Monday, March 16, 2009

Casual versus Hardcore

So I'm thinking Mondays for posting. Do Mondays sound good to everyone? I would pick Tuesdays, but Tuesdays I work during the day and raid at night. I'm not sure what would be a much higher traffic than Tuesday mornings (due to maintenance), so Monday evenings should make sense. I'll change the poll to reflect this question once the current poll ends. =)

(Of course, now I'm sure you're asking why this is being posted Tuesday morning - I started writing yesterday, but was abruptly called into work. Nobody's here yet, so I'm gonna try to sneak this out before the boss gets here.)

So, the topic today is casuals versus hardcore - basically, was it a good idea for Blizzard to have "dumbed down" content a bit to make it more accessible?

My short answer is yes. While I consider myself a hardcore, with a regular raiding schedule and a 100% raid attendance (barring personal disasters), I couldn't be happier that they recycled Naxx or made the content pretty easy to jump back into after a 10 level grind.

I will say I was disappointed with the nerfing of all the level 70 raid instances in some ways. Part of me wanted to run my head repeatedly into the Illidari Council until we got it, part of me wanted to tear my hair out when we finally got into Sunwell and couldn't get past Mu'ru, the guild breaker. It would have made me a better player had I been able to succeed past those things without the nerf. It took content that was challenging and fun and made it completely trivial. Granted, I'm also the kind of person who was against the attunements for instances being taken out - I've personally never downed Vashj or Kael because my previous guild was filled with people who did not know how to follow direction, and we skipped both those fights and immediately moved onto Hyjal and Black Temple... where we started skipping Archimonde.

It felt so very wrong to move onto the next tier of content without having completed the previous tier. That's the only part of progression that's been taken out that I really disagree with. You shouldn't move on to T8 content until you've finished T7 content. I really don't understand what's wrong with that idea. In my opinion, it's kind of like saying you should finish a 101 class before you move on to the 102 class.

I don't mind the idea of having some things be a little more accessible. Naxx is a fun raid and I'm glad a lot of people get to see it. I was one of the many that never got to see the 40-man iteration (truthfully, I never saw any of the level 60 raids at 60 - Eseten remains the only character I have ever managed to get to max level). So I'm glad that they took something they had put so much effort and work into and allowed it to be seen by a much larger population.

I can still stand out above the casuals with hard modes (whoot, go go Twilight Vanquisher - now onto Of the Nightfall!) and I think that's pretty cool. I think that's a good direction to take the game in - let the casuals have their fun to a certain extent, and let the hardcores still have something to work toward.

I will admit, however, that there is still that overall disappointment. I haven't seen anything in a while that could be considered "progression." It's been many, many months since I could say that. Working towards achievements is alright... but it's still the same boss with (in every case but 2/3 drake Sarth) the same rewards. All I get is a few achievement points that sit there and don't really do anything. I suppose they give me bragging rights, which is not all that different from saying "HAH, I've downed every boss in every instance, EAT THAT."

I guess I'm still a little torn on the situation. I suppose my argument is more that it makes sense why Blizzard did what they did. Is it really taking away from my fun, though? Does it hurt me directly that others are allowed to experience the same things? It would be a bit selfish to say yes to that.

But then, we're all a little selfish sometimes.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Forum Trolling 101

So, some things have been changed around a bit.
  • New poll, please be sure to participate (since it seems not a lot of people have voted yet, I'll leave it up another week).
  • You'll notice, if you don't have some sort of ad-blocker, that there are ads now. As a starving writer, I figured it couldn't hurt. If they're too much of a nuisance, let me know and they'll be removed. (To be honest, since I have ad-blockers, I can't even see them myself.) Since I can't actually see my own ads, let me know if there are any offensive or questionable ads popping up, and I'll get them blacklisted off. I don't really want to be advertising for gold-selling or anything like that. =X
  • New name! Since I had to change my name when I moved to Gurubashi, Eseten has become my new online moniker. I will miss my old nickname of Pretty, but life in and out of the World of Warcraft goes on... I am now Eseten.
That should about cover it. Onto today's topic: A quick lesson in Forum Trolling.

