I was talking to a good friend of mine this morning about “alting”, or the playing of characters other than your primary focus.  She was talking about her inability to seriously play any character other than her “main”, and that when she has alted before, it was more a shift of focus and that the new character quickly became her new “main”.  It got me thinking about the whole debate about mains and alts, and the various attitudes players have towards the two terms.

One of the key traits that you need in any leadership role is the ability to place yourself in the shoes of others, and understand who it is that they view the world.  Knowing and understanding how your players approach the game, gives you a greater understanding of their prime motivations, desires, strengths and ultimately weaknesses.

During the last five years playing WoW, I have noticed that there are three basic archetypes that exist in the way players view the main/alt relationship.  I will do my best to outline each of them and their unique spin on the world as I see it.

The Main

The Main is a very unique player. They tend to focus on one character entirely, and in many ways see that character as the virtual embodiment of themselves.  Their sole purpose in the game is to better their single character, and will do anything within their powers to progress.  These tend to be very driven players, and are often motivated by collecting items, gaining achievements, and accomplishing new goals.

The Main archetype gets very frustrated when dealing with players and their alts.  They don’t fully understand why anyone would choose to play a character other than their main, so they are quick to get annoyed when progression is stifled for the purpose of other players “alts”. 

The significant weakness of the Main archetype is that, while they are the most dedicated to their individual character, they are also the most susceptible to burn out.  When experiencing a period of significant stagnation, they do not have the ability to shift focus to another character and as a result begin to question why they are playing the game in the first place.  This can be seen with the players that rejoin WoW at each expansion, and then go on hiatus once they have reached a plateau.  This same basic action happens within raids as well, certain players are only there during the progression, but disappear once the initial challenge is gone.

The Progressionist

The next archetype is similar to the main, with a few key differences.  The Progressionist tends to have one character that is their primary focus.  When that character reaches a point where progression becomes slowed, either through raid lockouts, or inability to raid, they shift focus to an alt.  When this new focus reaches its natural plateau, the focus shifts again to a new character leaving a string of very well geared max level characters in their wake.

This personally is the category I fit into.  I focus on my main, in this case my Protection Warrior Belghast, and when he reaches a plateau where I can no longer progress other than through raiding, I begin to shift focus to a new character.  For me personally this was my Retribution Paladin Exeter, and when he maxed out and could only be progressed through raiding, I pushed up my Balance Druid Loamis. 

Much like the Main, the Progressionist tends to be very focused on each new character, doing their level best to master the class, and gear them as well as could be expected for a non-primary class.  This leads to these players being very good switch hitters, in that they can swap to alts if need be to fill necessary roles, but prefer progression on their primary character when at all possible.

The progressionist tends to get annoyed by rampant altism, but understands the desire to play characters other than your primary focus.  So as a result, sits somewhere in the middle of the archetypal spectrum being able to unit both sides of the chasm.  I feel the majority of these “alts” start out of a need to have a character for the “downtime” between scheduled and focused raiding.  Personally I find it favorable to have the ability to have multiple raid lockouts for each week, and I often times use my alts to go on instance runs with friends of the guild, and as a result network with new players.

The Altist

The Altist in its truest form is a player who refuses to designate between characters being mains or alts.  Many times the altism starts from a desire to be self sufficient, and the need to level up characters to unlock higher tiers of abilities like tradeskills.  However as the player levels each character, they become more and more attached to the point at which each additional class becomes interchangeable with the older ones.  I think the root of altism comes from a desire to do everything at once, and a fear of missing out on some aspect of the game that they might not be able to experience otherwise.

We have had multiple players in the guild that have maximum level characters of each and every class.  One of the most extreme cases of being an altist that I have seen, involved a player that would get no more than one level higher than any of his other characters.  The result was that he would rotate putting one single level on each character, slowly leveling them all up within range of each other.  While this functioned well, and kept all the trade skills and gear acquisition within the same level of each other, it made for very slow progression as a whole.

The key weakness of this method is that the altist tends to be the jack of all trades…  master of none.  They become acceptable players on each and every character they play, but tend not to really shine at any of them, as they lack the key focus it takes to truly master all of the nuances of one class.  In the best case scenario they seem to shoot for the middle, and in the worst case scenario they are the warm bodies that hold back progression.  I’ve known a few altists that did an great job at everything they touched, but they tend to be the exception not the rule.  The general lack of focus, tends to carry through to the raiding as well, and ends up with a player that may or may not accept assignments with the gravity you are expecting. 

