Darkmoon Faire Wrap-Up

The first month of the revised Darkmoon Faire is in the books, and my mage has snagged a total of 75 tickets.  The breakdown here was 20 tickets for six tradeskill quests (once per month, also good for five free skill points in the related skills), 10 for the general kill quest, 35 for doing five carnival game dailies every day for seven days, and 10 from a dungeon drop - I won one of only two I saw drop during the week.

By my standards, I played WoW pretty heavily this week to get even that many tickets.  According to Blizzard's post on the topic, I earned less than half of what is theoretically possible in a month, but they claim that the half I missed will be easier to gain in future iterations because you can get the random dungeon drops anytime, not just when the Faire is active.  If what I got this month is representative of what I'm going to get normally, I would have to repeat what I did this week every month for twelve months just to get the minipets and mounts currently on the vendor.

Six pets at 90 tickets and 2 mounts, at 180 tickets

On some level, these are all cosmetic rewards, and it therefore doesn't "matter" if I obtain them all.  (The six minipets do represent by far the largest trove of pets that I don't own that can be easily obtained, but we also can't be sure that these won't be account-wide when Pandaria hits - being able to farm them on alts would dramatically speed this time.)  There are a lot of tents in the Faire that are closed for "construction", raising the possibility that more ticket-earning activities will be possible in future years.  (Note: I meant to write "patches" instead of years, but the Freudian slip seems appropriate given Blizzard's patch cycle.)  For that matter, there's an argument to be made that a Veteran reward that actually requires in-game activity is more interesting than one that you get just for paying up, with the caveat that players would need to be available the week the Faire is open to get their tickets for that month.

That said, the fact remains that this is a game that charges a monthly fee.  I would have no complaint if this event was open year-round so I could work on it at my leisure.  Having an event that requires me to drop what I'm doing and work on it for the first week of every month, at the risk of losing my monthly token allowance, does not strike me as especially fun.

Consolation prize: a bunch of easy achievements

The Time Gamble for 4.3 Heroic Valor

I've had a bit of time to play around with the dungeon finder, where I've noticed something unusual about the new Heroic dungeons. 

When patch 4.1 added the two troll instances to WoW's heroic pool, the newer, more challenging instances were separated in a different tier, with separate Valor point awards (much to the chagrin of people who wanted to get their weekly valor cap but who got tired of running those two zones repeatedly).  Patch 4.3 adds three new instances, and these are indeed available as a separate category in the dungeon finder.  What is gone is the additional Valor award.

You can now get seven VP grants per week (the last of which will be reduced from 150 to 100 due to the weekly cap), regardless of whether you take the option that only includes the new zones, or the other option (which includes all of the Cataclysm heroics you are eligible for, including the 4.1 and 4.3 instances).  This makes for an interesting gamble on players' time versus reward ratios. 

• The newer zones seem to be reasonably quick, drop better loot (until you have something better yet anyway) and have a higher starting item level requirement, which means that you're not going to be added to a group with people who have not done at least some dungeons in Cataclysm.  However, the 4.3 zones are still a bit tougher than what you see in the old zones, so the chances - or at least the fear - of failure is potentially higher.  
• If you go the unrestricted random route, the basic Cataclysm Heroics are going to be even quicker because players grossly outgear them, resulting in a high speed, low risk clear if those are chosen.  However, you run the risk of drawing one of the new zones, or, worst of all, one of the time consuming and challenging troll heroics, which now no longer has any additional reward.  I've seen a lot of people immediately drop groups upon zone-in, and I assume these folks were hoping for the easy win.  

I suppose it's a good compromise solution - players like myself who are behind the gear curve looking to meet the requirements for the EZ-auto-raid-finder mode of Deathwing can self-select into the new content without losing the weekly VP bonuses.  Other players are available to fill in groups for anything, even the rare person (like myself, having not had a subscription for most of the time since 4.1) who actually still wanted to sightsee in the old zones.

This is one of those times when I wish we could actually see the numbers.  It would be fascinating to see which of the options players end up picking. 

Triumph of the Loyalty Reward Mount

Of the reasons why I signed up for WoW's annual pass, the Tyrael's Charger mount was pretty much negligable.  That said, the mount arrived with this week's patch 4.3, so I suppose you can make an argument that I now own a mount that I obtained with real money. 

Visually, it's a very nice mount - typical horse but the ethereal wings/tail are striking and unique (not entirely so, obviously, but far less common than the original sparkle pony was in my limited experience).  On the downside, I'm not entirely thrilled with the flight animation.  Viewed from the side or the front it looks fine, but from behind (which is the default perspective after all) the horse moves his legs as if he were pushing off against the ground.  It looks a bit odd in mid-air, in a way that the Headless Horseman's flying horse did not.  

Like all other mounts, the horse requires the appropriate level and riding skill to use - my level 5 bank alt can loot the mount from her mail but cannot use it.  The two perks this mount does get (which have been on previous cash store mounts) are the ability to scale to player riding skill level and the ability to make a seamless transition from flight to ground travel if you enter a no-fly zone. 

I'm not sure exactly what the rules for this are anymore now that so much of the world is flyable - I have seen people riding on gryphons on the ground - but I was able to fly the charger into the cave for the Pebble daily quests and continue on the ground, where a traditional flying mount kicked me off when I tried this last week.  This air to ground ability is not common - as far as I'm aware, there are only two mounts (the horseman from the Halloween event and the Valentine's rocket) with this capability that can be obtained through normal in-game means.  It's not a must have and I wouldn't pay $25 for it (the going rate for mounts in WoW's cash shop), but it's a nice account-wide perk.

Meanwhile, because my luck runs that way sometimes, my egg from the Oracles finally hatched into a Green Proto-Drake when I logged into game to pick up the new mount from the mailbox.  Go figure.

MMO Black Friday

Here's a few MMO-related Black Friday sales that are or will be available from the comfort of your own home computer. 

• Rift Client free with game time purchase:
  Via MMO-Crunch, there is currently no charge for the Rift client with the purchase of game time.  I assume that any of the normal sub-plans are available - $15 for one month or multi-month deals that may or may not be in your best interest.  Note that, while the most recent Digital Collector's edition is included on the sale page, the $10 upgrade package is available for $10 at any time, so there's no need to snag it now.
   
