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Taking a break today from my regularly scheduled “Why You Should Be Playing Rift” series, in part because my screenshots just are not ready for the next piece, and part because I felt like writing about something else.  A good deal has happened since I last did a non-series post.  Namely as you should be able to tell from the recent content, and the slow transformation of the website, I have been playing Rift.  It has been amazingly fun, and extremely refreshing.  As I have commented in recent series posts, I has made me remember what playing mmo’s used to feel like.

More shockingly however than me starting another MMO, is the fact that after six and a half years I have cancelled World of Warcraft.  If you’ve read any of my older posts, you know that my guild, House Stalwart, holds an almost childlike position for me.  Leaving WoW has been easy, after 6 years the game is really tired, and I’ve come to the realization that it has been a long time since I last really enjoyed playing it.  Leaving my guild however, that has been fairly heart wrenching.  As I sit back and watch it being transformed in many directions I tried hard never to take it, I keep having to tell myself that I am no longer in the picture.

Let’s Do The Time Warp Again

Last Saturday I hit level 50, the cap in rift.  It took me 6 days 6 hours and 26 minutes to get there, roughly 3 times the amount of time it took me to level my last character from 1 to 85 in World of Warcraft.  Throughout the process there was not a point for me at least where the content got stale, or the zones ceased to be compelling.  All in all I was extremely impressed with the experience, and look forward to running up additional characters once Belghast has been appropriately geared.

To achieve said gearing, I’ve encountered one of the great traps in Rift.  Namely that for tanks like myself and casters, our entry point into expert dungeons is paved with gear that includes stats that simply do not exist prior to level 50.  This seems like a design flaw to me, if you can imagine during the early days of wow that if defense gear simply did not exist prior to level 60.  The equivalent stat to defense in Rift is that of Toughness, which is scattered throughout precious few items that will be readily obtainable by players who have just hit 50.

I managed to suffer through my first expert without the required 50 toughness, but it was extremely painful.  Last night I attempted to run Fall of Lantern Hook starting far too late for my own sanity.  Having 49 toughness certainly increased my survival, but having never run the zone even on normal before made it equally frustrating.  Initially I was pretty frustrated by my performance, in that it took a few attempts per boss to get them, and we had more wipes that I care to count on the crystal boss.  However, after reviewing the run with a more seasoned friend, seems like we had a less than optimal group, and he was amazed we did that well with two off-heals instead of a cleric.

Difficulty or Distraction

Across the board the two “entry level” expert dungeons that I have run seem considerably more difficult than WoW heroics.  They are definitely more difficult than Cataclysm heroics, but the jury is out on how they stack compared to the Burning Crusade era ones.  Truth is I am not sure how much harder they truly are, as Rift is a new game, with new mechanics and completely new dungeons I am not nearly as familiar with.  I actually leveled in Rift without running that many dungeons, whereas in WoW I was grinding dungeons over and over to exhaustion.

The biggest adjustment I have had to get used to is the fact that since I am one of the first players in the guild to hit 50, I will be pugging a lot of my groups.  I have been spoiled by voice communication with guild groups for far too long, and as a result I am simply not as good about watching the chat window during fights.  I realize that we raided for years, throughout many different games without having a voice server to rely on but at this point it boggles the mind to think how we were ever efficient doing it.  One thing I have learned for certain, a sleepy Belghast is not an effective Belghast.

Though it was a rough run, I did manage to finally get my first post 50 dungeon drop.  With it I have gotten my toughness up to 60, so here is hoping that expert number three will go considerably smoother.  Also hoping to try one of the ones I have already done, to see if now that I know the pulls, and boss strategies I can maybe get through it without looking like a complete and total noob.  It is a shock to the ego to go from Bel, the tank of tanks, to that crappy pug guy.  The consolation is, that everyone for the most part on Shadefallen has been great, and we are all learning together.

Forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been forever and a day since I have last blogged.  I’ve been tied up with all the tasks and responsibilities that come with being the guild master of a 600 character guild.  Honestly for me, that has been a major adjustment.  We have always been a small tight knit family of raiders, and with the release of cataclysm some massive changes happened in House Stalwart.

