So long, and thanks for all the fish feasts

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I have always said that when I end this blog I will write a farewell post, not just stop with no explanation. Over the years I have imagined to myself the words I might write when that time came. In my head they were fine, soaring phrases that would inspire and sadden anyone who read them.

But now that it comes right down to it, all I can do is chuckle at such nonsense. The fact is, I am weary of this game and what it has become. I find myself begrudging the time I feel I have to devote to it every night and every week. It has become a second job. Blizzard has finally succeeded in designing a game of, by, and for the elitist jerks. They have methodically culled out the very base of casual everyday players that made the game so successful.

I am not going to detail all the ways they have done this — I have written about little else now for too long. And, it must be added, to no avail.

I have watched the relentless march towards elitism destroy my guild, morphing it from a friendly, open casual one into one bent on winning at any cost, with small cliques of members controlling access to every guild endgame activity. The message is clear — if you are not deemed “gud” you need not apply to groups running Mythic+ or PvP or raids. We have always been somewhere in the top 10 guilds for raid progression on our small backwater server, but now there is an unhealthy obsession with beating out this or that other guild. At any cost — even continuing progression raiding during the traditional winter holiday season, when we used to encourage our members to take some time for themselves and family, to relax in the game and just enjoy each other’s company.

It’s too much.

I had high hopes for Shadowlands, but they are being crushed every day. Blizz is in the process of taking what could have been a great expansion and destroying it by setting the endgame participation bar ever higher. There really is no longer any place in WoW for the truly casual player, the one who can only spend a couple of hours a week in the game, or who can only log in on a weekend. Such players will be relegated to running old content or farming mats or using the game as a social platform, but they are shut out of end game activities.

This has not always been the case. Time was when you could indeed log on once or twice briefly during the week and a bit longer on weekends and still eventually run dungeons with your friends, or knock out a few rated battlegrounds or arenas, or jump into a guild raid —get some gear, have some laughs, and basically enjoy the game. Those days are long gone, and it saddens me to know this is by design. Now those activities are growing further and further from reach for anyone not willing to do the daily and weekly hours-long grinds required for admittance.

Anyway, I stray. I will not be writing this blog for the foreseeable future. In fact, I will be taking an extended break from the game itself. These have both been very hard decisions for me, and I have not arrived at them lightly. But they are the right decisions now.

This has always been a small, boutique blog, never more than a couple of hundred daily followers. But I have felt like my readers have been some of the most literate, thoughtful ones in the genre. I thank every one of you, it has been a privilege to write for you. I hope in some small way I have been a voice and a focal point for your journeys through Azeroth. I’ll still be reachable via email and Twitter (Fiannor.hunter@gmail.com and @fiannor), but I’ll not be responding to the blog any more.

As for the soaring phrases? Well, I have none of my own I am sorry to say, but that eminent philosopher Winnie-the-Pooh perfectly expressed what I am feeling:

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

Goodbye.

Too pooped to praise

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It had been my intention today to write a nice upbeat piece about all the cool, fun things in Shadowlands. Because there are a lot of them. The artwork is stunning. Dungeons — and even the raid — are creative if not always well tuned. Professions, with the exception of the insane legendary base item leveling system, have been greatly improved over past expansions. The linear leveling system was a success, and the option for non-linearity with alts is welcome. The notion of Covenants controlling each zone is innovative and makes the story line hold together. The story itself is engaging, even for a lore-averse player like me, and the undercurrent of a redemption theme keeps it from becoming too death-centric.

In short, there is a lot of positive design in Shadowlands.

Unfortunately, even more than 6 weeks into the expansion, I feel too overwhelmed to be able to appreciate it. The sheer number of things — and the amount of time they take — that have to be done every day and every week, in order to responsibly participate in group end game activities like raiding and Mythic+, is staggering. Some of them have fun moments, to be sure, but generally any time you feel like you “have to” do something, it tends to suck the fun out of it.

For example, normally in a new expansion, this is the point at which I would begin to spend more time leveling some alts. I still have almost no time for that in Shadowlands, maybe a couple hours each weekend, if that. I would do some exploring just for the esthetic pleasure, and maybe to get a small achievement — nope, gotta spend 2-3 hours grinding through Torghast for that soul ash for that legendary. (And I am not even considering doing anything with Twisted Corridors.) Maybe kick back for a couple hours, farm some ore or herbs with the music cranked up and a glass of wine — nuh-uh, gotta grind out some M+ because the loot drops are stingy and I am falling behind the raid on my gear level. Oh, and the Covenant quest line for this week was especially long so I have to finish that so I can open up a new conduit socket so I can support my raid team with adequate dps.

The most successful large companies — and yes, even large government agencies — understand that employees need time for reflection if the entity is to maintain any sort of creative or innovative edge. A fast-paced, unrelenting schedule of fulfilling requirements eventually results in stagnation. Many of them actually build in time for employees to indulge their creativity. And sure, I do appreciate the irony of actually scheduling creative time, but the fact remains that humans do not do well over the long term when they are constantly in the mode of go-go-go-gotta-get-this-done. Whether in real life or a computer game, they burn out.

Thus, I find myself getting angrier and angrier at Blizz for the way they have steadily placed end game group activities further and further behind time-intensive daily and weekly gates. They are eliminating more and more game “down time” for players. In pandering to the easily-bored crowd, they have interpreted “content” to mean “requirements”.