• LOTRO Isengard Expansion 50% off for Black Friday
  After a highly aggressive pre-order campaign, which misled several people (myself included) into believing that the $30 price was pre-order only, that price will now be slashed by 50% less than two months after the expansion launch, albeit for a single day.  My patience in refusing the hard sell is rewarded with a major discount, and I will certainly remember this the next time Turbine tries something similar.   
  
  There's an additional wrinkle in that the sale does not specify which of the three packages is included.  At the full prices, I would not pay for the fancier editions - normal Turbine Point sales let you get the equivalent of 1000 TP for the added $10, and I don't care about the cosmetics.  At 50% off, the choice between the $15 base edition and the $20 edition that adds 1000 TP for $5 becomes much more interesting, as I don't think I've ever seen a rate that favorable.   
  
  (If the Legendary version is included, this deal would be spectacular for new players - $25 would be all you would need to spend from level 1 to the cap, including the not-yet-released new endgame content.  I own most of the quest packs included in this bundle, and I'd still be strongly tempted just because this blows any other deal they've ever offered for the two zones I'm missing out of the water.) 
  
• WoW Speculation
  As of now, the only WoW deal I know of is a black Friday price at Gamestop, offering the base game (which now include TBC) for $10, with Wrath and Cataclysm at $20 each, in exchange for potentially risking your life in the retail stampede.  I only mention this because Blizzard offered a similar price on their web store last year, and has Starcraft II on sale for half off through Monday.  I'd watch this one if you have a WoW account that you have not yet upgraded, but I could turn out to be incorrect. 

I'm primarily interested in game clients/expansions/etc, but feel free to post anything else interesting in the comments and I will try to update this post with your info.  For example, EQ2 has an unspecified sale, which could be interesting if EQ2X race/class or gear unlocks that will be usable in the base game next month are included.

Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Commerce, everyone!

Dailies and the Subscription Endgame

I've been sporadically working on WoW's daily quest endgame, and I'm staggered by how many of these there are in Cataclysm these days.  Studios - Blizzard foremost amongst them - have gotten really fond of using daily progress limits to extend the life of content in the era of the monthly subscription fee.  I wonder whether this mechanic is going to be less welcome now that so many games aren't charging one. 

Tales of Tol Barad

Today, I finished an achievement called Just Another Day in Tol Barad, awarded for completing each of the daily quests related to the Cataclysm world PVP area.  No actual PVP is required for this achievement, but it does require a decent amount of real-world time.

Most of the quests in Tol Barad are randomly selected on a daily basis, and it's taken over two weeks (not counting days when I didn't actually play) to get all of them.  Additionally, nine of the quests for the achievement are tied to control of the Tol Barad keep - after each battle, one of three random questgivers spawns, with quests pointing at one of three mini-prisons that are only open when the appropriate questgiver is up.  There is no time limit on these quests once you have accepted them (e.g. if the next battle happens - even if your faction wins, the same area might not be open afterwards), and you can complete the quests if the opposing faction controls the zone and the appropriate questgiver spawns for them.  (Unlike Wintergrasp, none of this area is flagged for PVP on PVE servers.) 

This is not the end of the Tol Barad dailies, however.  There is a quest achievement for completing 100 dailies in the area (I'm currently just over 60), and I would probably need around 40-60 more quests beyond that for exalted with the faction (currently partway through revered).  These daily quest totals would be enough for me to collect the tokens for the minipet (already purchased) and maybe the cheaper of the two mounts, with another 200 tokens if you want both mounts. 

Other daily quest-related activities on my theoretical to-do list in WoW include:

• I'm working on the revised Wintersaber cub grind, currently completed day 11 out of 20.
• I'm on one of the earliest stages in the Fireland daily quests from patch 4.2.
• I'm currently revered with Therazane, which has a bunch of daily quests for rep.  There are also two achievements here, each of which depend on completing a specific quest 10 times.  Neither of these is a guaranteed spawn either, and one, for the Pebble minipet, is actually very rare.  
• There are two open daily quests I can theoretically work on for Ramakhen rep (currently revered), though realistically it's quicker to get this by pugging dungeons with the appropriate tabard.  
• There are also two dailies for the Wildhammer clan, but I have yet to unlock these, and, again, there's a tabard for that.  
• I'm done with cooking dailies, but there are fishing (and possibly archeology?) dailies I haven't bothered with.
• This is not strictly a daily, but my mage still has his hearthstone in Sholazar Basin because he's still waiting on the green proto-drake mount from the Oracle eggs, which take three days of real time (reduced down from a week in Wrath) to hatch.  I have several bags-worth of duplicate super-common and thus un-sellable minipets from this activity, and may or may not be willing to do out-dated Wrath era daily quests to switch over to the Wolvar side if I ever get the mount, just so I can slaughter Oracles in retribution for how long this has taken.  
• Patch 4.3 will revise the Darkmoon Faire to include a number of daily quests and currencies, all of which are only available one week per month when the Faire is open.  

The role of the daily in the subscription game
Overall, it's pretty clear the daily quests are what's for entertainment for the solo player at endgame, and there are times when I don't mind doing them.  They're a great way to pass the time while waiting for dungeon queues, waking up bleary-eyed first thing in the morning, or just in situations where you can't be sure you won't be called away from the computer on a moment's notice.

That said, I would be seriously irked by all of the places where my ability to complete my goals is blocked by daily progress limits if I was still paying for a month at a time and trying to wrap things up quickly.  Because I elected to sign up for the annual plan for this year, I know that I have lots of time to take care of all this stuff (or not), and it doesn't really bug me if I don't feel like doing dailies today - I just don't do them.  In hindsight, part of why I haven't spent much time on Cataclysm's endgame was not wanting to try and focus on getting these grinds over with in as few paid months as possible.

The last few remaining subscription games, like WoW and Rift, are faced with competition that offers payment models which are more based on how much you choose to play than when.   Free to play games want to charge money too, but they have less reason to care if a player wants to go all-in for a weekend - see my experience with Runes of Magic bonus exp.  Ironically, this may mean less pressure to include too much of a (marginally) good thing. 