Anyone who frequents the Official World of Warcraft General Forum probably knows me to some extent by now. I've gained somewhat of a reputation as a regular, though more often late at night than during the day. I'm probably not as recognizeable as the better-knowns, like Zmue, Rizz, or Stabby, but I like to think I'm somewhat infamous.

There's a lot of different kinds of trolls out there. There's friendly ones, outright rude ones, and then the ones who have multiple accounts due to frequent vacations. This is all a bit of a generalization, but that's more or less the gist of it.

Friendly trolls, like myself, tend not so much to be flamers and tend more towards the humorous or sarcastic posts. My toon, Eseten, has sort of developed his own personality as an insatiable flirt with a particular taste for female night elf druids. It was just sort of a random direction I took it in, and now it's become kind of part of my posting requirement: if there's a female night elf druid in the thread, I must let her know how sexy she is. Female blood elves of any kind are also acceptable.

Most friendly trolls have some kind of quirk like this. Waffletime likes her tauren, Sunila likes her male blood elves (we get along, if you couldn't tell), and Korozen likes... uhh... high heels. We specialize in derailing badly formed threads late at night, and running rampant with non-sensical roleplay. This infuriates some posters, and we revel in it. Since we usually post later in the evenings, we often don't get policed for our trollings. Slap on the hand at worst, or the deletion of a thread we didn't really care much about in the first place.

Rude trolls are the flamers. These are the people who enter threads for the sole purpose of telling you how much of a noob you are or how horrible your gear/arena rating/achievement points are. My theory is that most of them are either 20-somethings with no life or your typical 12 year old who's obsessed with his e-peen.

Friendly trolls often enjoy disguising themselves as rude trolls, but usually in the way of parody. In particular, I tend to become more of an insulting person whenever Zarhym, one of the Community Managers, posts. Ever since he altered my signature one evening, I have declared war on him. He's winning right now, but I'm still trying to master the art of being a bastard without getting myself banned. I never mean most of the things I say, it's more akin to picking on friends of yours. Granted, anonymous friends of yours, but friends nonetheless.

Vacationers are the worst of the bunch. They're the ones that do it for no other reason than shock value, and often get banned frequently for that purpose. This behavior confuses me. If you're doing it for attention and you get yourself banned in the process, then haven't you just defeated the purpose?

Some of the worst examples I've seen are the ones that simply don't give up after the first few bannings - there was a thread about a week ago where some kid challenged Eyonix to a fight at Blizzcon. What's funny was that he was trolled harder by the Community Managers than they were by him. 26 pages of hilarity later, the dumbass had three banned accounts. I actually suspect that the person who started another thread to try to continue it wasn't actually the OP, but someone who wanted to ride on the tail end of his glory. Needless to say, it failed miserably.

Admittedly, most forum trolls have to be full of themselves or desire attention to one level or another. Otherwise, why would we do it? I'm definitely one to admit when I'm being an attention whore (read: always), but at least I'm honest about it. I have my own quirks I've developed at this point that people on the forums know me for - if I were to abandon any of them, it wouldn't really be the same. If I didn't enter an Eyonix thread to hit on him, people ask why? If I don't sling a little mud Zarhym's way, people wonder if something's wrong with me. If I don't fetch Nethaera her coffee, she gets grumpy. And we can't have that, now can we?

The long and short of it is that the term "Forum Troll" means multiple things, especially in particular on the official WoW forums. At this point, it really just means a forum regular rather than an abrasive individual looking to cause trouble.

Though, I assure you, no matter how nice we may seem, trouble often follows behind. What can I say? You know I'm a stinker. ;)

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Welcome Back: A Resurgence

Hi-ho ev-er-ee-bo-dy!