We have been having almost this very discussion in our guild, though from another angle. Last night we wiped repeatedly on heroic Lady Inerva Darkvein. Yes, we were having some early issues with mechanics, but the basic reason we kept failing is that we are carrying some healers and dps who are still in blue gear and/or do not yet have a legendary. Our healers simply could not keep the raid alive, and the dps was insufficient to beat the soft timer of the final vat filling up.

Our carried players have apparently *gasp* continued to view this game as fun, if you can imagine such a thing, and have failed to grind out all the daily and weekly requirements the rest of us have suffered through. We will likely end up dropping them from heroic progression and relegate them to our normal runs until such time as they can catch up. If ever. Clearly, that is what they deserve for having the temerity to think of this as a game!

Our guild PvP bunch has been spamming their Discord channel with “must view” videos and scheduling “training terrain walks” through various battleground maps. They have been exhorted (almost required) to join the raid team in order to upgrade their gear. (Not, note, because most of them think it is fun, it is merely a vehicle for gear…) When one of their number made a rather mild observation that this is beginning to be a lot like homework, he was sternly lectured about the idea that the only real fun is winning, and if you want to win then you have to do a lot of prep work. (I guess Mr. Game Director Hazzikostas is not the only one who likes to impose his personal notion of fun™ on everyone else…)

Bear in mind we are a casual guild.

If anyone from Blizz is reading this (they are not, but I suppose it could happen), I humbly implore you to take a long hard look at the evolving meta-design of WoW, especially this unrelenting and ever-more burdensome trend of gating end game group activities behind longer and longer lists of daily and weekly chores. You are sucking the fun out of your game.

And Blizz, if you are worried about meeting your MAU quotas, you should understand that this approach is losing you more than it is gaining you, that people quickly burn out or log out in disgust after long sessions of just-keeping-up chores. They would spend as much or more time playing content they find actually fun, they would get so absorbed in the game they might even lose track of time. You know, like they used to do when you were a creative company that just really wanted to design an awesomely fun game, and not the corporate entity now concerned only with investor metrics.

So yeah, I wanted to write about the cool, creative, innovative things in Shadowlands. There are quite a few. But honestly I am too exhausted to do so.

See you all on the other side of the weekend.

Torghast in triplicate

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Today’s topic: Torghast Tower.

It blows.

The end.

Oh, all right, here are a few hundred more words on the subject.

When I first heard about Torghast in the runup to Shadowlands, I can’t say I was especially excited. Mostly I was intrigued — I had never played Rogue, and when I heard Torghast described as “Rogue-like” I had to look it up. Okay — run through a series of dungeons, grab stuff, get a prize at the end, and if you die it’s the end of the game. Meh. I thought it might be fun to try, but I did not see myself as falling in love with it. So when Blizz first characterized it simply as a mini game within the game, I thought well if I don’t enjoy it, no harm no foul, I just won’t do it. Like pet battling.

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh I am such a sucker. I fall for that line from Blizz every time. Apparently early on they realized that for most players the novelty of Torghast would quickly disappear, so they would have to add some ”incentive”. And Blizz’s idea of incentive is basically, do this thing or we will deny you something else you want to do.

And now, as if Torghast was not tedious and boring enough, they have added a special 18-floor version that doesn’t even give you soul ash for your legendary.

Blizz — WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I have to admit, though, in setting up player punishment for not doing “incentive” for doing Torghast, Blizz really outdid itself. Consider the labyrinth of relationships they have devised:

  • Any character that plays group end game content requires one or more legendaries.
  • Legendary currency can only be earned through Torghast.
  • Torghast eventually becomes so challenging that it requires “helper” abilities and items.
  • These helper items can only be earned through Ve’nari in The Maw.
  • Ve’nari rep to buy the items can only be earned by excruciatingly slow and tedious and unpleasant daily and weekly quests in an ugly, barren zone loaded with high-health mobs that can 1- or 2-shot many players. 
  • There is a separate currency to buy Ve’nari items, and this hard-earned currency itself can be taken from you if you die.
  • And, in a stunning example of ouroboric game design, there is a special Torghast Twisting Tower achievement mount that helps the player to move more quickly through The Maw (which itself exists largely to assist players in moving through Torghast). Amazing. 

Basically, Blizz has taken a quickly-boring mini game and tied it to a hated, unpleasant zone, then taken both of them and tied them almost exclusively to a crucial piece of gear needed for pretty much any group end game activity.

Now look, I know there are some players who truly enjoy Torghast. More power to them. I have no wish to deny them the fun they have found in this mini game. But if they are truly doing it for fun and/or challenge, then honestly they should not need much in the way of tangible rewards. Some cosmetic stuff, some cool toys, fine. But why tie crucial game currency to the intertwined unpleasantness of The Maw and Torghast? If Blizz really thinks these are so damned fun™, then why is it necessary to tie them to crucial gear?

The answer, of course, is that Blizz understands these rapidly become disliked activities. They are Argus on steroids — recall that that Legion zone was quickly abandoned by most players because it was so tedious and annoying. What lesson did Blizz learn from Argus? Why, of course, that they have to force players to participate in poorly-designed zones and end game mechanics. Not, as one might expect, that they have to do a better job designing them.

And let us not forget that mechanics like hours-long Torghast runs do absolute wonders for those MAU metrics come quarterly report and executive bonus time.

So, yeah, like I said at the start: Torghast blows.