The natural chasm forms between the Main and the Altist, since neither seem to be able to understand the others point of view.  To the Altist, the desire to play multiple characters is so ingrained that it seems truly foreign to ONLY progress one character at a time.  it is always best to lay some ground rules, when you know there is a rampant altist in your midst.  However, know that forcing an Altist to declare a primary character, will always lead to discomfort from that player on the whole.

Closing

Each individual archetype has strengths and weaknesses, and as a leader it is important to be able to recognize them.  Being able to exercise the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses, will require a good deal of planning on your part ahead of time.  Being able to chose from multiple characters that each player brings to the table, helps you tweak the balance of a raid group.  Having a character who is driven and focused on one class, makes them the natural source of detailed information on the working of that individual class.  Each of the above types can offer some very solid things to a guild or raid, if you can utilize them properly.

Granted there are grey areas between the archetypes above, just as there are grey areas in everything.  But some prior knowledge of these traits makes managing situations when they arise far easier.  Understanding the basic mindset that each player comes from, only serves to allow you to formulate better solutions in the future.

Last Friday I had a blog post featured on Wow.com.  Granted this is not the first time my blog has been mentioned, in the past It was just a minor link.  This time however they did a pretty flattering write-up on my GroupCraft series of posts from the last few weeks.  I have to say I was pretty shocked and amazed, and truth be told still more than a bit taken back by the mention.

As a result I got "wow-dot-comed”, which for a Warcraft blog is much akin to getting “slashdotted”.  For the weekend my readership shot up by over 900%, which equates to over 16,000 unique users.  I am unable to wrap my head around this notion fully yet, but on the most basic level I guess this means I am doing something right.  Hopefully folks can deal with the rambling topics that fit their way in-between my informative ones.

Honor Thine Campfire

Well it is once again time for the Midsummer Fire Festival, and boys and girls find themselves running around like mad trying to either honor or put out bonfires.  I started in on the first bit of this early yesterday morning, and by the end of the day had completed the Eastern Kingdom achievements.  I figured that if I broke it down into several smaller chunks I would not suffer from the hatred and loathing that so many of the previous events have ushered in for me.

In truth, I don’t really mind events like this one.  Sure it takes large blocks of physical time to visit all of the bonfires, but it is purely based on player effort and not luck.  It also gives me time to sit back and revisit the old world, a place where I rarely travel anymore save for the trips to the Ironforge auction house.  Sunday I was taken back by the sheer marvel of what various pieces of the old world meant to me as I leveled through out.  The game world in warcraft is truly amazing if we just take the time to notice it in our rush to get somewhere else.

I’m hoping to get some guild help on the stealing the flame quests which take you into opposing faction capitols.  That appears to be the only real stumbling block for me, since I play on a server where PVP only exists if forced by the players.  Wowhead has a great blog entry, with links to quests and locations of all the bonfires, which should prove useful to any player trying to complete all this madness.

Now for the massive disappointment.  It appears that the Lord Ahune event has remained completely unchanged.  I realize its probably unrealistic to expect blizzard to go back and updated every one of these “boss” encounters to be viable for the latest expansion.  Based on the fact that they DID update the loottable for the Headless Horseman between his last two appearance, I did however expect that there be something either added or modified to the event.  Based on early reports, the items dropping seem to be exactly the same as the previous year.  Oh well at the very least this gives players a shot at getting a Scorchling pet if they did not get one last year.

360 Degrees of Not WoW

One of the things I have been trying to do lately, in order to stave off burnout is to do something OTHER than play wow on a pretty regular basis.  Previously I had written about taking a weekend away from the game, to explore Fallout 3…  which I might still add is amazing.  With my recent Birthday I indulged in the purchase of a doodad I have been wanting for a long while.  So I am finally joining the rest of the gaming public by starting to play an XBox 360.

Believe it or not, I have never played ANY Xbox titles be it classic or 360 prior to this Sunday.  I had been a console junkie for years, and have every major console platform leading up to the PS2.  However around that time, I fell off the planet as far as these titles were concerned.  Yes this does in fact coincide with my entrance into the dark world of MMO gaming.  I’ve recovered some of these roots with my PSP, and playing my PS2 while at the lake and otherwise unwired.

I attempted to make a brief foray into the console world once more with the Wii.  While it is ridiculously fun, it doesn’t really provide the true “gamer” experience I once savored so much.  Many of the titles seem to be more gimmick than game play.  So I am looking to Microsoft and the Xbox to give me back some of that console diversion I was missing.  The fact that I could stream movies 24/7 through it with a Netflix subscription was a very solid secondary reason. 

