Jerry Snook, host of DDOcast and a real legend in the DDO community, will be leaving his show after 3.5 years and 191 episodes to go actually work on the DDO community team at Turbine. He's certainly done enough for the community to earn a slot on the team; the podcast has played a big part in keeping me informed and involved in the game while I work on so many other projects. Fortunately, the show will go on in the hands of two capable DDOcast regulars, but it won't be quite the same without Jerry.
As part of his final episode, Jerry took some time to offer up some tips from a podcasting veteran to anyone who is looking to start or improve a podcast. Though some of the tips are specific to the audio format, I'd actually endorse the discussion (starts at about the two hour mark of the farewell show) for new bloggers as well. Concepts like establishing a track record, paying attention to the tone and length of your posts, and making sure that your content is easy to find are equally applicable to the written word. If Turbine is looking to launch an official podcast in the near future, they would be well advised to listen to the new guy.
Balancing Polish And Ambition In Cataclysm
Chris at Game By Night argues that the state of WoW's Patch 4.0 is so bad that Blizzard has forfeited its claim to superior quality and polish. Personally, I'm not at all convinced that the bug and balance situation is significantly worse than we've seen in the past - take the time when patch 3.0.8 forced Blizzard to disable Wintergrasp to keep it from killing the servers for just one example.
(Or the highly unreliable server stability for game's first 3-6 months, when, incidentally, there was no PVP system and extremely limited and buggy raid options.)
That aside, I'm more interested in addressing the second half of Chris' argument.
Is the lore revamp all or nothing?
We've known since Cataclysm's announcement that the old world revamp was only slated to cover levels 1-60. Zones like Azshara and Felwood are much worse off than anything you'll find in Outland because Blizzard had not planned to offer quests all the way to the cap to begin with, and didn't have time to do more than a cursory effort on the upper mid-levels before the game's initial launch. (After launch, they had level-capped characters to worry about, and could afford only token efforts on the leveling game.)
The problem is that this revamp is not just updating the local quests to meet modern design standards (e.g. not repeatedly sending players back and forth across multiple zones). The timeline of the entire world is actually advancing past the fall of the Lich King, which means that these old expansions are literally years in the world's past.
Blizzard made a comment at Blizzcon that they simply did not have time to redo the first two expansions, and Chris jumps on it, accusing them of not finishing the job of updating the lore so that the game can release in time for the holidays.
More Ambition, Mo' Problems?
WoW is currently two years out from its last expansion and an entire year out from its last significant new content. The looming expansion has posed a morale problem for many guilds for as much as six months now, and there's a very real argument to be made that even an unfinished expansion would be better than none at the moment. More importantly, the only reason why it's taking so long is because Cataclysm is actually a very ambitious expansion.
Wrath of the Lich King launched with about 1,000 new quests. Cataclysm is launching with a whopping 3,500. Cataclysm will actually offer more new zones per level than Wrath did (five zones for five levels, versus eight zones for ten levels - I don't count Crystalsong because there are like two quests in the entire "zone") even while gutting and overhauling literally thousands of old world zones and quests (and adding two races, with new zones of their own). The same type of math works on dungeons - there will be fewer completely new dungeons, butt more total dungeon work as Blizzard revamps a dozen old world leveling dungeons.
It's simply not reasonable to expect Blizzard to take all of that and then also expect them to go through and redo the entire contents of the game's first two expansions. If the rules had been that Blizzard must revamp the entire game up to the present day lore or not touch any of it, an expansion like Cataclysm simply would not have been possible.
If "when it's ready" for Cataclysm does indeed end up being a bit less polished than 1.0/2.0/3.0 (again, all of which had their growing pains), that's the cost of having Blizzard actually try something difficult and ambitious instead of churning out another cookie cutter 10-level expansion. Time will tell, but it looks to me like the results will be well worth the price.
(Or the highly unreliable server stability for game's first 3-6 months, when, incidentally, there was no PVP system and extremely limited and buggy raid options.)