Shadowlands chemistry

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We are now about six weeks into Shadowlands, and I feel like I have enough experience to make a few judgments on its trajectory. In doing so, the rather ominous word that comes to mind is “eutectic”.

Eutectic is a chemical term. I am not a chemist, but I am a potter, and glazing and firing pottery is a total function of chemistry — not, as some people think, one of a paint palette. The term describes two substances that, when mixed together or layered over each other, melt at a lower temperature than either of them does individually. (This is the reason for many, many kiln catastrophes.)

Mildly interesting, Fi, but how does this relate to World of Warcraft?

I sometimes think of myself as having a “meltdown” phase for various activities in every expansion. It’s essentially the point at which I feel the activity no longer offers enough relaxation or fun or tangible reward to justify continuing to do it. So, for example, after a few months maybe I am done with world quests on my main — done them a jillion times, no surprises or even anticipation left, and the gear or earned currency or whatever is no longer useful to me. Later I may decide there is no longer any value in continuing to develop my professions. Eventually even my favorite activity, raiding, becomes dull and worthless. You get the idea.

These individual melting points, though, are almost always additive — just a collection of individual activities I lose interest in one by one. What I am finding in Shadowlands is that not only did I hit meltdown with some activities much earlier than I usually do, but that they are eutectic — they are causing the entire expansion to melt down much faster than the individual components of game play.

This is the only way I can explain the burnout I already feel in Shadowlands. The hard truth is that I have come closer to quitting WoW in the past couple of weeks than I ever did in Warlords of Draenor or even the darkest days of Battle for Azeroth.

Objectively, I know there are a significant number of game innovations and changes that, if they could be seen in isolation, would be creative and engaging. But the other parts layered over them are starting to make the whole piece melt down for me. In coming weeks I’l try to dissect each of these parts in some detail, but for now I just want to sort out the additives causing this eutectic reaction. I think there are three.

The first is the unforgiving nature of very early game choices — Covenant and legendary. Full disclosure: I made poor choices for both, and I am paying a heavy price for it. Combined with Blizz’s near-total gutting of Beastmastery Hunters, my poor choices are resulting in damage numbers frequently below that of tanks, and tortuous, unfun play style. Even my own guild hesitates to take me on M+ runs at any level beyond 8 or 9, and there is practically zero chance of getting into M+ pugs.

My Kyrian Covenant power is measurably less powerful than the Night Fae one. The Soulforge Embers legendary — though it is still hyped by every theory crafter as the only real choice for BM hunters — is virtually impossible to play adequately, much less well. But Blizz has made it painful and tedious to change these items — realistically it will take 2-3 weeks (if not longer to level out a new legendary). This is beyond daunting when I already feel like I am running as fast as I can just to not fall behind my raid team.

The second is the horrible design and synergy of the Maw and Torghast. That they are time gated to deliberately slow progress may not in itself be objectionable. But the fact that they are integral to one’s legendary, and that the legendary is required for any end game group activity, means that no matter how much you hate doing them, you will be doing them for months.

The idea of Torghast seemed decent at first, and indeed the first couple of times I went through it I found it entertaining. But it is still overtuned for some classes, it takes at least an hour or even more to solo it at higher levels, and if you fail on the final overtuned boss, you have absolutely nothing to show for it. That this is the only real way to earn soul ash — the only currency for your legendary development — is beyond stupid. And annoying. And tedious. And soul-suckingly grindy.

The Maw design does not even have the few redeeming points of Torghast. It is simply one of the worst designs Blizz has ever come up with. It is esthetically disgusting — a lazy mishmash of the worst, least artistic zones Blizz has done. The decision to disallow not only eventual flying but indeed any mounts whatsoever makes it a slow, tedious, horrible experience, compounded by Blizz’s delight in funneling players through endless high-health mobs. It is miserable to go anywhere for any quest in the zone.

Combine the misery of even entering the Maw with the snail’s pace of earning rep with Ve’nari (yet another useless, pretentious, confusing apostrophe name) tempts many to just say screw it, but in typical fashion, Mr. Game Director Hazzikostas a few days ago dropped one of his smarmy hints that we better get our asses in gear and do it or we will regret it. He didn’t use those exact words, but that was the thrust of it. I don’t know about you, but that sure makes me want to dig in and have some fun in the Maw!! 🙄

The third component of this eutectic mix is the Vault mechanic. I know for the most part people are happy that they can get a weekly pseudo-choice of gear, and that they can earn choices through several paths. But the effect I am seeing is that people who do not ordinarily like certain end game activities end up participating in them anyway because it is natural to want to maximize your Vault options every week. It’s just human nature.

What this means is that people who ordinarily do not raid, for example, now demand to be part of progression raiding simply to increase their weekly Vault options. Similarly, people who may not actually enjoy Mythic+ runs now try to become part of at least four every week. Same, I assume, for the PvP component which must be rated to count in the final weekly tally.

We have certainly seen this behavior in our guild. I assume it is playing out in similar fashion in other guilds that offer a range of end game group activities. Maybe it is not a bad thing for players to try out new activities, but the problem is they usually have not done them because they do not like doing them. So doing them simply to up their gear choices does not improve the experiences for those who do enjoy doing them.