Combat Pacing and Feel

A few semi-related ramblings about combat pacing, which are aimed in the vague general direction of this question: To what extent can/should the mechanics of actually playing the game (pushing buttons etc) influence what roles the player can perform?

• LOTRO got a bunch of complaints in the early days for "sluggish" feeling combat.  I think this can be chalked up to several different factors; the time to kill a solo mob is much higher than in WoW (which was the only other MMO that focused on solo content at the time LOTRO launched), there were some issues with lengthy animations that would have to complete before characters to execute their next attack, and there may have been some other factors as well.  Regardless, this was a major critique of the game at the time of its launch.
  
  Speaking of things dying quickly, I've been getting much more interested in healing now that I'm actually grouping in games that aren't WoW, and a big part of that may be that WoW has always had faster paced combat - with less reaction time for the healer. 
  
• I blogged about DCUO weapons last week, and I've since earned enough skill points to allow my main to equip any weapon he wants (though he only has special attacks for a handful).  Weapons differ drastically in their combat speed, what types of click combinations are necessary to execute special attacks, etc.  Some, like the slow 2-handed weapon and brawling types, I dislike for slow speed.  Some, such as dual pistols and staves, I'm not so fond of due to the attack sequences.  The assault rifle I dislike because it has a really bad habit of hitting far away mobs that I did not intend to pull, which I suppose is a valuable lesson in firearm safety courtesy of SOE and Superman.
  
  At the end of the day, I have some options I can live with - Bows and 1-handed weapons are my current favorite.  I think these are passable options for my two roles (DPS, healing), but it's certainly possible that there is a more optimal choice that I'm not using because I don't like it. 
  
• When talking about their plans for the new monk class in the Pandaria expansion, Blizzard admitted that the design of not having an auto-attack may be so far out there that they will have to fight to keep it through testing.  DCUO meanwhile has confirmed its new Flash-themed DLC pack, and stated that the new "Lightning" powerset will do some sort of ward-based smart-healing.  Given my namesake, you'd think that I've be playing a Green Lantern, but I'm less interested in their group role (crowd control/regen) than in healing.  I'm reasonably happy with the Sorcery powerset I'm using on my main, but the Flash powerset may or may not make the new DLC more appealing, even if the subject matter is of less interest.

I don't know that I really have a bottom line today, quirky/pensive mood I suppose.  

Which Blizzard Title Could Miss 2012?

I don't really care that much about the latest in WoW subscriber numbers, for the reasons that Tobold and Wilhelm describe.  While it is likely that some of the current losses represent a vote of no confidence in the Cataclysm, what happens in the next year will matter a lot more to the future of WoW than what happened in the last year.  It will take more than one down expansion to spell the doom of what is likely the world's most lucrative game.  Two expansions that are not well received, with 18-24 month dev cycles each, would leave the game in "unsatisfactory" status for 3+ years, which would be far harder to rebound from.   

In this context, I'm more interested in a separate tidbit from the call, reported by both Gamasutra and MMO-Champion: 2012 will see a "minimum of two highly-anticipated new titles from Blizzard Entertainment, including Diablo III". 

Assuming no one wants to quibble about whether Blizzard titles are "highly-anticipated", most people would probably agree that they expect three Blizzard titles in 2012 - DIII, the first Starcraft II expansion (Heart of the Swarm), and Mists of Pandaria.   So, which one of the two expansions could potentially miss 2012? 

It's possible that Bobby Kotick is simply being conservative - i.e. that both expansions are equally likely to launch comfortably within 2012, but that saying a "minimum of two" just provides insurance in case an asteroid destroys half of the Blizzard HQ.  Given that SCII was out six months earlier than Cataclysm, however, its expansion should be six months closer to completion.  The possible implication is that Heart of the Swarm is slated for a Q2 release with no reasonable possibility of being delayed to 2013, while Pandaria is penciled in for a Q3 2012 release - just close enough to the end of the year that Kotick doesn't want to go on the record promising that it won't slip into 2013. 

What we saw at Blizzcon seemed to be further along than past expansions at their unveiling, which had me thinking that a mid-late summer release might be on the table.  If my new guess is right, the plan is for Blizzard to respond to possibly the most serious threat in the game's life with the same leisurely 20+ month development cycle that they have always taken (and a release date of September or later).  This would be much more concerning than plus or minus a few hundred thousand customers to the subscription count. 

F2P Assault on the Hard Drive

Yesterday, I posted a full run-down of five separate free to play games that are currently installed on my computer: LOTRO, DDO, EQ2X, Runes of Magic, and now DCUO.

In addition to these, I have clients for WoW (annual pass subscription), EQ2 Live (yes, this requires a separate full client install) and Rift (the latter two of which I do not want to uninstall because I want to be able to patch up quickly for free retrial weekends).

The net result of all these clients, all of which I could potentially use on short notice, is that my hard drive is 77% full and climbing rapidly.  Already gone from the hard drives of this and my previous machines are various games that I'm not actively playing, including Age of Conan (tried sometime last year pre-F2P, did not feel any particular desire to return), City of Heroes (tried back in 2007 or so), FFXI, Guild Wars, Torchlight, Warhammer, Free Realms, Vanguard, and Star Wars Galaxies (soon to be a moot point).  This does not include betas or test server clients (none of which I currently have.) 

In addition to all of the above, my post and the following comments identified half a dozen high quality F2P or formerly paid games that I have never played in any form, including: Champions Online, soon Star Trek Online, Fallen Earth, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Allods, and Wizard 101.  (Honorable mention to the soon to be closed Lego Universe.)  I'm sure there are plenty I've missed in that number, feel free to post shout-outs in the comments. 

A year or two back, I remember someone mentioning on a podcast that they had installed an MMO to an external hard drive and thinking that this was a weird call.  Now I'm vaguely considering whether I should add an external drive (perhaps SSD?) to my Christmas list, as hard drive capacity is about to become a limiting factor in my ability to try additional games.

Is anyone else's hard drive buckling under all the MMO clients, now that it is increasingly both possible and desirable to have so many at your disposal?  Any suggestions on creative or high quality external storage solutions? 

