I HAS PC

Breaking news over at broken toys – the return of an old MMO hero/villain.

Is Brad McQuaid back? Myself, as well as others tend to think it’s a hoax. Let’s chat about it a bit – it has been a slow gaming “work” week anyway.

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I am part of a WoW guild. I have spoken briefly about it in the past in a few topics, but nothing major (you know, the one I used to be GM of, yadda yadda). It’s going through a change right now, and the people that founded the guild are mostly gone. It was a great guild and will be interesting to see as a “casual” player what happens with it. They are working on their 4th GM right now. I have a Guild post lined up for the future. This is of lighter fare.

I still read the boards, and Clawdia/Orvie updated a thread that was/is kinda cool. It’s in private guild forums so I can’t link it.

Since the guild was formed at the beggining of Burning Crusade, we have had 12 kids born into guild members. Hell, that’s a solid 10 person raid group (with rotations, even). It’s a fun thought – a group of adult gamers grouped by an in game tag sharing parenting tips for newborns (after they read the Yogg-Saron strats, mind you)

Puts things into a fun perspective when gaming and real life collide.

The lawyer-in-training is coming out (heh, no pun intended) in me today. In law school, professors hammer into us the fact that “words matter.” A lot of time and effort is spent poring over words and their meanings; often disputes will turn upon a word that you and I think has a fairly settled definition. Over on wow.com there is a post about the fact that a GLBT guild is planning a “pride parade” in a couple of weeks. At the end of it is a little note that got under my skin, though. it says “NOTE: All hateful comments will get deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.” I know that the post made there is a bit of a charged subject and riles emotions on both sides of the issue. It’s the irony that while celebrating one group’s freedom of expression, they immediately turn around and warn that “hateful” speech will not be tolerated. But what exactly is the definition of the word “hateful?”

More after the break. Read more

This post is inspired by the article of the same title in the June 6th to 12th edition of the Economist.

A group of Harvard Business MBA students have made attempts to turn management into a formal profession. Doctors have their oath, so do Lawyers. CEO’s have always had one too – except it isn’t nearly as flashy or encompassing as the other formal professions. “The only responsibility of business is to maximize profits” is hardly a mission statement to live by.

“..the students promised they would, among other things, ’serve the greater good’, ‘act with the utmost integrity’, and guard against ‘decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions, but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.”

About half the class took the pledge. The purpose, of course, is most likely to distance themselves from the  current gen of MBA CEO’s who have lived off the backs of consumers and are the root of the problem of the current economic crisis. Of course, detractors from the oath indicate there is no “bite” to it, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

“Defenders of the oath reply that the goal of maximising shareholder value has become a justification for short-termism and, in particular, rapid personal enrichment. They are concerend about managers doing things that drive up the share price quickly at the expense of a firm’s lasting health. Management gurus such as Jim ‘Good to Great’ Collins argue that shareholders are likely to earn better returns in the long run if firms are led by managers with integity and a desire to play a constructive role in society”

Loved that line in the read – because of it’s obvious truth. Jim Collins not only ‘argued’ the point above, but was able to demonstrate it over a long period of time through some great research that followed the top public companies that went “Good to Great” in comparison to those that did not. Of course, applying this to real life is still a ways away. I used to be heavily involved in Politics when I was younger – I dreamt of all the changes to yet another failed, redundant and inefficient system (goverment/party politics system) and worked my way into the Federal party and found out there were a lot of people like me. What becomes apparent though – quickly I might add – that in order to get into that position of “power” that would enable you to make those important changes you have to sell yourself off along the way. Once you get that power, you quickly learn that if you don’t listen to lobbyists and the guys funding the whole thing you will be out before you have the chance to make the change. What that boils down to is this – by the time you get into “power” to make positive change you are often a shadow of your former self. You will never be in a position of power for long enough to enact the changes that are needed – no matter how strong your vision is.

My point with that, while the MBA student’s pledge is definitely a step in the right direction, let’s see what happens when they have to go out, get a job, and have to make tough choices of doing the right thing for the company, or doing the right thing for their career. Will be a tough pickle.

So, all that being said – anyone care to draft up a MMO Developer’s Pledge Forswearing Greed?

Pope here. Today Blizzard announced major changes to the mount structure. Most notable amongst the changes is that flying mounts will now be accessed at level 60. Normal flying will be 150% speed instead of 60% like it has been since flying mounts were launched. Wow.