And feeling like you “have to” participate in high end activities you do not enjoy, every week, does not make for a fun game. Sure, you can say screw it I don’t need gear, but realistically how many people actually do that? World of Warcraft is about gear, nothing more. It may have started out to be about fun and social gaming and whimsy, but for several expansions now it has been first and foremost about gear. If you got it and if you keep grinding it, you get to do the things you love in the game. If not, you may as well go play Second Life. (If that is still a thing.)

The net effect of these three mechanics/trends in Shadowlands, I contend, is enough to sink the expansion for many players. No one likes to feel burned out a scant 6 weeks into a new expansion. No one enjoys feeling constantly “behind”, and that if they fail to log in for several hours every night they will actually be behind their teammates for whatever group activity they ultimately play the game for.

Taken separately, none of these things would be a meltdown catastrophe, each could be dealt with. And the other Shadowlands designs — dungeons, battlegrounds, farming mats, crafting, raiding, chasing mounts and pets and achievements, leveling alts, exploring different class specs — could be enjoyed to their fullest. But together they significantly lower the melting point of the entire expansion, threatening final failure.

2020: The long goodbye

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This will be my last post of this rotten, lonely, grief-filled year. In normal years I would take a two-week holiday break, but I need more this year. Look for me back in this space Monday, Jan 4, 2021.

The WoW year in review has at least been a tad better than the real world one, if that is any consolation. Looking back, even though Battle for Azeroth was a dog of an expansion, at least Shadowlands has the potential to be a decent one. Still, Blizz had some major missteps along the way.

The main one was their miscalculation of Shadowlands release date. To announce an October release, then a “never mind” may have been the proper thing to do, but it begs the question of why did they set the original release date in the first place, were they unaware of the state of development? Had they allowed corporate marketing to control the development cycle rather than the engineers and designers?

Whatever the reason, the clumsy delay set off an unfortunate chain of events. For one thing, they implemented the pre-patch rather prematurely, in my opinion. Players were left for nearly 6 weeks to deal with Shadowlands class and spec abilities, along with gear nerfs, that simply did not work in BFA. The result was a sort of empty expansion, described by some as “BFA lite”.

One of the factors that saved Blizz probably was the pandemic that resulted in droves of players returning to the game, players who were just glad to have a little leeway in catching up, even if it meant not having the full benefit of all the cobbled-together leased power Blizz had introduced into BFA.

In fact, as I have mentioned before, over the summer and fall, the number of players returning to the game has been quite astonishing. Certainly the pandemic contributed to it, but so did other factors — the roaring success of Classic, the promise of leaving the substandard BFA expansion behind, various forms of advertising and hype, maybe other factors as well. (We thought this was a real boon for our guild, but we are now coming to grips with the downside to an influx of new and returning players.)

The other unfortunate consequence of Blizz’s delayed release, though, has been the ill-timed first raid tier and M+/PvP season release. It is just too close to all manner of major winter holidays. Sure, some players have more time then, but there are also competing real life priorities. For groups engaged in any level of progression, it can just add more stress to an already stressful time. I know my own guild — normally quite sane about these matters — seems to have gone full Captain Queeg this year. No investigation yet into the missing strawberries, but there has been an announcement that progression raiding will continue as usual even on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. I will not be participating, but it seems to be just one more little 2020 gotcha, a further consequence of Blizz’s horrible time management.

Not really sure where I am going with this, but I think I am equally happy to see the end of the year in WoW and the end of the actual year. Ushering both of their butts out the door will be a pleasure. I hesitate to say the new year will be better, because that seems to be inviting catastrophe, but hey you only live once.

So: This year has been a grueling marathon, but we are close to the finish. Just one more steep, long hill. I will see you on the other side of it, and we’ll celebrate. I promise.

Confined linearity

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Before I get into this post today, let me say up front that my first impressions of Shadowlands are that it is a better expansion than Battle for Azeroth was. It certainly has gotten off to a smoother start. I fully enjoyed leveling my main character, even though outside pressures kind of forced me to rush through it. I think Blizz has done its usual amazing job with artwork and animation. I even kind of understand the story line (something I usually pay zero attention to) and think the zones actually do complement it. I am starting a leisurely leveling of a couple of alts and fully expect to have fun doing so.

But there is a troubling undercurrent of design running through it, and it may be serious enough to eventually sink Shadowlands. That design philosophy is something I call confined linearity.

One of the features that made World of Warcraft into the blockbuster game it is — even if it now has much more competition than when it was created — was its accessibility to a whole spectrum of players. If you wanted to be hardcore, there was room in the game for you. If you wanted to log in for a couple hours on weekends, there was room in the game for you, too. And opportunities abounded for all the players between those two extremes.

And when I say “opportunities” I am talking about end game activities. Historically in the game, if you liked to raid, for example, you could pretty much concentrate on that once you had leveled, and not have to be troubled with other activities you might not enjoy so much. If you liked PvP, similarly, you could pretty much do that and not have to worry about other parts of the game that didn’t appeal to you.

That kind of freedom really started to come to an end in Legion. That was the expansion that began in earnest to be centered around a single piece of gear that was the price of entry into any end game activity. Obtaining the gear was not sufficient, either — continued viability in whatever end game activity you pursued was contingent upon a near-endless upgrade path for that piece of gear. This upgrade path generally required participation in certain other end game activities — not necessarily ones you might choose if left to your own devices.