PVD On The Multiverse Again

I was fortunate enough to get to record an episode of The Multiverse, one of my favorite podcasts.  Topics of discussion included:

• Blizzard's controversial expansion plan and whether Cataclysm can hold the subscribers long enough for Blizzard's slow expansion cycle.  
• FFXIV getting ready for the big day when they actually start making money.
• The latest MMO's going F2P.  
• Round table discussion of the future of the subscription model. 

Overall, this went pretty well when we taped and aired it last September - most of what we said doesn't sound completely irrelevant over a year later - so I was extra fortunate to be invited back to a second taping of the show this weekend for the 50th episode. 

A few random tidbits about being a blogger who makes the occasional guest appearance on a recorded-live audio podcast:

• Chris of Game By Night is a teacher by day, and some of the questions he asked last time out fit that mold.  We spent 15 minutes exploring topics raised by the games we were playing that week, and I fielded questions like, "So, Green, tell us about what you do at PVD.  This is your time to showcase your work for our listeners who aren't so familiar with it." 
  
  Chris wasn't able to make it this time, which left Ferrel, author of the Raider's Compendium, calling the shots.  The games we were playing this week segment took 75 seconds combined between the three of us, and I got thrown questions like "Green, what do you think of the FFXIV free to play conversion?" I don't actually play FFXIV, but I made this work and we chain pulled the next topic.  Draw your own conclusions.
    
• I'm used to writing out all my thoughts and then reorganizing or deleting as necessary.  By virtue of having a live conversation, there's no opportunity to reorganize, clarify, or insert that extra thought you had a few minutes later when the conversation has already moved on. As a result, it's really hard for me to have an honest opinion of how I did on the show - when I listen to it right now, I'm highly critical of what I could have said more concisely (I think I did terribly on this front this time out), or the arguments that I'm not as convinced were worth presenting at all after hearing the guys' comments. 
  
  Maybe in a year when the memory of actually having the conversation is less fresh, I'll have a different view - I definitely thought the show from last year was much better than I remembered it when I re-listened it to prepare for this week. 
  
  
• I did talk for what feels like 10 minutes straight about DCUO.  This wasn't necessarily out of line since DCUO was one of the three news stories of the week and I was the only one who had actually played it.  I also talked for probably a bit more than the other guys (Dr. Klassi was pretty quiet) during the discussion.  Again, it was my suggested topic, and I don't know what exactly the right balance is.  Ah well, practice makes perfect I suppose.  

Anyway, the link again for those who want to listen to a few guys rambling for an hour is here for Season 2, Episode 17 (episode 50 overall) of the Multiverse.

Poll Results: Blizzcon Reaction

Based on an impression that the reaction to Blizzcon and Pandaria was generally strongly positive or strongly negative, I asked the following poll question:

What was your reaction to Blizzcon?

• Pandas = Jumped The Shark. Will never pay Blizzard again. - 42 Votes, 32%
• Signed up for the year-long subscription. - 28 Votes, 21% (includes my vote)
• Something in between these two extremes. - 60 Votes, 46%

There is indeed a silent moderate plurality in between the two extremes, and it's possible that these folks would take the lead in a legitimate random scientific poll.  Even so, I wonder if Blizzard may actually be happy with these sorts of numbers. 

There's a solid core - larger than I had expected - who like the direction the game is taking enough to make the long term commitment.  There are a larger number, at least amongst those who are willing to come to blogs to vote and comment, who are dissatisfied, but how many of those were really going to be in Blizzard's corner for the long haul in any case? 

Where cash store mounts are concerned, I've long maintained that anyone willing to cancel their subscription over a cosmetic mount was already on their way out the door for other reasons.  An entire expansion of Pandaren may be a bigger impact on the tone of the game, but I think the direction of WoW (both in general and under the recent dev team) is reasonably well understood at this point.  Perhaps in this context, it actually makes sense that so many people already know what they think of the expansion.

WoW Prices in October 2012

In my post about the WoW annual plan, Nils comments:

"If only Blizzard had known that lowering the monthly rate from $13 to $8 would make you subscribe for 12 months instead of 2-4 :)"

They almost certainly were aware of this, since it's basic macroeconomics that there will be a larger number of people who will buy a product at a lower price point.  The tricky part is figuring out when the increased sales to people who would not have paid the higher price are outweighed by the lost revenue from people who were willing to pay the full amount.  Perhaps their confidence in retaining subscribers is really low, perhaps they are concerned about the effect that the exodus has on the players who remains, or perhaps Tobold is correct that they hope that free copies of DIII will drive future RMT auction house fees.

All issues of why aside, there's an interesting quirk to this price drop in that it is temporary.  Come late October 2012, the rate goes back up to $13 (with the six month commitment).  A cynic could argue (Kring did in the comments) that the solution is to charge $60 for the presumptive first DIII expansion and just duplicate the plan out another year on the theory that it worked once. I'm just not convinced that a DIII expansion could be ready in time to fact into a purchasing decision in October 2012 (when it will be likely be just announced, trending towards a Q3 2013 launch).  Also, won't they want to actually be paid for their work on DIII at some point?

Will we see an actual cut to the multi-month fee?  Some other combination of incentives?  Is the plan to prop this thing up until it can be incorporated into the hypothetical Blizzard all-access pass with Titan?  Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch. 

Paying More For Flexibility

After deliberating the new "annual pass" to WoW, with the "free" copy of Diablo III, I decided to pull the trigger. 

Nils, despite his funny European currency, is not wrong when he points out that this is a bad "bet" if you look at it as a pre-order of Diablo III coupled with a longterm subscription at whatever is left over divided by twelve months.  Based on my past gaming habits, I would probably have paid for 2-4 months of WoW time - at a cost of $30-60 - between now and November 2012, had I not taken this "deal".  If the sole goal is to pay as little as possible, I may well "lose" somewhere in the neighborhood of $36-66.

What $66 will buy you
That said, I also think I'm getting more, as a result of being able to log in during the 8-10 months when I otherwise would not have been able to play for lack of a subscription.  A few examples:

• This evening I am exploring the updates to WoW's Halloween event.  I would not have paid $15 to resubscribe for a month just for this project.  The Lunar Festival supposedly has similar updates.  Some of my "lost" $66 can cover access to world events.
  
