just wanted to record something of interest to casters.

Blizzard have rejigged the rules for bonuses to healing and spell damage. Essentially they have evened out, so items that used to be more beneficial for one type of spell are no longer. This means I in the current TBC version of WoW my shockadin pally has +792 spell damage and + 1374 healing unbuffed. But in Northrend, after all the balancing, I have a flat +820 to both stats. So, slightly more damage, a lot less healing. I would imagine if I was wearing Ornamented (the full healing specced gladiator armour) instead of Lamellar the difference would be even more noticeable.

Now, Blizzard say that this reduction in healing is balanced out by a bigger base effect from the spells themselves. So although I get a lower bonus to my Flash of Light, it basically heals a lot higher anyway. Quick thumbnail testing seems to confirm this. My Holy damage spells seem to do more damage as well - well, Holy Shock recharges a lot faster. I haven't paid a lot of attention to Consecrated ground and there is no seal of the Crusader any more. So generally it seems there is no real disadvantage to my spell power from the changes.

But, what has changed a lot, is my mana regen. In the TBC version I have 294mana/5 seconds when not casting and 67/5 seconds when casting. In WotLK I only get 126/5 and 25/5. This is a big change. It means that although I will heal party members at about the same level as before, I will run out of mana a lot faster. As things stand I can heal the main tank in Kara for a long long time before I get a little worried about mana. The Curator fight for example - using just Flash of Light I can heal that thing long enough for DPS to run out of mana (this has unfortunately been demonstrated far too many times!). But regenerating mana only half as fast - this could strain me and any other casters a lot sooner.

One other thought - I'm also at a bit of a loss as to why Blizzard are making these changes in the first place. There may well be some good reason. But surely they're not trying to homogenise all casters that can choose to heal or dps? Are they trying to remove that point of decision where you have to decide whether to spec your pally/priest/druid/shaman for damage or healing? Please tell me this is not true! I know Blizzard are under the mistaken impression that they need to make WoW as bland as possible in order to get the maximum number of subscribers, but surely eliminating specialised classes in the game that has largely defined group composition rules and raid tactics would be a step too far?