The most obvious example in Legion was profession leveling. Some players really enjoy pursuing WoW professions, and for some of them their favorite end game activity is topping out one or more professions and then playing what amounts to an economic trade game. Others simply enjoy crafting items and giving them to friends or just dabbling in light trade for small profits. But in Legion suddenly you could not do this unless your character was fully developed enough to compete in high threat zones and successfully complete other end game activities such as high level dungeons. And you could not do those things unless you also kept up your artifact weapon.

Legion design was all based on the artifact weapon. Everything centered on it. You simply could not play any end game activity unless you followed Blizz’s prescribed end game play style.

In BFA the special weapon design grew even tighter with the neck piece — not only did you have to maintain this piece, but now you had descendant pieces in the form of azerite gear. When Blizz felt it could no longer reasonably sustain that system as the expansion aged, they injected a new grind — the legendary cloak. This initially seemed to be patterned on the very popular cloak from Mists, but it soon became evident that it was just a follow-on to the neck piece grind.

Implicit in this design is the narrowing — and in some cases total elimination — of player choice. Not only is certain gear required in order to even level a character, but it is the gateway to any end game activity. And its continuing, endless upgrade requirement dictates day to day game activities of every player, no matter what end game style they wish to play.

Shadowlands not only continues this dictated play style but strengthens it and introduces a new element: near-elimination of players’ ability to change their minds about certain early decisions. Worse, even decisions players made based on very solid reasons can — and have been — rendered wrong because Blizz blithely changed the calculus by nerfing or strengthening traits players relied on to decide. Thus, if you selected a Covenant based on early expansion abilities and Blizz changed them after your selection, you are hosed. Oh, sure, in theory you can change your Covenant, but it takes a minimum of two weeks to do so, and you lose any hard-won Renown you had built up with your previous one.

SL legendaries are the artifact weapon and the neck piece and the cloak of previous expansions, but this time it forces an even more narrow path for players. You can only create it and upgrade it with a currency called Soul Ash. You can only get Soul Ash by weekly hours-long runs through Torghast Tower — and by the way, if you fail at the end boss you come away with nothing. And to efficiently run Torghast you must also run daily tortuous quests in the Maw. There is no other path to obtaining enough Soul Ash to maintain the progress on your legendary. (I do not count the rare and often-failed stupid new pet battle called a mission table.)

If, like me, a player selected a legendary that turned out to be all but unplayable, the penalty is to go back and start all over again collecting enough Soul Ash to craft a different one. This will put me behind my peers in terms of gearing up for the end game activity I enjoy — raiding. Will it eventually even out? Probably, but it will be months before that happens.

Thus, in Shadowlands, we see that Blizz has gone full bore on confined linearity: there is a narrow, prescribed path that must be followed daily and weekly as the price of admission to any end game activity, and for significant parts of that path there is no off ramp, no U-Turn. Once you choose, you are stuck. Blizz, of course, is free to make changes as the whim strikes them, but as for players, to paraphrase Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, “No choice for you!”

The irony and hypocrisy of this is even greater when you recall all the pious, greasy pre-Shadowlands pronouncements from Mr. Game Director Hazzikostas about “player agency”. What a joke that was. At the time I was suspicious he was engaging in typical lawyerly lying, and it turns out he was. (And I note, as an aside, that the entire trend towards even more restrictive confined linearity began at the exact same time that Mr. GDH took over as head of game design.)

Why not have multiple paths to gathering Soul Ash — world quests, bonus objectives, consolation prizes for bosses that don’t drop loot for you, Calling rewards, etc.? Why not eliminate the significant time and renown penalty for changing Covenants? In short, why not actually design for “player agency”? How could it possibly hurt the game to allow players to experiment, change their minds, play the parts of the game they actually enjoy, have that thing we used to call “fun”? Is Mr. GDH actually so control-obsessed that he cannot even imagine the horror of allowing players to determine their own path in WoW?

This continued lack of choice, and its spread within the game, can turn out to be a deal breaker for me with Shadowlands, and I do not think I am the only one. If Blizz does not get its shit together and realize that they are making a game, and that implicit in the term “game” is the term “fun” — for nearly everyone — then I think this expansion will be judged to be as bad as BFA. Hardcore players may be happy, but the rest of us Great Unwashed are becoming exhausted with the second job feeling we get now from the game — a feeling we would not be getting if there were not such a steep and continuous admission price for doing any end game activity.

On that happy note, time for a weekend. See you on the other side.

Raiding with a crowd

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Short post today — it was a late night last night and lots of real life things going on — but I did want to at least get something out there. (I try to keep a decent writing schedule.)

Last night we started our new raiding season in Castle Nathria. For a first raid night in a new expansion, it went okay, but it was a definite “experience”. We only killed three bosses, on normal. In general it felt good to be back raiding again, but holy moly what a different experience it was raiding with a full 30!

For one thing, we had put out raid rules covering things like minimum ilevel, requirement to have your own current flasks and potions, requirement to have at least the cheap versions of gems and enchants on your gear, etc. In typical fashion, though, very little attention was paid to the requirements, and lower geared people were allowed in, and when some complained they were “too poor” to afford flasks, some were provided to them. As can be guessed, this led to charges of unfairness and favoritism (not entirely unjustified, imo) — bla bla bla.

Two of our core raiders had legitimate reasons for being a bit late, and others were asked if they wanted to step in for a bit until they arrived. Then of course when it came time for them to step back out, there was a small amount of pouting. One guy just insists he should be allowed to tank, even though our tanks have been set now for a couple of expansions. (Also he is a lousy tank, I have seen him in action.)