In the past, by choice, we had shunned the concept of guild based raiding.  Throughout our history as a guild we have been the core of several different non-guild raid groups, and at the tail end of Burning Crusade we struck out on our own and build one known as the Duranub Raiding Company.  If you’ve read much of my posts in the past, you’ve followed some of our adventures.

Cataclysm however brought into line several things that rocked the core of this group.  Namely the guild rewards changes, and the guild based achievement system lead us to collapse Duranub and begin to look at raiding as a guild.  As a result, many of the smaller satellite guilds that had raided with us in the past made the choice to go ahead and collapse into House Stalwart.  As a result we have grown leaps and bounds, from having 10-15 players on any given night, to having upwards of 40 players online. 

This could have lead to some major schisms, but for the most part it has been a fairly natural progression.  The majority of the players that now are in the guild were in the greater “guild ecosystem” beforehand.  While we have as a result added in a lot of friends and family in the process of these new members, the result has somehow managed to maintain the same atmosphere we have always had.  Primary difference being, instead of being small and flexible, we are now the 5th largest guild on the server.

The Doldrum Returns

Towards the tail end of Wrath, I struggled greatly with trying to find a desire to play the game at all.  With the release of Cataclysm, I had an influx of new things to do that pushed this aside.  However as I sit with 3 85s, all of which are geared I am starting to feel the same familiar tug of not really wanting to play.  In the past, I was fine to dink around on alts but it was the raiding that I really was not enjoying.  This time around, with the switch to 10 man raiding, I am enjoying that aspect immensely.  I just find myself not knowing what to do with the rest of my time.

I’ve been known to wander off and disappear for weeks at a time, exploring various games.  I’ve taken vacations to play all manner of games such as Warhammer, EQ2, LoTRO, and most recently the creation of the House Stalwart minecraft server.  Each time a vacation winds up with me back in WoW, refreshed and ready to level something else.  The problem is, I find myself getting “toasted” a little quicker each time.  The digital blood transfusion, seems to be rejected more quickly.

Where’s the Beef

As a whole, I blame this most recent “funk” on Cataclysm itself.  I had been in since the friends and family alpha, and to quote an 80’s commercial, I kept wondering “where’s the beef”.  While the revamp of the oldworld is nice, when you are like me with 3 85s, 4 80s, and 7 characters between 60 and 80…  the prospect of going back and doing the old content seems to lack meaning.  So when you remove all of the oldworld content, that I agree needed to be updated, you are left with 5 outdoor zones, 7 dungeons, and enough raid bosses to make 1 Icecrown sized instance.

Cataclysm just lacks the same epic feeling that the other expansions have had.  In so many ways to me, it feels half done.  As I sat in Alpha, and eventually Beta I kept feeling that surely there was a major update they were holding out until live.  For an expansion that I had been anxiously awaiting for two years, everything just felt incomplete.  As a developer I have been here before, gotten into a project that was too massive to get done by release time.  As a result you start trimming back, cutting everything that isn’t essential, so that you can meet your release schedule.

I feel that Blizzard bit off far more than they were prepared to chew when it came to revamping the classic world.  As a result, you have this banquet of experience for new players, but for us veterans it feels like we are stuck eating budget gourmet.  We as players simply expected more at this point.  Yes we knew going into it that we only had 5 new levels of content, but I had experienced this same drop in leveling in Everquest without getting gimped on the content.

Lets look at the previous expansions, which should underline why I am overall unsatisfied with Cataclysm two months in.  With the release of Burning Crusade it gave us plenty of content to chew on: 8 Outdoor Zones, 16 Dungeons and the introduction of heroic modes, and 15 total Raid Bosses.  With Wrath blizzard kicked it up a notch and delivered even more content:  12 Outdoor Zones, 16 Dungeons, and 18 Raid Bosses.  So to restate, when we look at Cataclysm that as veteran players only gives us 5 outdoor zones, 7 dungeons, and 14 raid bosses it just seems like we got cheated.