This little project of mine died a while ago, and I just wanted to post now that I really have no intention of letting it stay dead. I will get a regular schedule again, because if nothing else, this place is a wonderful exercise for me to practice good, non-trolling posting. =P

You will notice in the next couple of weeks that I will be revamping the layout. I want to make it a little more personal, so those of you who don't actually know me in-game will understand a bit more about the person spouting random nonsense. ;)

I haven't decided on the schedule yet. It will likely be morning posting, at least once a week if not twice a week. I have to learn to keep a regular schedule, and training myself to do it through something I don't *have* to do seems best.

I've been wanting to use the new year as a new step in the right direction. If you're wondering why I'm not doing this six weeks earlier, it's because I haven't had reliable internet in the last six weeks, and for four of that, didn't even have a home to call my own. Now that I've gotten all that in order, I have to opportunity to get back to doing the things I'd like to, and I just wanted people to know that this is one of them.

Thank you for anyone who has had the patience to stick around, and a hearty welcome to anyone new in the next few weeks!

-Eseten, formerly known as Prettyboi

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Happy Patch Day!

So it's been a month. Yeah.

Last Poll: Death Knights. Yay or Nay?
Yay! (44%)
Nay! (22%)
Meh, don't care. (33%)

I wasn't terribly fond of DK's either, and I'm still not enthused about them, but I will say they have undeniably the coolest starting area in the history of EVER.

**Edit**
There will be a new poll up when I can get it to work. For some reason, Blogger won't let me change my layout right now. Very weird.

**Edit^2**
So Blogspot ate some of my blog and I had no idea. Fixed.

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So as a side note, I was at Blizzcon this past weekend. If you saw the crazy girl with the "I <3 Eyonix" sign, well, that was me. I'll have a more detailed update on Blizzcon probably tomorrow. But for today, I'd like to talk about the new patch.

So while I'm relatively upset that I was not specced Retribution for raiding for patch day (and, indeed, have been Protection for a few weeks now due to our regular Prot Pally being MIA), it was nice that tanking was actually fun again. Especially when I'm running around pulling threat off the T6 warrior. There's something incredibly satisfying about that. I'm a lot more excited, however, to get a chance to raid as Retribution with all the new changes. I greatly wish I could do so tomorrow, but with our guild looking at Illidan and me being one of the few with tank gear AND FR gear... well, I'm not really going to get the chance.

A guildmate has already leveled his Inscription up to about 300 (or at least close to that before I logged off), and my own level 15 Rogue alt already has 90-some Inscription herself. I'm liking the flow of the new profession. Even as you level up through it, old herbs and low level things are still useful to you. I think that's kinda cool.

After our raid this evening, a group of us decided to pay good old Onyxia a visit, so those of us who never raided pre-TBC could get the achievement. It was fun tanking her - I'd personally never seen the encounter (since I never hit 60 before TBC), so it was really cool. The 20g reward just for killing her was nice too.

Too bad the Pally T2 didn't drop. I would've liked to say I had some of it. =P Though I'm sure we'll go and kill her for loot weekly now... It takes all of ten minutes. Tomorrow, we plan on getting the Leeeeeeeroooooy! Achievement. Should be fun. =D

Admittedly, I was very apprehensive about how we'd operate tonight with the new patch. Everyone was scrambling at raid time to put together their talents, figure out their new rotations, and generally organize themselves. I thought the Holy Paladins would trip up on their healing since they operate so differently now. I found myself giving advice on how to use Beacon of Light, simply due to the fact I've been more informed of the patch notes and changes than my guildies have been (I never realized how much more dedicated a fan I am to this game than the typical player is). It was kind of nice being a go-to person for information tonight; possibly because it's all too often that I'm just "that girl who plays" and not really considered an informed or important figure. Not being an officer in the new guild has a lot to do with that, though I suppose if our usual pally tank keeps being MIA, I may find myself upgraded sooner rather than later.