And so forth. Nothing new to a lot of guilds, but it was a big deal for us, as we have been accustomed to a pretty tight knit core group of about 12-14 raiders. We know how each plays, where our strengths and weakness are, who likes to zig and who likes to zag when avoiding bad stuff, who can be relied on to be the marked position leader, who is good at puzzles, and so forth.

But last night seemed rather uncomfortably close to an LFR group. I honestly think the numbers will fall off after we clear normal and get into a progression routine, but maybe not.

One uncomfortable thing I noticed, though, is a marked increase in people simply chasing numbers for their parses. I am not really a numbers person, and I think it is mightily uncalled for the first night of a new raid when people should be focused on mechanics and teamwork, not personal aggrandizement, but there it is. There was a big discussion in Discord today about whose parses got ranked and whose didn’t and how “some people” need to step up their game. I found it unpleasant and honestly kind of ugly. (I did notice a direct inverse relationship between how many raid jobs such as cc were performed and how how high someone’s numbers were. Clearly there were some team players and some out for themselves.)

I suppose, with more raiders than slots, people are looking to secure their own positions with high numbers. But I do not like it. We are not that kind of guild, and I do not want to see us morph into that kind.

We also had some minor “discussions” last night about the disposition of BoE loot, as we got a couple of drops. The guild rule is, equip it immediately, have the raid roll for it if you don’t need it (and the winner equips immediately), or give it to an officer for the guild bank to sell for repair funds. There was a tiny bit of whining over not being able to get rich off of it, but hey they would not have gotten it at all if the guild had not provided the opportunity. But we are used to our core raiders knowing this and immediately following protocols, so it was a little disconcerting to think there might be people looking to game the system.

I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Anyway, like I said, short post today. Back Friday.

The not so much legendary

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I spent much of the weekend running various solo quests and quite a lot of dungeons, the first extended test of my new BM hunter legendary, Soulforge Embers.

It is a piece of shit.

Let’s start with the mechanics. To use it, you must first launch a tar trap at the target, then launch a flare into the tar trap. Without macros, this requires at least four separate actions (maybe six if you count moving the placement graphic around), since the trap and the flare are reticule placement mechanics. I macro’ed both to auto-launch where my cursor is, but it still requires two distinct actions.

Now, BM hunters have a rotation that does include some down time, it is true, and ideally of course you would pick that time to use the legendary. The problem is, any down time rarely coincides with reasonable target positioning. Using the legendary as filler is not the same as using, for example, Cobra Shot as filler, not least because the target does not have to hold still for Cobra Shot.

Which brings up positioning factors for this legendary. For one thing, it only works if the tar trap procs before the flare — you cannot reverse the sequence, nor apparently does it work to launch both at the same time and wait for a mob to walk into it. No, you can only launch the flare for effect once a mob has actually triggered the tar trap.
LATE EDIT: Upon further investigation, I am not sure this is true. There seem to be some peculiarities to the various timing combinations. Activation of the tar trap is one critical component, to be sure. But for example, what happens if the trap is already triggered, a new mob wanders into it, then a second flare is launched — does the new mob get the debuff? Also, some third party sites are recommending launching the flare first, then the tar trap, claiming the debuff procs as soon as the first mob walks in or the existing mobs trigger it. Bottom line: it’s a half-assed, lazy implementation of a crappy idea.

Up to 5 targets in the trap will be affected when flare lights up the triggered trap, and the good news is they do not have to remain in the trap to retain the 10-second debuff. The bad news is, any mobs entering the trap area after the flare has been launched — even if both the trap and the flare are still active — will not be affected.

Even more annoying, tar trap and flare have different cooldowns. In theory, you should be able to ignite the trap twice while it is active, but of course that would require mobs to still be in the trap. At least for dungeons (don’t yet know about raid bosses), Blizz has seemed to design most of the bosses (as well as significant adds) to wander around a lot, pretty much negating any possibility of double-flaring with this legendary.

There is also the matter of educating tanks about Soulforge Embers. I am a fan of tanks, and honestly can’t imagine myself trying to keep track of all the things good tanks keep track of. But nearly all of them are stuck in Classic mindset when it comes to class roles and abilities.

Our usual raid leader is also our main tank, and for years now I have tried to educate them on the notion that assigning “hunters” to chase down widely-scattered adds is as bad as assigning melee to the job because of the fact that BM hunter pets are melee dps. After all these years they still do not get it, so I am not hopeful that even decent tanks will now recognize the importance of not moving targets out of a hunter’s tar trap without a really good reason. Thus, I expect to almost never be able to use that second flare to trigger renewal of the legendary debuff, and for trash mobs to be moved so rapidly they do not even trigger a tar trap launched half a second before.

Another part of this problem is that the legendary, even when triggered, does not have any visual effect on the targets. All you see is a slightly illuminated normal hunter tar trap circle on the ground. With everything else going on visually in melee range, it is very easy to miss. The targets themselves show no visual effects — no little flames on them, for example. The only indicator is the debuff icon that shows up on the target’s nameplate.

Yet another challenge with this legendary is Blizz’s often-crappy distance rendering. Any number of times, cursor placement that looks like it is going to a target’s feet ends up in a tree or on a pillar or some place else. This forces the hunter to frequently reposition to be able to get the right visual angle to ensure proper placement of the trap and subsequent flare.