What’s more: Blizzard is now including a portal from SW and Orgrimmar to the Stair of Destiny (aka the Dark Portal). As the folks over at wow.com point out, it will certainly reduce “downtime” for traveling back to the major cities to train after leveling.

Yes, that’s right. Downtime. Because it just took far too long to get to Shat, take your preferred portal to the city of your choice, then activate your hearthstone to get back to Outland. Of course, if you’re a Death Knight, you don’t even have to go to Shat, you can simply conjure your Death Gate and you’re back in the loving arms of Mograine and the rest of Death Knightdom.

What really makes me chuckle about this though is that they feel the need to speed up leveling through the use of flying mounts. Back in the winter, I leveled my Death Knight up to 65 before setting WoW down to focus on school. Last Thursday I picked him back up and started leveling again. I was out of Outland on Saturday night. I dinged 70 on Monday evening. I didn’t play all day each day or anything like that. I simply did the chains of quests that I received, skipping any instance quests and things that would take me horribly off course. All of that without a flying mount. In about three days.

Oh but really, that was too slow. We need to speed things up! Let’s give players flying mounts at 60, and up the speed on them. Forget all the work that Blizzard put into the zones, the detail that they added to it. Let’s let them navigate above the fray, pop down on the one mob they need to kill, then take back to the skies. Maybe Blizzard is more embarrassed about the Burning Crusade content than I thought.

On the other hand, at least players will be able to fly around before hitting level 78. It’s too bad my Death Knight missed out on that.

Newsflash: MMO’s make you grind.

(That new, informative and ground breaking statement should win me a blog-pulitzer, or blog-nobel, I am certain of it.)

Follow Up: People tend to not like grind.

MMOment of Truth: Grind equals profits for companies (both in the form of longer sub fee collection, and minimizing development costs)

Sad Truth: Inclusive of the above statements, MMO companies don’t treat their customers very well. [insert any analogy here that shows the longer a company forces a customer to wait for something, or to receive their item, or charges more to one customer for the same item than another customer, etc etc - the poorer the customer feels]

Solution 1: Develop a fun game that doesn’t have grind as it’s core, “innovating” feature (not going to happen anytime soon)

Solution 2: Enhance the experience with Real Money Transactions (community has a hard time accepting the current iterations of the model)

Solution 3: After the break! (oh, how I love cliffhangers)

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Warning – Fanboi’s may attack!

WoW has changed. Change is sometimes a good thing, and I’m not going to belabor the obvious changes (less challenge) or industry misconceptions (subs are needed to cover ongoing costs) instead, I am going to look at two things I have noticed the most since my foray back into WoW.

First, to stave of the flames – WoW is still a fun game. It presents well, plays well, and yes, we all know how many subs they have. They are obviously growing still, but there are two nagging things that jump out at me that aren’t typical Blizzard “style”, every time I log in and (try) to play. Confusing conundrums, after the cut.

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I took my 4 year old son and my wife (or did they take me?) to the movie UP! over the weekend. First off, I am loving the glorious 3D action that is making it’s way back into theaters. It is good to see the industry figuring out that if you don’t enhance the experience, it’s far easier/cheaper to just download the movie and/or wait for Blockbuster to release it. The 3D experience is one worth paying for, and seemingly only available in the theaters. [Note to self for future post: Why can't you have 3D at home? And is it possible to have it in games?]

I didn’t start this post to talk about 3D though, but a small surprise about the movie – which led me to thoughts about gaming, kids, and all that jazz. Does the expectation of certain entertainment mediums skew our views on how it is perceived? More after the break.

*Warning – Spoilers follow for the movie UP! – Don’t read if you don’t want to know*

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First off, big thanks to Chris for letting me post here.  I had this thought rolling around in my head, but no real spot to post it (my regular readership on my blog wouldn’t really get it).  Unbeknownst to him, Chris actually touched on the problem I’m looking at in this post in his “welcome” post.

While doing some reading on various blogs, I read several different posts that got my brain working on the subject of guilds and raid teams.  Guilds typically form as social constructs, ways for players to stay connected to friends in the game.  Guilds also form as a means to connect with other players for a common purpose; the most common of those purposes being raiding.  There are plenty of guilds that are purely social guilds and do no raiding whatsoever, but how many guilds do you know of that are purely for the purpose of raiding that don’t have a social element?  Beyond the big famous ones, guilds almost always have a nonraiding, social component to them.  After all, the raiding component of the game is only a subset of the endgame.

