Whose line?

A couple of weeks ago a WoW player created an addon to inject a little pizzazz into quest giver voiceovers. You can read more about it here and here, but the basic story is this:

The player created an addon that substituted player-created voiceovers for standard Blizz voice-acted quests. The community was invited to upload their own voice renderings of quest dialogs, and these could be added to the repertoire in the addon. I did not use the addon, nor did I submit any voiceovers, so I cannot speak with any authority about the details of how it worked in practice. But the bottom line was, this was an attempt to inject some player whimsy into the game.

Predictably, Blizz shut the project down pretty fast. Here is the Blue post explanation, courtesy of MMO-C:

Hello TioMiklas,

I’m Josh Allen, from the World of Warcraft Community Team. We came across your Voice Acted Quests project, and I have to say, the work you’ve put into it is very impressive!

Unfortunately, I’ve been told that this project infringes on our intellectual copyrights in a way that we can’t allow. You may recall a similar situation with an addon called “Warcraft Tales” a few months ago. While your project is slightly different, it’s still considered a re-performance of our established works.

Because of that, we have to ask you to stop production and distribution of the Voice Acted Quests project. Rather than going straight to delivering a legal notice, they’ve asked me to contact you directly to deliver the news and answer any questions you may have. Like I said, it’s a very impressive project and we recognize the amount of work you’ve put into it, it’s just not the sort of thing we can allow to be created using our copyright.

Sorry for the bad news.

Hey again, sorry for the delay in getting back. I managed to sync up with the higher-ups here again with your questions.

The issue isn’t about any potential monetary gains. The issue is simply that Blizzard doesn’t want third parties to create in-game story content for WoW, and creating a vocal performance for existing lines falls inside that. No one here thinks you’re trying to be malicious – I’m being completely honest when I say we found your work impressive!

That’s about the extent of what I can comment on myself. Anything further would need to come from our legal team.

I am completely with Blizz on this one. The addon does seem to me to have been an infringement on their copyrighted intellectual property. I suspect they were more or less amazed to find out such a project could be created using their approved API. I think there was some back and forth between the author and Blizz about the author making money off the project, etc., but I believe Blizz when they say the main issue was copyright infringement. And it appears that they handled the whole thing with understanding and finesse — they simply told the author to cease and desist, they did not bring any legal proceedings against him, did not ban him for life.

Having said that I support Blizz in this, I can’t fault the addon author for giving it a try. Perhaps I am being naive (it would not be the first time), but it strikes me that his project was exactly what he said it was: a chance to inject some community fun into the game. Maybe he was trying to make a few bucks off it, maybe not, but it doesn’t feel like he was deliberately trying to infringe on Blizz’s copyrighted material. He saw that the addon interface made the project possible, and he went for it.

Couple of thoughts on this. First, it is clearly a gray area that Blizz did not anticipate. I suppose that is one of the reasons they have an army of lawyers on staff. But when you think about it, the project was really only a tiny step over the line that represents Blizz’s intellectual property. For example, anyone engaging in RP is essentially adding to Blizz’s copyrighted story line. Same with some of the fan fiction.  And addons like DBM and Bigwigs inject additional voice drama/warnings into the game. The difference, of course, and the part that put this particular project over the line, is that none of the examples I cited actually alter existing game art or story. But the Voice Acted Quest project did.

The other thing that strikes me about this affair is that it shows how engaged in the game some of the community remains, and how attracted they are to enhancing whatever escapist fantasy the game represents to them. This desire is not something Blizz should treat lightly. We have seen it manifested time and time again. It is the foundation, I think, for such things as:

• The desire for player housing
• Tailored music (the WoD jukebox)
• Individual interpretation of “class/spec fantasy”, and how Blizz implements it
• The push for classic/vanilla servers
• Much of the dissatisfaction with WoD’s “time wrinkle” story
• The not-yet-dormant question of flying

All these examples, in one way or another, have their roots in how each player perceives the fantasy of the game. Of course, it is not possible for WoW to be all things to all players, nor is it possible to allow every player to configure major aspects of the game as they wish. Each small player option has the potential to bring the game to a halt by virtue of the cascading complexity of permutations it introduces. I get that, and I can see why Blizz is often reluctant — if not downright mule-headed — about allowing more player options. Still, I wonder if they truly understand the almost-primal desire many players have to make the game their own, to put their personal stamp on some part of it. That is a powerful force, and Blizz would do well to heed it whenever possible.

So yeah, Blizz was right to put a stop to the Voice Acted Quests addon. And from a personal standpoint, I am not big on listening to any kind of long drawn out NPC speeches no matter whose voice it is. But you gotta admit, it was kind of a cool idea.

Through the glass darkly

As I have for the past couple of weeks, I spent most of my game time this weekend continuing to chug away at leveling my Void Elf arcane mage. I thought maybe as I got more into the leveling mindset, I might come to appreciate the finer points of Blizz’s throwback leveling mechanics.