What I found over the weekend is that the net result was I spent far too much time screwing around with this legendary in every encounter, at the expense of an efficient rotation. I missed a lot of Frenzy stacks and even Kill Commands because I was either setting up or tending to this legendary. Adding in the Covenant power (also a reticule-placing mechanism) only made things worse.

I opted for Soulforge Embers because I bought the hype from the theorists, and I failed to realize the extreme perfection of play required to actually get the benefit of the item — perfection that is dependent not only on the hunter but also on the encounter and on the tank. That is on me. I made a big mistake not going for the “not so good” legendary. But of course Blizz has made it difficult and tedious to change one’s mind, in the same way they have made it difficult and tedious to change Covenants. (The signature feature of this entire expansion may turn out to be its inflexibility.) About the only thing that would make this whole situation worse would be if Blizz suddenly nerfs the legendary, making it not only nearly impossible to use efficiently but also shitty in terms of damage. (Taking bets on when they will do this.)

I did a quick perusal of the top-recommended damage legendaries for all classes, and it seems that not one of them (including for other hunter specs) requires this amount of planning and execution. Nearly all of them are either passive stat increases or simple auto-procs requiring the player at most to be aware of the proc and take advantage of it with a normal rotation.

Trap-throwing is really not reflective of the BM hunter spec “fantasy”, any more than roots is a signature mark of Balance druids. Traps for BM hunters are cc mechanisms, no different than any other class cc — it’s a utility, not a rotation feature. So why Blizz suddenly decided to incorporate it into a rotation is beyond me. Who at Blizz thought this would be a good legendary mechanic for BM hunters? It would be as if the main Fire Mage legendary would require sheeping a target then casting Pyroblast at it — yes, it is that stupid.

I have asked this question before, and I will continue to ask it: Which devs at Blizz main a BM hunter? Because, let me tell you, no BM hunter would have ever thought this kind of clunky, cumbersome mechanic would be a good idea. Not one.

Seriously, Blizz, what the fuck do you have against BM hunters?

Torghastly

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After spending even more hours this week in Torghast, I can only say I am developing a slow-burning immense hatred for the place. I just cannot imagine spending 2-3 hours a week there every week for the next couple of years.

Let me start with the positives. The hyped concept is kind of intriguing — a rogue-like mini game with self-contained rewards and puzzles. I had fun the first couple of times I ran last week’s wings, mainly because it was something new and shiny. I really, really liked the fact that Blizz said you could actually take your time, no constant pressure of gogogo-gotta-finish-before-I-die. I liked being able to explore little dead ends and corners, being able to methodically plan out how to best defeat a room of trash and elites. I liked taking my time to decide which of the temporary powers would help me the most or be most fun for the remainder of the run. And I liked that I could either run them solo or in a group, and it was mildly challenging either way.

Of course, that was mostly true only for week 1, and it all pretty much came to a crashing end this week when I realized a couple of very disconcerting facts:

First, the instance is badly tuned starting at Layer 3 and depending on the particular wing and the RNG of which final boss and combination of traps you draw. In fact, it is so badly tuned that some combinations are not beatable without spending literal hours in a wing and getting incredibly lucky with the extra power drops. If it is this randomly difficult at Layer 3, I cannot imagine what it will be like in a couple of weeks at Layer 8.

Second, and sadly as usual, Blizz has lied to us about the instance not being timed. There is a soft timing mechanism that indeed forces you to expedite your run. It is in the form of “Torments” that vary with each wing and gain intensity with each floor and each passing second. Some just slowly drain your damage levels, some drain your health. One of the most annoying — and the one I found to be the most stressful — are the Mawsworn mobs that spontaneously generate if you are out of combat for (in the wing I was in) 30 seconds. They tended to kill my pet almost immediately, and they became stronger on each new floor.

What this meant was that I could no longer blissfully explore areas, for fear one of these monstrosities would appear. I could absolutely not take time to decide which anima power to accept, because inevitably that would push the timer over the edge and oops time to take on another 70k-health elite. I could not survey a room full of mobs and strategize how best to approach it, what mobs to pull first, which elite to cc — without being attacked.

So don’t be fooled — this instance is chock full of time-induced stress.

Last, the time sink required for weekly Torghast runs is ridiculously unbalanced with the rewards. All you get for a full run is a relatively miserly amount of Soul Ash, used only to craft and upgrade legendary gear. Mind, you get bupkus if you wipe on the usually ridiculously overturned final boss — if you have used up your allocated number of deaths and bomb out of the wing, you will have just wasted well over an hour. (In my case closer to two.)

There is a very small possibility you might get a mission follower from your run, but that seems to be very rare. And eventually players will have the chance to spend more hours in a special Torghast area to get mounts, transmog gear, toys, and an achievement. But basically you will spend several hours a week here grubbing for a pretty paltry amount of Soul Ash.

I never thought I would long for the return of Horrific Visions — at least those were relatively quick if at times unpleasant.

I am kind of embarrassed at the number of times I have bombed out on the final boss in my solo runs. I mean, I am a hunter, the class everyone claims is awesome for exactly this kind of activity. What I have found is that the elite mobs and bosses seem to be especially brutal on my pet, and no amount of pet healing and other emergency measures are able to save it from dying. This usually results in my death also, since a 4-second pet rez generally is a one-way ticket to a final death shot from the target. Even when I can manage to keep my pet alive, it requires massive pet heals at the expense of any kind of maximizing rotation to efficiently kill the target, so the fights just take longer. Which would be fine if time were not a factor, which of course is not the case, no matter how Blizz tries to mealy-mouth their way around it.