While I'm sad we didn't down Council legitimately (I.E. before the 30% nerf and the ridiculous DPS people are putting out now), it was rather awe-inspiring to just plow through BT while barely batting an eye. It took us 49 seconds to down Shade of Akama - I only had two adds on me in the center by the time they moved in on him. I think we only got three people killed on Gorefiend, simply from them getting the debuff (and the last guy's timer was nowhere near up by the time Gorefiend hit the ground).

This patch and the upcoming expansion are amazing leaps and bounds for the game, especially for Paladins. If you've lost interest in your class, Patch 3.0 brings a ton of new stuff to the table that makes you excited about the game again. And really, as a devoted fan, I could hardly ask for more.

Friday, September 12, 2008

4 Types of Beta Testers

Last Poll Results:
What role do you want to play in Wrath?
DPS - 50%
Tank - 20%
Healer - 10%
Haven't Decided - 20%

More people seem to want to be DPSers in Wrath. This doesn't particularly surprise me, since the ratio of DPS to other types of playstyles is roughly 4-1. >> I should write about that sometime...

This was posted over at the IGN boards. Ironically, I'm trying to win a beta key with it. >>

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I think I'll take the opportunity to talk about beta hostility. There seems to generally be four kinds of people involved with the beta: Those who are part of it and do good work reporting bugs, those who are part of it if only for bragging rights, those who are not part of it and instead just glue themselves to MMO-Champion (or another similar site), and those who are not part of it and whine about the fact they are not part of it. There's probably people who don't care as well, but that means they're not really involved with the Beta in any way.

First off, let me start with the positive note: I love you people who are part of the beta and enjoy it, as well as do good work in making the game better. It means I will have fewer frustrations when I finally get to experience the final content. It means that maybe Paladins won't be a horrible class and even more horrible DPS option for the third round in a row. For that, I thank and salute you. You guys are awesome.

To the people who are part of the beta for bragging rights only - while I wish someone else had your beta key, you are still playing the beta and still doing things with it and contributing, whether you like it or not. So I laugh at you - HAH, YOU'RE HELPING! YOU CAN'T NOT HELP UNLESS YOU STOP BETA-ING! Even if you personally are not reporting bugs, by playing the beta, you're still providing information for Blizzard to parse, examples for others in beta to follow or not follow based on your actions, and spreading the word about how good or bad something is because in your need to show off, you have to have content to talk about. So, in a very backhanded kind of way, I thank you too.

To the people who are part of beta and browse forums and theorycraft and otherwise pretend we were in the beta without actually being a part of it (yes, I'm part of this group) - you guys are great too. We are the bridge between the privileged beta players and the regular live players. We can compare and contrast what works and doesn't work on live to what seems to work and not work in beta. We are the ones who keep playing what's out now so that there's still something to compare the new with. While not directly involved with the beta, we are still helping in a sort of ambiguous kind of way. So thanks to you too - keep up all the interesting topics and writing. It's how I keep myself from being bored at work. ;)

Finally, to those of you who did not receive a beta invite and desire to have the world know you didn't - seriously, there's lots of other productive stuff you could be doing. You could be enjoying things in live you may have not yet - level an alt, try a different spec, try to progress where you haven't, or deck yourself out in Season 4. Done all that? Then follow suit of the 3rd type of person I mentioned earlier. Keep your reading up on the stuff that's coming out and form constructive discussions on what's going on in Beta, and use your extensive knowledge of the things you already know to help those discussions remain useful to devs and other players alike. The point is, take that energy you have from quintessentially whining and apply it positively. You'll make the game you want to play so badly so much better by doing that - even if you don't directly get to play the beta yourself.

I understand the frustration in not getting a beta key - I'm in the same boat, after all. =) But I still do what I can to help the community, and I still raid on live (even transferring servers to a more active one in my time zone to do so) because I have a love of the game. I've always believed that in anything, be it a hobby or a job, the people who make the most progress in making that hobby or job better are the ones who are most passionate about it. It's about channeling your passion into something positive and constructive. If it means a better game, I'm more than happy to keep it up.