However I now find myself far more interested in the XBox Live Arcade titles than the shiny disc games.  Carcassonne has already accounted for many lost hours of strategic goodness.  I have to give an apology to Ysinnia of Limb From Limb…  I have given her immense amounts of crap over the years for her husband’s “bored game” nights.  It was them who introduced me to this great game, when I was up visiting family in the area they live.  While I won’t guarantee more crap in the future…  I am having to eat crow now because the game is amazing, and even more amazingly translated onto the Xbox.

I figure I will eventually add a xbox gamertag link on the side panel of this site, but for the time being if anyone out there wants to friend me I am “eXeterTBC”.  I am playing Street Fighter 4 offline right now, as I attempt to remember how to play the SF franchise with a certain measure of skill.  I have to admit that it was rarely disarming when I first booted up the game, to keep getting spammed with challenges from live players.  I kept trying to sit down and play a nice computer match, only to get my ass kicked over and over by a kick who has unlocked Akuma.  After a few minutes I figured out how to turn that option off and was back to pleasantly beating the game and unlocking characters for myself.

Humbled

I feel once more like I need to take a quick moment to thank all of you who helped make this blog a success.  I am overwhelmed on a daily basis by the regular readers and support I have gotten from the WoW Blog community.  I will do my best to continue to write something worth reading, if you continue to read it.

 

Thanks

It’s amazing how phenomenally boring it is when everyone in your department is on vacation.  I went from being so busy I could barely see straight, to essentially sitting here babysitting an install process where I am communicating with a third party over email.  I am sitting back at my desk now after a quick jaunt into the adjacent tower, to a break room that always smells like a curious mix of burnt popcorn and wet dog, for a quick infusion of caffeine.  Hopefully the clock will learn to move faster.

Crusader’s Coliseum

Yesterday we began to receive a trickle of information about the next big patch and the content it would include.  Amongst the blatant nerfs and lackluster “tradeskill improvements” were a smattering of details about the new raid dungeon.  Firstly I like that it is shaping up to be 3 unique dungeons, with their own merits.  The thought of a semi random sequence of bosses that has been hinted at before also seems very favorable.  When Northrend was released, Violet Hold was both the most loved and most hated dungeon due to the random bosses.  If there really does end up to be a random element, I hope that they at least do the smart thing and have some of the items on a shared loot table, like we saw in Naxxramas.

The most intriguing tidbit however is the concept of the “Crusaders’ Tribute”.  Honestly I think you could call filing your taxes a “Tribute Run” and I would at least do it once, just the sheer merit of the enjoyable memories I had doing tribute runs in Dire Maul.  Adding an extra special, sneaky, challenging way through a raid dungeon sounds like good mojo to me.  Granted everything they are saying, makes the new tribute run sound absolutely NOTHING like the original.  However count me in for running through it a few times.  I just hope that it does not turn me back into the frothing asshole, barking a furious string of orders amongst the expletives, that the Zul’Aman timed runs did.

A Few of My Favorite things

This patch seems to be the “oh yeah, here are a bunch of things we forgot to do ages ago” patch, in order to play catch up for the next big paradigm shift.  I am breaking from my normal format and doing a change / comment type structure.

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.

• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren’s Lucky Coin, Lavanthor’s Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus.

This is pretty much too little too late, but it is nice to see.  It is painfully obvious that block is not cutting it, as in comparison with the other options like dodge/parry, so I am glad to know that they are going to address this in the future.  It both excites and frightens me to think about what zany scheme they will come up with as its eventual replacement.  For now I just hope this is going to be good enough to make it “less than useless”.

• Emblem System Changes

• Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders’ Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.

• The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.

• The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.

• New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

I have seen MUCH gnashing of teeth regarding this one in the last twenty four hours.  Pretty much this feels exactly like the same elitist complaining that happened when 2.4 was announced and the stats on all the new badge gear was shown to be roughly equivalent to that of black temple.  While I have posted against the general dumbing down of content, I do think that from time to time you need to help the player population “catch up”. 

As a raid leader, we are having the same problem this summer that so many other raids are having.  Summertime means waning attendance, and it is becoming increasingly harder and harder to find a fresh infusion of players who are already Tier 7.5 era geared to fill in on Ulduar raids.  Making it so that every player can get the same level of emblems regardless of it being heroics, 10 mans, or 25 man raids makes it that much easier to catch players up who have the drive and skill, but not the gear.  Trust me…  this is a GOOD thing for raiding in general, not to mention for adding flexibility to your raid making it easier for players to gear up offset gear.