• My mage has yet to finish the regular heroic dungeons.  Once he's through these, it will be on to the two Zandalar instances.  Then there will be a third tier with the new zones in patch 4.3.  Finally, there will be the EZ-mode Deathwing encounter tuned for PUG's.  I would like to see all of this stuff at least once.  Could I have done that in a single month, by paying $15, clearing off my calendar, and spending every single night in randomly generated WoW dungeon groups?  Probably, yes.  Am I happy to spend some of the $66 so I can spread that experience out over a more leisurely pace?  Yes. 
  
• I have no intention of leveling a Monk to the new level cap during the Pandaria beta, as I did with a DK during the Wrath beta.  Nowadays, my time is limited enough that I'm going to invest it on characters I actually get to keep.  That said, I expect that I will get some entertainment value out of being able to sign and preview mechanics changes, learn where flight masters are, etc. 
  
• There's also a mount involved, which I'm assuming will be usable as a ground-capable flying mount.  Currently, both of my level 85's spend most of their time on the Horseman's mount, because I can't be bothered to write a macro or devote an extra hotbar spot to a second mount for locations that do not allow flight.  If the new horse is a substitute, at least I will have a bit more variety.  I would not have paid anything for this, but I will probably use it once I receive it.  

Like Anjin, who also signed up for the annual pass, it is not my plan to sign on every night, get back into raiding, or stop playing the other games I play.  Quite the opposite, not having a monthly timer on my WoW subscription makes me less concerned about taking time to do other things.  I could have had this deal at any time by paying the $156 for two 6 month subs, but that was more than I think it is worth.  By cutting it down to $96/12 months, the number becomes something I am willing to pay, especially with some extra's thrown in. 

(And yes, incidentally, this entire analysis assumes that Pandaria will not arrive prior to November 2012.  If the expansion arrives in August or something - earlier than expected, but the expansion definitely looked further along than past expansions at their Blizzcon debuts - suddenly I'm likely to be satisfying my "commitment" with time I would have purchased anyway.  Like the perks, I consider this possibility of actually "winning" the bet to be an extra, rather than part of the math.)

Blizzard's Panda Gambit

The major announcements of Blizzcon 2011 are in the books, and I made enough predictions over the course of four separate prediction posts that I was practically guaranteed to get some of the calls right by sheer force of numbers.  The reception amongst people who blog about how they are either no longer satisfied with - or indeed no longer playing - WoW has been predictably bad, though I will admit to a bit of surprise that this seems to have comprised almost my entire blogroll. 

Personally, perhaps because my expectations were so low, I am surprised by how much stuff the game is getting in the next expansion.  I'm even considering the year-long subscription deal, even though I hate long term subscriptions. 

Expansion basics
As I wrote in August when news of the trademark broke, in hindsight a new continent with five levels and neutral playable Pandaren were the obvious call - a return to the pre-Cataclysm formula.  I did not think we would see a new class in general, or the Brewmaster in particular due to the alcohol question, and I would have said that I did not expect a fifth tanking class if I had not already dismissed a new class.  Wrong on all counts (albeit with the Brewmaster as a spec of monks). 

While most melee DPS in WoW have some passive self-healing, a true melee-based healer is a niche that most other MMO's have and WoW does not.  Assuming they don't chicken out on the "no auto-attack" plan, a DDO-style martial arts class will fill a previously unoccupied melee DPS niche.  I still don't know what they're thinking about the tank tree, and they may not either, other than wanting the new shiny to be able to queue as tank to help queue times. 

Overall, this was precisely what people should have expected, other than people who are offended because they feel that the fictional pandas Blizzard created are inappropriate for the fictional world that Blizzard created and owns.  Personally, I see no reason to take the lore more seriously than its owners do.   

New features
What I really wasn't expecting was a number of new features.

Back in January, Tobold suggested the new expansion would have public quests, while my tongue-in-cheek response (and followup explanation) was that I thought WoW's dungeon finder could fill the niche for unscheduled group content.  Turns out we were both half right/wrong - the new PVE "Scenarios" will be set in world locations (similar to LOTRO skirmishes) but will be non-public and filled using the dungeon finder mechanic (and tuned to allow non-holy trinity groups to complete them). 

The Crab hinted at a talent revamp, and I correctly guessed that some key abilities would be automatically granted based on spec, but I didn't see the complete removal of trees coming.  Realistically, I think there will still be optimal specs in the new "six talent points at level 90" system, but I won't miss having to pick between interesting abilities and passive DPS. 

And then we have the Pokemon pet battle system.  This was a total surprise to me, and it is almost certain to be a huge hit.  Other games have tried stuff like this - notably EQ2's arena pets from 2005 - but layering this system on top of the existing minipets, when so many of us already have 50-150 of them, was a brilliant move.  The gameplay would have to be truly terrible for this to be anything short of massively popular. 

The Diablo III deal
And then, we have the curious package deal - players who commit to a one year subscription to WoW get a free copy of Diablo III and access to the Pandaria beta (and a mount, if you care about these things).

The downside is immediately obvious - Blizzard must be really nervous about retention over the next year.  Between SWTOR, possibly GW2, and the always slow end-of-expansion lull (at the end of an already poorly-received expansion, and with Pandaria possibly not even launching during the one year window), one can see why.  Viewed purely as a Veteran reward for a one-year WoW sub, this is probably a bad deal.

Then again, consider the cost.  One year of game time at the six-month subscription rate costs $156.  (Blizzard will allow single month and even game time card plans, but there's no reason not to take the best multi-month rate once you've already committed not to cancel.) 

Diablo III will MSRP for $60, and will sell well enough that you will have to pay that price if you want to play the game before 2014.  I'm not even that excited about DIII, but I'm sure I'll want to see the story at least once since I did love DII back in the day.  If you are going to buy DIII anyway, this deal is effectively one year of WoW, plus access to the Pandaria beta if you're so inclined, for $96, or $8/month with your paid DIII pre-order.

(Two bonuses for Blizzard - this effectively wipes out the secondary market for Pandaria beta keys, and it puts a lot of DIII pre-orders directly into their hands as digital presales, eliminating the retail middleman.)   