I have generally found group runs — I have not done a group larger than 3 — to be much more effective, efficient, and even more fun than solo attempts. The most effective grouping I have been in was a pally tank, a shaman healer, and me. But even then, we only barely squeaked out the final boss on a Layer 3 run. And if group Torghast runs turn out to be the best way to accomplish this weekly chore, then that begins to add another level of difficulty to the endeavor — finding a group and getting it organized for communication is sometimes not trivial, especially if it has to be a pug.

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, while I admire the innovation of Torghast and can even see some initial fascination with it, I simply cannot imagine running two wings every week for the next two years. For shitty rewards, but ones that are part of what appears to be an endless legendary upgrade grind along the lines of the BFA neck piece. And I am kind of pissed at Blizz for once again lying to us about it not being timed. Not to mention (although I am) it is unbalanced between trash mob difficulty versus elites and final boss, too dependent on the RNG of temporary powers, favors some classes over others, and in serious need of solo tuning.

Blizz, do yourselves and your players a favor, and fix these Torghast problems before it becomes a millstone around your neck, bringing down what seems to be an otherwise decent expansion.

And on that note, time for a weekend. See you on the other side.

Population explosion

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Over the last couple of days my guild has been discussing our raid schedule, which starts in less than a week. For the last couple of expansions, our main worry has been will we have enough sustained participation to complete each tier — the goal has usually been to hope for 15-20 regular, committed, core raiders. We have gotten that number sometimes to start a tier, but it frequently dwindled rather rapidly to somewhere around 12.

That is decidedly not the problem in Shadowlands. We had close to 40 who signed up, giving us a whole new challenge, as it has been many years since we have had to sit raiders and come up with some kind of equitable system for doing so.

Of course, not all who signed up will show — even the first night. Some will give it a half hearted effort once or twice then stop showing up. There will be a lot of reasons for this. Some will figure out they actually do not enjoy a whole night of trying the same couple of bosses over and over. Some will realize the significant time commitment required — even for our semi-casual schedule — and decide they cannot sustain it. Others will simply lose interest in the game as the expansion stops being new and shiny, and stop logging on altogether. But whatever the reasons, I expect we will be down to a manageable number of raiders in very short order.

Still, there is an interesting dynamic at play here.

Short digression. Our guild does not routinely kick inactive members. This is a rare point where I disagree with the guild policy — I can see carrying them for a few months or even a year if they have not logged in, but we have some who have not logged in for seven years. Seven years! They were such legacy members that they no longer had a real character name, it had had a system-generated number added to it! We only recently kicked some of them because we were hitting our max guild membership every couple of days and were unable to bring new active members on board. But it was like pulling teeth to get agreement on purging the rolls, if even just a little.

Anyway, back to my slowly developing point. Towards the end of the summer we started seeing probably 10-12 heretofore inactive players returning each week from their long-inactive status. Every day there were people popping up that many of the current members had never heard of, often with a cheery “Hi guys, I’m back!” in guild chat. (I suspect some current active members muttered “Who the hell are you?” to their computer screens, though likely the old-timers recognized the zombie player.) But the returning numbers just kept growing.

Combined with large (for us) recruitment, the result has been months of having 20-30 people logged in and active nearly every night. This is amazing, because by the end of Legion we were lucky to have 3-4 logged in during prime evening hours. Moreover, there was really almost no significant player return in anticipation of Battle for Azeroth. Sure, a few came back for a month or so immediately after BFA launch, but mostly they did not stick around long.

I admit to some amusement over comments and expectations from a few of the zombie guildies. I suppose it is just human nature, but some of them simply expect that when they left the game, it went into suspended animation and now they are back everything will resume exactly as they remember it. There have been some cries of anguish over things like class changes, auction house inflation, and user interface modifications. I suspect when we start raiding, many will have a rude awakening over the complexity of most fights nowadays (quantity of mechanics has become its own mechanic).

I also suspect we will quickly lose previous-era raiders when they realize they can no longer just show up on raid nights, get some loot, have a few laughs, then log out until the next raid night. Even for a casual guild, raiding now requires daily maintenance that can become very chore-like very fast. Even in an engaging expansion, Blizz’s fascination with endless, relentless grinding can wear on a player. The admission cost to whatever end game activity you love is steep.

I have no idea what convergence of factors is at play here to bring such numbers of players back. Certainly some combination of Blizzard pre-Shadowlands advertising, popular gaming streamers, pandemic boredom and free time, the success of Classic, tech advances that make notebook computers viable MMO platforms — pretty sure the list goes on. I will also mention the positive influence Blizz’s current in-game guild finder is having on recruitment. It has some problems and in the wider app world would be considered pretty primitive, but the previous version was so terrible — essentially unusable — that anything would be a step up. It’s a definite improvement, but the bar was pretty low.

The big question, of course, is how much staying power Shadowlands will have. So far it is looking like a win at least on a par with, if not better than, Legion. But it is very early. There are easily identifiable ups and downs already, and I have hopes that Blizz will recognize some major systemic problems early and move to fix them. (Overly-severe Covenant restrictions and major Torghast overtuning come to mind.)

But who knows? Maybe Shadowlands, with its theme of death and redemption, will turn out to rescue World of Warcraft from near-death and redeem it, if even for a few more years. That would be some nice symmetry.