In his last post, Chris referenced the struggle of balancing the needs of the guild and the needs of the raid team.  Unless the guild is built as a hardcore raiding guild from the start, the goals and needs of a guild are often in conflict with the goals and needs of a raid team.  With a raid team, you know the numbers you need, the types of roles you need for each encounter, and a certain competence and commitment level from each individual raider.  There’s a clear goal in mind when a raid team is formed: progression through raid content.  In BC, nobody formed a raid team to go and wipe on Moroes for three hours a night.  Whatever the pace, the goal of each and every team was success.  Guilds, on the other hand, can either be as exclusive or as accepting as the leadership wants it to be.  Regardless of its level of exclusivity, a guild, at its most basic level, is a social instrument.  Success on a guild level can be whatever the guild wants it to be.

The mere existence of a guild invites drama.  I’d venture a guess to say that the biggest cause of guild drama and guild implosions comes from raiding, and there wouldn’t be many who would dispute that.  The nature of raiding drama has evolved as the landscape of raiding changed with each expansion.  In vanilla WoW it was the pressure on a guild of maintaining a raid team capable of fielding 40 raiders.  In BC, Blizzard lowered the raid cap to 25, but put a ten man instance as the entry-level raid.  It took a long time for most guilds to make it over the hurdle of Karazhan.  Now in WotLK, it’s the pressure of having both 10 and 25 man teams.  While having the bifurcated system for all instances facilitates more raid progression across the board, it’s allowed raiders to jump guilds more frequently; in short, the guild as a raid-organizing body is becoming obsolete.

Though I haven’t had the luxury of experiencing the current endgame raiding content, I’ve kept tabs on friends raiding experiences and watched them be more or less successful in the content.  One friend organized a group of individuals into a set team for the sole purpose of defeating endgame content on a time-limited basis.  The team wasn’t created out of any single guild; instead, the team was formed independent of guild tags and was set by one person.  Once the team completed its stated objective, the team disbanded and a new team formed with a different objective and different raiders.  Though I am not sure exactly how well they’ve done, I’m fairly certain that they’ve been able to complete most of the 10-man content in the current endgame.  This with high expectations and only a few raid nights per week.

Back when they launched Burning Crusade, Blizzard introduced a new gameplay element in the PvP Arena system.  With it came a new organization method in the Arena Teams.  As you know, Arena teams consist of two, three, or five players fighting a time with team rosters allowing for twice that amount (four, six, or ten) for the sake of versatility.  The beauty of the arena team system, though, was the fact that the arena teams weren’t limited to guildmates; an arena team could consist of members from completely different guilds.

I think you know where I am going with this.  What if Blizzard were to implement a system for raiding similar to the Arena Team system?

Instead of using the guild structure to organize the raid team, a raid leader acquires a raid charter from the “Raid Master” just like an arena team would visit the Arena Master to sign an Arena Charter for the preferred size.  A set number of raiders sign the charter and become members of that raid team.  Perhaps the allowed number could be double the size of the raid, like Arena teams, or it could be some other reasonable number.  The raid leader could set the timeframe of a raid team, or perhaps there could be raid “seasons,” similar to the current Arena seasons.  Just like Arena Teams, the raid leader gives the Raid Team a name.  Just like an Arena Team, the Raid Team is not bound by guild structure; raiders from multiple guilds can belong to the raid team.  Additionally, once formed, a raid team could have a dedicated chat channel through which to communicate (say, /rt or something?), even when not formed into an actual raid group.  I have thoughts on other mechanics, but I’ll save them for a possible later post, since this one’s running long.

This would provide distinct advantages to the current “ad hoc” system WoW currently has implemented.  The biggest advantage would probably be the segregation of raid organization from guild organization.  With an Arena-style system, raid teams could organize and be tracked independent of a guild system.  Guilds could focus on being social entities without worrying about the competing interests of the raiding component.  Raids could organize around their goals free of the concerns of guild management.  If a raid team wanted to be all in-guild it certainly could organize that way, but it wouldn’t have to.  Additionally, an Arena-style system would allow tracking of raid accomplishments by Blizzard.  The Armory system already tracks Arena Team accomplishments and progress.  Instead of having websites that scour the Armory and produce data and “rankings” for raid teams, the armory itself could remove the guesswork from the system.  We could easily see who was a world- or server-first for a specific kill.  Who knows, Blizzard could even implement some personal titles or competitions for raiding, just like they have for the Arena system.

Well, there you have it.  I welcome your thoughts.