I do not currently have a WoW subscription, my last paid time expired in July, I don't know when I would next resubscribe at the normal rate, and I would very likely spend less than $96 on WoW subscription time between now and next October.  However, the way in which I would "save" that money is by not logging in when I wouldn't mind to visit Azeroth for a weekend, world event, or even a single evening, because I don't think I will extract $15 worth of value out of paying for a one month subscription.   At $8/month, WoW becomes a game I can log into whenever I feel like doing so, alongside multiple other non-subscription games where I do just that.

I'm not 100% sold because I doubt that Pandaria will arrive with much, if any, time to spare out of the year, but the deal is tempting enough that I'm definitely considering it. 

The WoW Outlook
Like many others, I'm not entirely satisfied with Cataclysm.  Blizzard did what people accuse them of not doing - they tried to do something genuinely different by spending much of their effort overhauling massive amounts of content - but the results did not work out that well.   In that context, I entered Blizzcon with unusually low expectations, and came out pleasantly surprised. 

Might I be underestimating the popular distaste for the Pandas?  Perhaps.  Might they fail to execute their ambitious plans, including yet another gutting and overhauling of the talent system?  Absolutely.  Are they likely to take until next fall, or even the holidays, developing an expansion that the game desperately needs before next summer?  Most likely. 

With all of those caveats, what they say they would like to do over the next year is for the most part what I want them to do over the next year.  Regardless of the outcome, my outlook for Blizzard is much more positive coming out of Blizzcon than it was going in - where this writer is concerned, Blizzard's Panda Gambit is a success. 

Blizzard-style Marketing: Now SWTOR is the Master (but only of Evil)?

Blizzard's marketing department is somewhat notorious for attempting to steal other MMOs' thunder - I correctly predicted their Rift launch antics about a month in advance.  I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of their competitors returned the favor. 

With Blizzcon and the presumptive announcement of WoW's Mists of Pandaria expansion less than a day away, EA has dropped a press embargo on the SWTOR beta.  One of Bioware's folks was quick to point out that the drop applies only to press - as Syp points out, bloggers who do not make money on how many page views they get (or do not get) on embargo drop day because they were included (or not) have to stay silent a bit longer. 

Personally, I don't have a problem in principle with the strategy - Blizzard has earned whatever karma they get on this front.  That said, I'm not convinced it will work.  Even with the relatively controlled press audience, Keen reports that the reactions are mixed or even lackluster.  Perhaps there are some people who aren't aware that there is a SWTOR or that it is coming out at the end of the year.  These folks may remain ignorant after the new WoW expansion gets the front page of every news site tomorrow anyway.  I don't know if they're going to make it all the way to the keynote, but even getting to the night before without the full details of the expansion posted on MMO-Champion is a bit of a coup for Blizzard compared to past years. 

At the end of the day, I think the strategy is a bit misguided for the same reasons it is misguided when Blizzard does it to other companies - I don't think most players are making purchasing decisions on games that are out now (or shortly) based on things that may be worth playing in the future (e.g. SWTOR's December release, versus almost certainly 6-12 months for the WoW expansion). If SWTOR doesn't get all the coverage they otherwise would have earned (good or bad) because they got buried under Blizzcon news, well, I guess it's only appropriate since overcoming his old master only worked out so well for Vader. 

P.S. Yes, I still think that the expansion will be Pandas, come back and laugh at me this time tomorrow.  Based on the schedule for an entire panel devoted to talent trees, they're probably messing with that system again.  My guess is that they will re-open the system a bit to cross-spec points, but remove key spec-defining abilities to a separate category based on points spent in the primary tree, akin to Rift's "root" system, to prevent the old cherry picking issues.  In fact, the Crab had suggested allowing the 10 out-of-tree points to be spent anywhere in the other trees, not just in the bottom tiers; we may be looking at a system where tiered "trees" are removed altogether, with the remaining "non-spec-defining" talents freely available based on level (i.e. no wasting points on talents that modify level 60 spells before level 60).

Opportunity Coast Bypass

My first two trips into the mid-30's in Runes of Magic took a year and half a dozen zones.  My third trip has taken 4 nights in a single zone, the new Coast of Opportunity. 

As part of adding a third class to the game, Runewaker had to offer some way for characters who had already completed the low level content while leveling their first two classes to get their new class off the ground.  Adding half again the current leveling content in the game wasn't really a viable option. 

The Coast of Opportunity was an interesting compromise - it's a zone where each individual quest is about as hard as a level appropriate quest elsewhere in the game, but with dramatically increased exp and gear rewards.  Where a player might get a level and a mildly usable piece of green-quality gear from a series of quests in the original content, a single foray into the new area might award an entire level and one or more pieces of blue gear.  Repeatable quests offer the training certificates needed to unlock your elite dual class skills far more easily than farming the old turn-ins (which are less reasonable now that each character can have up to six sets of elite skills).  

The system isn't entirely for the faint of heart - I'm earning skill Training Points faster than I can figure out what to spend them on, unlocking new skills left and right, and juggling my two secondary jobs on my fledgling Warden.  That said, the system works - I went in with two usable higher level classes, and I will emerge with three.  The old content remains in the game for players who want to experience it, with no need for massive nerfs to difficulty or exp curves. 

Overall, it's an interesting approach compared to the more traditional leveling content revamp/nerf as games age.  Instead of spending cost-prohibitive amounts of time actually removing old content from the game, the developer has simply allowed those who want to bypass it to do so.  It's still more elegant than outright starting characters at higher levels (e.g. WoW's Death Knights), and it doesn't really harm the previously existing experience for people who actually enjoyed it, the way that WoW's Cataclysm has.

I wonder if the hypothetical Pandaren starting area that may or may not be announced at Blizzcon will take this approach?  

Easy Raids And Player Conversion

Rohan at Blessing of Kings is looking vaguely prophetic.  On Thursday, he wrote about a split between what he calls "transient" players - those only willing to tackle content designed to be completed in a single session - and "extended" players - those willing to invest greater amounts of time over multiple sessions in traditional raid content.  He wrote:

The single biggest problem with the endgame of WoW is that it persists in believing that if the incentives are just right, Transient players will transform into Extended players, and everything will work out properly.