Stick a Fork In It

So at this point, two and a half months into cataclysm, I have leveled through the 1-60 experience twice, leveled through the 80-85 experience three times, and ground enough heroics to gear up those same three characters in 346 or better items.  I am still in the process of raiding through the content, and am enjoying it greatly.  However for the rest of the time spent in game, I am out of things I actually care to do.

This post has developed a life of its own at this point.  Originally I had planned on writing about Rift, as during this doldrum I have managed to get myself hooked on this new MMO.  At this point, that will have to be saved for another blog post.  Apparently I as a player, had more than a few things to say about my disappointment in Cataclysm.  I find myself greatly looking forward to the Rift head start this week on Thursday, and I plan on playing it furiously before and after my schedule raid times. 

One of the cool features of the game is the in-game twitter client.  Towards the end of beta I set up a separate twitter account @BelghastRift, and began tweeting various in game screenshots.  I was initially afraid that the game would end up being pretty spammy, but overall it seems to be manageable, so I might end up switching back to tweeting from @Belghast.  I think part of the problem with my blogging has been, that I’ve barely had the excitement about WoW to keep playing it on a weekly basis, let alone write compelling posts regarding it.  You the readers, if I have any left, should expect to start seeing some rifts content as I explore this new game.

Onwards and Upwards

Last week Ghostcrawler released an article entitled “Wow, Dungeons are Hard!” in which he outlined some of the complaints players have made about the steep learning curve of the Cataclysm dungeon content, and outlining the fact that it was very much on purpose.  I found the article a very well thought out and well written discussion piece about what the folks over at blizzard were thinking about the way dungeons should fit into the entire gaming process.  I expected that this would have helped to quiet some of the discussion over whether or not these zones needed a nerf, however it seems to have caused the opposite effect.  There seems to be a large conflagration of posts both on the wow forums and around the wow blogosphere about that the dungeons are in fact too hard.

A Privilege Not a Right

One of the sticking points I have as I read through these complaints is the general sense of entitlement that the community has developed over the years.  The ability to run heroics, and the ability to raid for that matter is a privilege not a right.  Getting to the point where you can reliably contribute requires a bit of dedication and work from the player.  it should require that the player spend time gearing up, and preparing for the fights.

I guess I just find it odd that folks generally have a problem with that.  I am a very serious about gearing my characters, and make checklists of the various items I need from each of the dungeons.  It is just something I have done since the beginning of wow, and has helped me keep things organized.  I feel a big part of my job in this game, especially as a tank, is to be as well geared as possible so I am the least drag on my fellow players as possible.  I’ve even developed little OCDs about this, to the point that I cannot log for the night without upgrades being enchanted and gemmed.

However it seems to many players the art of gearing, is a chore they would rather not do.  In wrath we would limp into certain heroics straight from quested greens, and I assume that is the expectation that players have had as we entered cataclysm.  When I saw that there were strict limits on the dungeon queuing I applauded them, as I have always been well over the whatever the specific number was.  However as my guild leveled I noticed a number of players lagging behind, and barely keeping up with this cutoff point.  As we neared 85 each and ever player had this 329 number in their heads, as soon as they found out that was the magic number that unlocked heroics in the dungeon tool.

329 is Not a Magic Number

The biggest problem I am seeing is the fact that the target number of 329 seems to be a resting place and “good enough” for most players.  As though they pushed to that number and then are somehow done.  Truth be told this figure is way too low to be effective in heroics on a wide scale.  If you are walking in there as a tank at that level you will be struggling.  I think I was probably 332 or so, when I finally walked into my first heroic.  I had been waiting for one of my healer friends to finish leveling, and at that point it was very much an eye opening experience.

What the 329 number reminds me of is the way heroics worked in Burning Crusade.  If you remember back to that era, in order to get into a heroic you had to gain revered with the specific faction that controlled that dungeon hub.  So in order to run heroic Steamvaults, you had to run enough normal dungeons to be able to grind up your faction with the Cenarion Expedition and purchase the Reservoir Key. 

This quickly became a pain in the ass, since as a guild you had to coordinate getting all your players to revered faction.  However, as a result running enough dungeons to get to revered generally meant you had fairly decent level 70 dungeon gear when you were done.  However due to the complaints of the community, this faction requirement was lowered to honored.