• Mote Extractor now has innate tracking for gas clouds while it is in your inventory. Tracking of gas clouds has been removed from goggles.

It’s always the most simple items that seem to make me the happiest.  Since I graduated out of the rather impotent engineering helm, to better tanking options (amazing that the last one served me well until tier 6, but this one was replaced by a nonset piece in the first dungeon), I’ve had to ritually enchant my belt with Spynoculars so that I could see elemental nodes on the mini-map in game.  Now this practice becomes a think of the past and makes room for…

• 
  

  Spynocular belt enchantment changed to a Brassbolt Rebreather, allowing engineers to breathe underwater.

Yep you read that right.  Now engineers can put a place an enchant on our belts that will allow us the ability to breathe underwater.  I can finally remove my Deepdive Helmet from my inventory and finally and forever upgrade my Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole, to my trendy Jeweled Fishing Pole with the spiffy phoenix wings.  Like I said, it’s always the dumb things that make me happy.

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  Players with 300 or higher cooking have a chance to find a Waterlogged Recipe in the Bag of Fishing Treasures awarded by the Northrend fishing dailies. This item can be traded to other players and rewards several Dalaran Cooking Rewards when turned in.

Another stupid change, but one that makes me very happy.  Considering I enjoy doing the fishing daily quest, this will allow players to catch up on the cooking patterns they are missing, since in general…  the cooking daily sucks.

• 
  

  Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers. Quantity produced by recipes for Runic Healing and Mana Injectors has been increased.

If this is how I read it, that engineers will now gain a 25% bonus from using health and mana pots from an injector, this is a pretty monumental change.  Since we only get one shot off a pot per boss fight, this is an “oh shit” button that I hold in reserve.  Anything that gives me a little more health is a very very good thing.

 

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  The Nexus: The Oculus & The Eye of Eternity  – Vehicles (drakes) used in these instances now scale with item level.

Thank you soooo freakin much for this change.  Heroic Oculus is without a doubt the most scabrous piece of crap a seasoned player will ever have to run their friends through.   Almost every single player I know who is stalled on the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title, is hung up on this silly requirement.  Trying to teach someone who has not been through this place a dozen times or more how to do all the events is sheer torture.  If you manage to get all the new players through to the final boss, trying to give them a crash course in how not to suck at flying a drake can give water-boarding a run for its money any day in the race for most extreme officially sanctioned torture method.  Any small boost in our ability to pull it off with dead weight is a miracle.  So once again…  Thank  you blizzard.

The Just Plain Wierd

There are several things in the upcoming patch that are just plain kooky.  Patching in Northrend Children’s Week, when the event is almost a year away from happening again…  what the heck is the point.  Giving rogues the ability to wield axes when there is only ONE endgame main hand axe currently…  what exactly was the point here.  Putting Ravasaurs into the game finally in Ungoro Crater, only 5 years too late…  not entirely sure what the point was here either.

Honestly this patch feels like a combination of all the scraps left lying on the floor after they build other patches.  This is the chum to ready the waters for something bigger.  I can only imagine that the something bigger, is ultimately Icecrown, and this patch will serve as bite sized nibblets to tide us over until the real meal.  The nerfs to Deathknights and Retadins were probably needed, but I would still rather seem them bring up other classes to their level rather than push those excelling into the dirt.  We will just have to see how everything shakes out after the inevitable months of PTR service.

You can tell that you live in a connected society when opening your inbox on a day like today, you are assaulted with dozens of automated messages from the various sites you have signed up on before…  all wishing you the most sincere Happy Birthday.  So apart from my wife, the first birthday greetings came rolling in from a chorus of mail bots over night.  I’ve tried not to talk much about real life here, saving it for mostly game based topics (much to the ire of some key individuals), but on a day like today I figured I would make an exception.

Makes you realize how small the world has become, as the well wishers start rolling in on every platform imaginable from facebook to email to IM.  Birthdays lose their lustre as an adult.  Gone are the elaborate birthday parties and the months of being told no because it was “close to your birthday”.  Forgotten are the party games, and the looking forward to gifts…  because chances are if you really really wanted it you’d have gotten it yourself.  What you are left with, however is probably the most important part of birthdays.  The realization that there are all these people out there, who genuinely care about you, enough to remember that you do in fact have a birthday, and stop for a moment in their busy days to wish you a happy one.