In a followup post on Monday, he suggests that having a lower difficulty raid setting with automated group finding is a compromise solution that could provide transient players with an endgame, while preserving the more traditional endgame.  Today, we learned that Blizzard has been hard at work implementing his suggestion, and that the looking for raid tool in patch 4.3 will indeed send players into a lower difficulty level. 

Dealing with Transience
To greatly abuse numbers, I'd suggest that transient players make up 80+% of the MMO market - that's the approximately 5 million NA/EU WoW subscribers versus the approximately 500,000 subscribers to the most successful MMO's that pre-dated WoW. Some portion of that increase may be the fabled Blizzard "quality"/"polish", the popularity of the IP from previous games, etc. However, I just don't think that these things account for an order of magnitude. Instead, I believe the additional numbers are transient players, who Blizzard chose to invite into a previously closed genre by allowing them to solo to the level cap.

The challenge ever since has been how to entertain transient players now that they are here, providing the majority of the revenue for the genre and voting down the extended players (including the EQ1 vets who now work as developers at places like Blizzard) on questions about whether it's appropriate for expansion storylines to culminate in raid zones that only elite players can complete. 

Some games, like LOTRO, have effectively punted - that game's core story is now soloable, with group content as an optional additional-fee add-on.  Others have struggled to find the resources to tack a solo game onto a model that was intended for something else.  Meanwhile, a few hold-outs, notably WoW, have tried to hold the line for the extended old-guard, selling everyone the same expansion with the same storyline, but reserving the ending for not merely regular raids but harder "heroic" raids, with heroic-only encounters like Sinestra and the final phase of the Firelands Ragnaros encounter. 

Continuing the trend?
Assuming that this does play out the way it sounds like it will, transient players will indeed get to see all of the zones in the game.  The real question I'm wondering about is "why".  If the answer was "to provide more content, without having to re-design raids for 5 players", this plan would make sense.  However, according to the interview summary, the one of the goals of the system is to teach players how to raid for future efforts in the "real" difficulty settings.  If so, I believe the effort is doomed to failure because it continues the mistake that Rohan pointed out - the belief that somehow players who are paying to play a game on their own schedules can be convinced to switch over to more structured raid schedules, if only they can be made to see the light. 

Nothing that Blizzard or anyone else has attempted since 2004 has succeeded at this, and I don't expect that exposing players to 24 strangers in WoW's notorious random dungeon pool will do the trick.  Meanwhile, if Blizzard intends to reserve the real ending of the raid storylines for players who do the traditional non-easy versions of the raid, I doubt that most transient players will be impressed. 

In principle, this whole thing should have limited impact on "real" raiders, who are supposedly raiding because they actually enjoy raiding.  If the plan succeeds, real raiders might even see more experienced recruits coming out of the raid finder.  That said, to the extent that some raiders are motivated by exclusivity, Blizzard may see some customers heading for the exits. Whether this number will be offset by increased retention among players who can now PUG all the raids remains to be seen.

What I'm Working On: Round-Up

I'll come back to EQ2 after the bonus exp weekend wraps up, so for the moment that leaves me with the games that I haven't done much with recently to round up my MMO update tour.

WoW is simply not a high priority for me at the moment.  I will, in principle, want to clear out all of the level 85 heroic dungeons sometime before the next expansion, and there are some new features, including cosmetic items, to be tried whenever 4.3 happens.  What I'm really not interested in is signing in on a daily basis to earn a few more tokens towards Firelands dailies that could someday award me gear that I'm not even going to use before the next gear reset.  At least in EQ2 (and soon Rift) I can earn AA exp that will stay with the character beyond the next patch if I do spend time on daily quests.

LOTRO has an expansion launching this month, and I have yet to make plans.  It's not entirely clear to me how the thing will work with the business model, which currently includes the level cap, physical access to zones, and the epic questline for all players regardless of payment.  If this is the case for Isengard, I don't see why I'd want to pay $30 for the "expansion pre-order" instead of $5-15 for the content I need a la carte.

(I'm not sure if the world of Middle Earth isn't slightly more atmospheric if I make a point of NOT owning all the generic quests so that the only quest available to me at a new camp is the Epic story, rather than having the wilderness campfire lit up like a Christmas tree with quest icons.  I still have a bit of Mirkwood content that I have yet to finish, along with epic storyline in Enedwaith and scaling skirmishes, so there is, in principle, content I can use to earn exp if I don't buy all of the new stuff.)   

My current plan here is to wait and see how much content I actually end up needing, rather than rushing to pre-order now and ending up with content that I don't bother to use.  DDO has basically fallen off my plate, leaving me with about $30 worth of unspent Turbine points and a fair number of quest packs that I paid to unlock but have yet to play because my characters are not high enough level.  Because it's a free to play game with no real time limits, it's possible that I will still come back one of these days and get good value for that money.  Even so, this situation is what I don't want to have happen in LOTRO - no matter how much of a "better deal" the pre-order is, the money is still wasted if I buy it before I plan to play it, and don't end up using it once I do so. 

Vacation News Roundup

I'm still on blog vacation for another week and a half, but I've noticed a few tidbits that I felt like commenting on anyway.  Comments remain moderated, though I expect to be able to approve them over the next few days.

• Disliking the fourth pillar
  Spinks' rundown of the SWTOR classes mentioned a detail that I hadn't considered.  Apparently, George Lucas is continuing to maintain that Jedi cannot get married without turning to the dark side.  This makes me less interested in the game - not because I really had my heart set on cyborz with my NPC's, but because the notorious forbidden love story from the second Star Wars prequel was not the one part of the Star Wars Universe that I've been dying to re-live in an MMO setting.  
  
  Specifics of this particular case aside, I see a potential issue with the "fourth pillar" approach here.  If you are going to put the story front and center, it becomes a bigger issue if players dislike the story you are trying to tell.  Moreover, I would imagine that Jedi who romance their NPC's are going to be the majority of players - the former because of the lore and the latter because that's what you do in Bioware games. If the gameplay impact of being a Republic-faction Jedi with Dark Side status turns out to be disadvantageous to game mechanics, Bioware will have some unhappy customers. 
  