You could get to honored with almost all of the factions in question through simply running quest chains in the same region.  The big issue at hand became the fact that having the heroic key, became a sense of entitlement.  I functionally CAN run heroics, therefore I SHOULD BE ABLE to run heroics.  The pug community on my server went completely to pot, as it was flooded with players completely unprepared and ungeared to be doing the heroic dungeons.

Raise the Bar

Setting the requirement for running heroics in Cataclysm at 329 is much like starting off the expansion with the bar set down to the honored requirement.  Just from doing quests in twilight highlands and Uldum, it is extremely easy to reach a ilevel of 329.  The problem being, without getting those critical upgrades from normal mode level 85 instances, you are completely unprepared for the step up that heroics are.  A much more realistic number would have been 333-340, meaning that the player would have at least had to have spent some time running normal mode instances and raising their factions enough to start getting those 346 faction rewards.

If the heroic requirement would have been set to a higher requirement, the normal dungeon running would have several effects.  The most obvious is of course with better gear, comes better stats, and more ability to dish out whatever it is your class/spec combo does.  The normal mode dungeons are for the most part 90% the same as the heroic mode dungeons, with the boss fights being the big difference.  The more time a player spends in these dungeons, the more they understand about how each of the various trash mobs reacts and how the normal abilities of the bosses function.  With this firm understanding, moving to heroics becomes a much more iterative step.

So my only suggestion for making things more smoothly is to make it HARDER for players to zone into heroics.  This is likely to be an even less popular opinion than that of the heroic dungeon difficulty being just fine as it is.  However, if players are not willing to do the work on their own in order to ensure they are able to be effective group members, then the only way to make sure things move smoothly is to ensure that the requirement for the heroics is higher.  If you come into a heroic with the bare minimum you are guaranteeing that the rest of the party will have to carry you through the instance in order for it to be successful.

The big problem with raising the cap, is that it is VERY easy to bring a character who is 329 along with a group of players who are in the 350s.  We often do this as a guild, grab a geared tank and healer, and at least 1 geared dps in order to help out players with less than stellar gear.  Raising the cap would lock this practice out.  The only way I can see to bypass this problem, and still keep the players out who have no business being in heroics would be to evaluate a party when queuing based on the average score of the group.  In this case, 3 players that are 350 geared, dragging along 2 players that are 329 would evaluate out to an average party gear score of 341.

The Master Plan

I honestly feel like Blizzard has realized exactly what the various decision they made during the wrath cycle have cost the community.  As I said earlier, it has built a very entitled player base that leveled through an era of easy epics.  When I was gearing my shaman, I had him fully outfitted in epics and and ready to participate in ICC10 only 4 days after dinging 80.  Run the right instances, get a little luck, and it felt you were handed epics on a platter.  An environment with no risk and constant reward is simply not sustainable.

So in turn they’ve turned the virtual screws to our characters, making us fight hard to earn those 346 level items.  The ramp up in difficulty between normal and heroic is like stepping off a cliff if you are not prepared for it.  However, if you go into the dungeon with your brains and a balanced group it is very much accomplishable.  We are having to relearn the community how to play the game as a whole.

As I have said before, Wrath caused us to get soft as players.  The easy train was fun while it lasted, but now it is time to buckle down and work for it.  Wouldn’t you rather feel like you had earned your gear, and had to fight your way through a dungeon rather than steamrolling it and getting free loot?  I found the roflstomp era of dungeon running to be boring and completely without skill.  Now we as players are getting to stretch those muscles we have let atrophy for so long, and honestly for me at least it feels good.

I think with this expansion, Blizzard is trying to retrain it’s community and make them better players.  I applaud that they have the courage to do so, and not simply kowtow to the complaints.  Only time will see if they stick by this new mission. For the sake of the game and its future I hope they do.  While Wolfshead Online called Cataclysm the worst expansion of MMO History, I think its more a matter of this is the most ambitious.  They set out not only to change their game world, but at the same time their gaming community.

I hope for the sake of WoW they Succeed