That aside, I'm more interested in addressing the second half of Chris' argument.
Is the lore revamp all or nothing?
We've known since Cataclysm's announcement that the old world revamp was only slated to cover levels 1-60. Zones like Azshara and Felwood are much worse off than anything you'll find in Outland because Blizzard had not planned to offer quests all the way to the cap to begin with, and didn't have time to do more than a cursory effort on the upper mid-levels before the game's initial launch. (After launch, they had level-capped characters to worry about, and could afford only token efforts on the leveling game.)
The problem is that this revamp is not just updating the local quests to meet modern design standards (e.g. not repeatedly sending players back and forth across multiple zones). The timeline of the entire world is actually advancing past the fall of the Lich King, which means that these old expansions are literally years in the world's past.
Blizzard made a comment at Blizzcon that they simply did not have time to redo the first two expansions, and Chris jumps on it, accusing them of not finishing the job of updating the lore so that the game can release in time for the holidays.
More Ambition, Mo' Problems?
WoW is currently two years out from its last expansion and an entire year out from its last significant new content. The looming expansion has posed a morale problem for many guilds for as much as six months now, and there's a very real argument to be made that even an unfinished expansion would be better than none at the moment. More importantly, the only reason why it's taking so long is because Cataclysm is actually a very ambitious expansion.
Wrath of the Lich King launched with about 1,000 new quests. Cataclysm is launching with a whopping 3,500. Cataclysm will actually offer more new zones per level than Wrath did (five zones for five levels, versus eight zones for ten levels - I don't count Crystalsong because there are like two quests in the entire "zone") even while gutting and overhauling literally thousands of old world zones and quests (and adding two races, with new zones of their own). The same type of math works on dungeons - there will be fewer completely new dungeons, butt more total dungeon work as Blizzard revamps a dozen old world leveling dungeons.
It's simply not reasonable to expect Blizzard to take all of that and then also expect them to go through and redo the entire contents of the game's first two expansions. If the rules had been that Blizzard must revamp the entire game up to the present day lore or not touch any of it, an expansion like Cataclysm simply would not have been possible.
If "when it's ready" for Cataclysm does indeed end up being a bit less polished than 1.0/2.0/3.0 (again, all of which had their growing pains), that's the cost of having Blizzard actually try something difficult and ambitious instead of churning out another cookie cutter 10-level expansion. Time will tell, but it looks to me like the results will be well worth the price.
Hallow's End Haul
I had no intention of ever repeating the holiday achievement grind again after the pain of going through it the first year, but the Tauren ended up with all of the hard achievements by the time he was done beating the horseman into submission. At that point, it was just a question of doing the world tour for candy (I'd never even set foot in the zone of Shadowmoon Valley before) and looking for people to wand-zap me in Dalaran for the second leg of the dreaded meta achievement.
As long as I'm rambling about my characters, it seems like a good time to update the pre-cataclysm bucket list. Time permitting, the things I'm working on are:
- Finishing exalted with the Frostborn Dwarves on the mage (probably 3-4 random 5-man runs to add another +1 to my rep counter, will be harder to complete once I'm no longer 80)
- Dungeon runs on the warrior for access to heirloom rep-based head and shoulder enchants. Cataclysm will probably add updated ones, but it could be a while before I get them. The old ones will be better than nothing in the mean time. Also, this will provide the occasion to try and beat each Wrath-era heroic once.
- Soloing old level 70 heroics on the mage. I've beaten half of them so far, and I think the Black Morass is beyond my current level of dedication. We'll see how many I get to.
Finally, there is the Thanksgiving event that I pointedly skipped last year due to holiday burnout. I guess there's no harm in taking a look next month to see how that goes. The next stage of the Cataclysm launch event will also kick off sometime around then. That said, none of this is completely irreplaceable, and I won't cry if I ultimately fail to complete most or all of it. There's something to be said for the nostalgia tour, but there are plenty of other things to do while I wait for the End of the World (of Warcraft).