  


• WoW 4.3 update
  This week, we're hearing details of WoW's patch 4.3.  The mega-patch will include the now industry-standard cosmetic gear option that Blizzard has been resisting for about five years now.  There's a new storage system that will save Blizzard disk space by having a vendor who will create a new copy of item number whatever upon request, rather than storing all the details of your existing item (e.g. enchant, crafted by, what bank slot it is located in).  There will be new five-mans, which was basically expected.
  
  The one thing that I find surprising is that the patch will feature the Deathwing raid, and therefore will presumably serve as the Cataclysm finale.  I had expected this to be bumped to next year to shorten the window between Deathwing and the expansion now believed to be Pandaria.  While it's not uncommon for the last raid of a WoW expansion to sit for 9-12 months, Cataclysm is already somewhat widely viewed as a failure and nothing from this list sounds especially game-changing.  Unless Blizzard can finally deliver a WoW expansion in 18 months instead of 23-24, 2012 may not be kind to the WoW subscription count. 
   


• Reinventing Warhammer
  Werit has the details of the free to play Warhammer spinoff. My view on this project echoes Tobold's.  Back in 2008, I genuinely enjoyed Warhammer's instanced "RVR" scenarios but generally found that the PVE game these battles were attached to did not compare favorably to the many other options out there.  On paper, ditching the PVE game allows Mythic to focus on balance, while opening up the door to more exotic races/classes/heroes/etc that might have been harder to fit into a holy trinity PVE game. 
  
  However, as Tobold suggests, this revamp almost certainly guarantees that I will never pay for the existing version of the game again.

Overall, it's been an interesting week.  We'll see if next week follows suit. 

Pondering Pandaria

MMO-Champion reports that "Mists of Pandaria" is "extremely likely" the next WoW expansion.  While some folks are unconvinced, I'm inclined to trust the MMO-Champion track record. 

Hindsight is always easier than foresight - my best guess would be nowhere near the mark - but this makes a lot of sense in hindsight.  Regardless of the success or failure of Cataclysm's world revamp, which peppered with a few new zones in previously blank areas of map, the more traditional model with a new continent makes sense as a follow-up.  If Pandaria does turn out to be located on a previously unknown South Seas island, it is a logical battleground for an invasion by Azshara and the Naga.  There are relatively few other combinations of location and antagonist that players have heard of (especially through the Vashj'ir storyline in Cataclysm) and that are not similar to past foes (The Burning Legion again, or yet another Dragon Aspect gone evil). 

There are a few obstacles Blizzard has to deal with, if this is the expansion.  Panda haters are going to hate, and Panda lovers aren't going to be happy unless the race is playable for both factions, as Rohan suggests, which would be a first.  That said, I see no niche for a Brewmaster class, even if Blizzard does want to take the PR hit for marketing drunken cartoon pandas in a game that kids play, which might mean no new class.  WoW expansions have always included either new races or a new class, and Blizzard had previously suggested that two new races every expansion would be tough due to art requirements.  One new, neutral race mitigates that concern by halving the art requirements, even if two panda factions require Alliance and Horde colors.

There's also the issue of China, which was rumored to have prompted the removal of the Pandaren as the Alliance race for the 2007 Burning Crusade expansion.  Six months ago, I would have guessed that Blizzard no longer cared about China due to the likelihood that the government would refuse to approve the next expansion no matter what its contents.  However, after a rocky period that saw WoW China shut down outright and the Wrath expansion delayed by nearly two years, Blizzard seems to have finally mended relations; Cataclysm reportedly hit China a mere seven months late.  I don't have a good answer for this question, other than that Blizzard apparently thinks they can do something involving Pandaren - perhaps the Chinese version of the expansion will have all the Pandas find-replaced with Worgen? 

In the end, my guess is that Pandas, much like EQ2 Beastlords, will arrive because people want to see them.  Yes, some people will argue that this is WoW jumping the shark, but others have been asking for the Pandaren at every Blizzcon since the first.   By the time you're talking about a seven year old MMO, your target audience really should be your current playerbase.  Very few players who have stuck with the game through Cataclysm are going to walk off because they think Pandaren are a joke, while players who have already made the decision to leave are free to mock the move as validating their departure.  Sounds like as good a choice as Blizzard could make under the circumstances. 

Early Firelands Daily Quest Impressions

I was out of town for July 4th, and didn't get much gaming in, but I did finally get around to starting off the new Firelands daily quest series that was added in patch 4.2. The initial phase in the campaign, which can be done in a single day, introduces the campaign by the druids of Hyjal against the minions of Ragnaros.  These quests are, like all of the Cataclysm content, well implemented, high production value, and were actually pleasantly a bit more difficult than your average Cataclysm fare, to the point where my partially-dungeon-geared mage was occasionally using cooldowns to survive. 

After completing the introduction - and unlocking a vendor with an epic ilvl 365 neck for a trivial amount of gold - players begin a series of six phases of daily quest token grinding.  Blizzard definitely spent an above average amount of effort on this project - each phase adds a new set of dailies, and each set offers a randomized selection from a pool to ensure that players don't get bored - it also appears that recurring NPC's will turn up during the festivities. 


Firelands Outlook
Unlike the Argent Tournament of the Wrath era, there is a definitive beginning, middle, and end of the event.  Quest tokens are not used to actually purchase the rewards, so players are not obligated to return once they've completed the quests.  (It does appear that the quests stick around, for those who want to revisit them for gold or rep.)  That said, one thing that I'm kind of on the fence about is that the number of quests available ramps up during the successive phases, as the new phase events are added to the previous pool. 

It's theoretically possible to finish the series in a single month, but that means not a lot to do in the initial phases and probably more than I want to do in a single day as more phases unlock.  The good news is that players can be increasingly choosy about the quests they don't like as the campaign advances, at the cost of making this a several month-long project.

Personally, daily quests in WoW tend to be something that I do while waiting for the dungeon queue to pop.  At that rate, it will take forever to complete the campaign, and I will have long since gotten similar or better gear from the dungeon vendors.  I will probably try to work on the thing just so I can see the content, but it remains to be seen whether my patience holds out as it becomes less and less meaningful to actually finish.