Episode 01:  The Map

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

It has been just shy of a month since the release of Cataclysm, and I have already reached that stage where Justice Points are now completely meaningless on my current main, Belgrave.  I’ve run up an additional character to 85, my shaman, and he is nearing the point of being fully heroic geared as well.  So as a result, rather than race changing my druid Loamis, I rerolled a brand new baby worgen Belgarou.

Papa Needs his Medicine

I am a fairly lazy person, so if there is a way to level a character faster without the hassle of constantly swapping gear then by all means I am going to do it that way.  So obviously my first thought was… grab some heirlooms.  I had a set of shoulders, chest, and trinket over on my 70 dwarf rogue, so I stripped them off for the time being. 

Being melee centric, the most important heirloom to me has always been the weapon.  Always having a weapon with the stats of a blue at your level is the most game changing item you can get for a character.  While a feral druid doesn’t rely on their weapon nearly as much as traditional melee, it was still something I definitely wanted to lock down.  Even in the brand new Worgen starter zone, and repopulated night elf zones the starter weapons have generally been crap.  So I quickly browsed out to wowhead to find out how many of those JP daddy warbucks (Belgrave), would have to spend on the new member of the tribe.

OMGWTFLOL

Yeah, I know that is not the most intelligible heading but that is exactly what I felt.  I really had not paid attention to heirloom prices since the swap from a tier based token economy to the new point based one.  Needless to say I was completely shocked at the insane price gouging going on to get your alts some gear.  Primarily when contrasted with the price of heroic level blues (346) it is just truly insane.  Let me give you some examples of the prices.

Heroic Level Blues (346)

• Offhand Item / Shield – 950 JP
• Neck – 1250 JP
• Gloves – 1650 JP
• Belt – 1650 JP
• Shoulders – 1650 JP
• Chest – 2200 JP
• Helm – 2200 JP
• Legs – 2200 JP

Heirloom Items (1-80 Range)

• Shoulders – 2175 JP
• Chest – 2175 JP
• One Handed Weapons – 2175 JP
• Trinket – 2725 JP
• Two Handed Weapon – 3500 JP

Seeing the disconnect? I think you do.  The cheapest heirlooms (that cap out at level 80 mind you) are just 25 JP cheaper than the most expensive heroic level blues.  So we are supposed to be paying way more per item than we pay for the gear that allows our characters to raid?  I realize, that I said at the beginning of this post that my justice points are meaningless at this point, and as one of the most geared tanks in my guild I will be running the hell out of instances for a long long while to assist in gearing everyone else.

However, not everyone will be having that dilemma.  We have a good number of players in our guild that are not near as focused on gearing up a “main” first, and as a result spend a good deal of time playing around on lower level alts.  While I am not expecting blizzard to hand us heirlooms in a silver envelope in the mailbox, I just think the pricing currently is way out of line.

Fear for the Future

One of the things I really enjoyed during the wrath era is the fact that as the life span of the expansion extended, it became easier to catch players up enough to be useful in raids.  With a few weeks worth of work, you could take a green level 80 and get them enough gear to be able to survive in Icecrown.  I’ve enjoyed the fact that upgrades so far have been hard to come by, and require actual work to get, however I am starting to feel the echo of burning crusade.

During the burning crusade era, with the various gating mechanics (attunements), and difficulty to gear up, it became very difficult to replace vacancies in your raid.  We for example are a group of mostly 30 somethings, with families, and jobs, and real life that sometimes intervenes in our game time.  As a result sometimes a player has to leave the active raid through no real fault of their own. 

During the Burning Crusade era, once we moved past tier 4 content, this was a massive tragedy as it meant we either had to step back and spend time running lower level raid content or try and steal a member of another raid that was already at our gear level.  Due to these problems, the raid climate on my server was very back biting and vicious.  Every raid leader was forced to steal from others to survive and keep the home fires burning.  Wrath thankfully made it much easier to find a player with a good attitude, but lacking gear and catch them up enough to start contributing to the whole.

Enough Beating Around the Bush

My big fear is that as blizzard decommissions the 359 gear, and moves on to the next tier that based on the current heroic blue prices, the justice point cost will be astronomically high.  We will be right back to Burning Crusade, an expansion where I ran Karazhan every Sunday for literally 2 years just to get players enough gear to begin raiding.  The gearing grind is fun to do once, but not much fun when you have to keep dragging your friends through it.  I came out of the Burning Crusade era very bitter about all the things I had to do on a regular basis just to keep raiding functional.

I Really Hope Blizzard Knows What They are Doing