Champions' Take On "Free To Play"
Champions announced their take on "free to play", complete with a benefit matrix similar to what we've seen for other games that made this jump.
Much of the table is pretty standard. Non-subscribers face limits on character slots, bags, auctions, and costume slots, and will have to pay extra for access to "adventure packs". The latter are the patches that Cryptic previously threatened to charge subscribers for. Presumably that threat is now off the table now that it's an explicit benefit of the subscription, which is theoretically a win for subscribers (especially life-timers, as freedom from the sub is worth a lot less if they start charging by the month for content).
The big and somewhat unique change is that non-subscribers will be forced to use a pre-generated "archetype" build instead of being allowed to customize their powersets as they see fit.
Archetype Impact
For a very new player, having the option to go with a pre-made build is probably a welcome option. In the long run, though, being able to pick your own powerset is one of the game's major features. More concerning, these pre-generated archetypes will have to be optimized for something. Presumably, that something will be leveling (possibly solo leveling) to ensure that new players stick around long enough to pay, which could leave players regretting their decision when they reach endgame.
Also, lapsed subscribers will need to somehow revert their existing customized characters (from before or after F2P) into archetype templates to continue playing them, which sort of defeats the purpose of not charging for server access - you can't sell microtransactions to people who aren't playing because they would have to permanently gimp their character in order to do so. Perhaps Cryptic will implement a system where characters will be allowed to swap between two builds as their subscription status permits, but that does not sound like the current plan.
In the end, as readers of my EQ2X commentary are well aware, I'm not fond of so-called "free to play" models which come with major restrictions that can only be lifted by subscribing. Time will tell, but this sounds suspiciously like the same situation. I suppose that the shift to free to play makes it slightly more likely that I will someday try the game. Unfortunately for Cryptic, the archetype restrictions probably mean that I will do so as a mostly non-paying tourist.
P.S. Star Trek Online, by comparison, will almost certainly make its way onto my playlist when it eventually follows in CO's F2P footsteps. If Cryptic has a sense of humor, they set it so that STO's free player archetypes are red-shirted ensigns. :)
Much of the table is pretty standard. Non-subscribers face limits on character slots, bags, auctions, and costume slots, and will have to pay extra for access to "adventure packs". The latter are the patches that Cryptic previously threatened to charge subscribers for. Presumably that threat is now off the table now that it's an explicit benefit of the subscription, which is theoretically a win for subscribers (especially life-timers, as freedom from the sub is worth a lot less if they start charging by the month for content).
The big and somewhat unique change is that non-subscribers will be forced to use a pre-generated "archetype" build instead of being allowed to customize their powersets as they see fit.
Archetype Impact
For a very new player, having the option to go with a pre-made build is probably a welcome option. In the long run, though, being able to pick your own powerset is one of the game's major features. More concerning, these pre-generated archetypes will have to be optimized for something. Presumably, that something will be leveling (possibly solo leveling) to ensure that new players stick around long enough to pay, which could leave players regretting their decision when they reach endgame.
Also, lapsed subscribers will need to somehow revert their existing customized characters (from before or after F2P) into archetype templates to continue playing them, which sort of defeats the purpose of not charging for server access - you can't sell microtransactions to people who aren't playing because they would have to permanently gimp their character in order to do so. Perhaps Cryptic will implement a system where characters will be allowed to swap between two builds as their subscription status permits, but that does not sound like the current plan.
In the end, as readers of my EQ2X commentary are well aware, I'm not fond of so-called "free to play" models which come with major restrictions that can only be lifted by subscribing. Time will tell, but this sounds suspiciously like the same situation. I suppose that the shift to free to play makes it slightly more likely that I will someday try the game. Unfortunately for Cryptic, the archetype restrictions probably mean that I will do so as a mostly non-paying tourist.
P.S. Star Trek Online, by comparison, will almost certainly make its way onto my playlist when it eventually follows in CO's F2P footsteps. If Cryptic has a sense of humor, they set it so that STO's free player archetypes are red-shirted ensigns. :)
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