Stabbity to Sliceity

Over the last few days I have been helping one of my good friends who has always been a dagger rogue, try and build a Hemorrhage build.  The whole process has made me realize exactly how different the life of a stabbity rogue, as I call them, is from that of a Sword/Mace/Fist rogue.  First you have to have the background that I have raided as a rogue many times, but never ONCE played a rogue that used a dagger for anything other that part of a macro to equip it only long enough for an ambush.  I don’t like positional attacks, and in general I hate the stealth dynamic…  so the real question is why the hell did I play a rogue in the first place?

I’ve always modeled my rogues off of the Swashbucklers of those classic sword fighting movies.  As a result I have either played a combat swords build, or a hemorrhage build, both of which support that play style very well.  I guess I never really thought about the differences in the styles, until sitting down with someone I feel to be the most adept rogue I know, and going over the basics of how to play “hemo”.  I felt like Master Yoda, asking him to “unlearn” what he has learned. 

I’ve never claimed to know much about being a rogue, nor really excelled at playing one either.  There was a time when I could easily top the meter in “alt” runs, but most of it was by sheer brute force.  It was not until today that I realized that the two play styles are almost as different as say a Feral Druid and a Resto Druid.  Were I to sudden switch my focus to daggers, I would have to go through the very same “101” training to even know what abilities to use.  It is funny that five years into wow, I still learn new things on a regular basis.

The Ugly, The Bad…

This week has brought two drastically different raid experiences so far.  In Duranub, Tuesday night we had probably the hardest time we have ever experienced trying to pull together a workable raid.  It was nearly impossible to find enough healers to make the raid work.  Normally we run 6-7 healers on our 25 man raids, and this gives us plenty of healing across the board.  However last Tuesday we were able to pull together what could be best termed as 4 1/2 healers.  Within a few minutes of starting the raid, one of those healers got pulled away on a work emergency.

We sat there after Leviathan trying desperately to make things work.  We had one of our “retired” raiders, magically show up when needed and helped solidify the ranks enough for us to keep moving forward.  It was a very very bad night.  We only managed to get Leviathan and XT down, and when the fill in healer needed to leave we were forced to call it early.  It was far from our worst night, but it was very trying on the raid as a whole and caused by nothing but attendance issues hitting all at the same time.  The people who were there made a valiant effort, but at the end of the day we just didn’t have the oomph to continue.  The hardest decision a leader can make is knowing when we simply do not have the needed resources to keep going.

The Amazing!

Now we scan forward to last night, a night that I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to raid.  Our little 10 man group is having the same regular attendance issues that our 25 man has been, but through some luck we managed to pull together a group with relative ease and get into the instance only 15 minutes late.  We have yet to actually EVER start on time, so only 15 minutes late, instead of an hour late, seemed like a breeze of fresh air. 

We had a pretty unorthodox grouping, including 3 mages…  but we made it work pretty well, even though we struggled with some DPS issues throughout the night.  Each fight seemed to take twice as long as normal.  Part of this was caused by the fact that the DPS warrior realized late into the evening that she had been in half tanking gear for the majority of the night.  The other issues seemed far less intangible, since the damage numbers didn’t look all that off. 

The amazing part however is how smoothly everything went.  The mood of the night was light, and we joked back and forth throughout the raid.  Everyone just seemed to do their jobs without prompting, and the night saw us clearing Flame Leviathan, XT-002 Deconstructor, Kologarn, Auriaya, and Razorscale in our 2 hour window.  This was by far our most successful night yet in the 10 man raid, and sets us up for attempts on Hodir first thing Monday night.  Auriaya caused a few false starts, but once everything fell together we downed her like she was on farm status with very few issues.

Change the Randomizer

For as much fun as we had, the main frustration of the night was not the low dps.  The annoyance du jour came from the fact that every single boss that night dropped Paladin and Shaman loot which quickly got DE’d.  Had we a shaman or paladin, this would have been a great night, but since we rarely if ever have them…  seeing those item drops just adds to the frustration of loot in general.  It would be nice if blizzard would change the way loot worked, so that only items usable by classes in the raid would drop.  I realize this would take alot of work, and change the whole dynamic of loot in general…  but isn’t it about time?

Blizzard made great strides with the addition of tokenized loot (set tokens/badges), and other games like Warhammer have created versions of universal loot in the “repairable” items system (ruined gear that repairs into something useable by your class).  I think it is time for one of these companies to truly push the paradigm to the next level and introduce “intelligent loot”.  So that if you come into an instance with a warrior, priest, warlock, mage, and rogue…  you would see an item usable for one of those 4 classes drop from each boss.  Granted there would be ways to game the system, but surely there has to be some solution available.  Nothing is more annoying than an otherwise amazing night tarnished by the fact that so much loot went to disenchant.