Nope. I find it needlessly tedious and stupidly boring. Blizz has changed or varied some of the quest lines, it is true, so those are of very mild interest when I encounter them, but I am finding a lot of quest lines designed to force you to spend inordinate amounts of time simply shuttling back and forth:

• Get a quest.
• Go far away and do the quest.
• Go back to turn it in.
• Get newly available quest from same quest giver.
• Repeat.
• Repeat.
• Repeat.
• zzzzzzzzzzzz…….. hmmm, what did I do with my toenail clipper?

I would have abandoned this whole project days ago if it were not for the fact I have all the Pathfinder achieves and thus can at least fly rather than gallop about. It seems clear that the “new” leveling protocol is all about stretching out the process as much as possible. Blizz can bray all they want about “restoring the experience”, but trust me, there is nothing interesting about commuting back and forth along the same path multiple times just to turn in and get new quests. (I am actually waiting for the change that will prevent us from skipping cutscenes, it seems almost inevitable it will happen. 🤨) Still, I suppose I am helping to contribute to Ion’s annual bonus by cranking out some MAU numbers for him, so at least that’s something.

Anyway, this post is not a rant about the ridiculous leveling changes (that will come later). It is about looking back and seeing expansions with the benefit of perspective.

I started playing WoW sometime around the very tail end of Burning Crusade. (I think I must have been about level 50 or 60 on my then-main hunter when Wrath of the Lich King went live.) One of the positive things about leveling my Void Elf is that it has given me a kind of retrospective on my history in the game. As I have gone through zones from each expansion, I am reminded of my first time through them years ago, and it is interesting that the things I see about them are not necessarily the things I would come up with if asked to list the highlights (or lowlights) of each expansion.

For example, if asked about Wrath, I think I would have remembered only two things. One, it was where I began my years-long search for Skoll and Arcturis. And two, it was where I finally found a guild I fit with and began regularly running instances and raids. That, and the Amberseed poop quest in Grizzly Hills.

What I would not have remembered, but which came back to me like a load of fresh Amberseed material falling on my head, was how much I detested nearly every quest in Zul’drak. Especially the seemingly-endless quest line where you put on that Ensorceled Choker disguise (you know, the one that keeps falling off exactly when you are surrounded by mobs that will kill a squishy mage in an instant) and run around playing with the Scourge. I hated it the first time I did it, and I hated it this time, too. If I had remembered how awful it was I would not have selected that zone to level in this time, but I only remembered about halfway through. I gritted my teeth and did most of it, but finally abandoned it prior to completion. It was just too long and annoying.

The main things I remember about Cataclysm are the zones — I hated the undersea one and loved Uldum. I spent hours in Uldum every week — even after leveling — gathering herbs and ore, and fishing. It was some of the most laid back, relaxing time I have ever spent in the game. I was having quite a bit of stress in my own life at the time, and putting on some music and flying my gathering routes was exactly what I needed to decompress.

I skipped all of the Cata zones leveling my Void Elf, opting instead for staying in Northrend until level 80, then going directly to Pandaria. I considered moving to Uldum, but I think I was loathe to overwrite what I want to keep as a sort of hazy pleasant memory.

The surprise revelation I got as I was leveling through Pandaria and now Draenor is this: I love the idea of a personal homestead in the game. When I got to Valley of the Four Winds, I couldn’t wait to get my cozy little Sunsong Ranch home. It was stupid, as I did not need to do any of the Tiller stuff for leveling purposes, but it was weirdly important to me to get a little place of my own.

Similarly, when I got to Draenor, I made sure to do the quest line to set up my Level 2 garrison. I did this mainly to be able to get the vendor for the XP potions, but I was astounded at the happiness that ran over me when I first walked into the gates of my Level 2 garrison. Yeah, I complained as bitterly as everyone else during WoD about the garrison burden, and if asked, I would have never listed garrisons as a plus for WoD. But there is no denying how good it felt to see this familiar scene of safety and sanctuary and know it was my own place. If I do anything with my Void Elf once she is leveled to 110, it will probably be to go back to Draenor and build up my garrison.

I am certain I will never have the same “coming home” feeling about class halls once Legion is finally history. I still do not understand why Blizz is so adamant about any form of player housing. They came so close with garrisons, but in typical fashion completely ruined the experience by ramming them down our throats. The unfortunate thing is, they now hold this venture up as an example for why player housing would be a bad thing — “See, we tried a prototype of it in WoD and you all complained bitterly and loudly about it! So no more of that, we promise you!”

Anyway, the best thing so far about leveling my Void Elf is that I am getting a renewed perspective on my history in the game, one that is frequently a surprise to me. Memory is often like looking through the wrong end of very dusty binoculars. We see tiny imperfect images and have a tendency to interpret them imperfectly, too.  And while we can never really go back, sometimes we get a brief chance to turn the binoculars right way round, and we can see the past a bit more clearly, and we can apply a proper perspective.

The way home

This post contains a few spoilers. Skip it if you are sensitive to that kind of thing.

I am frequently very hard on Blizz, especially when it comes to what I believe is their inability to carry out a clear and cohesive expansion, one where each individual piece contributes to a well-stated strategic message for the expansion. What often starts out as a nicely-encapsulated picture nearly always disintegrates into an everything-bagel mashup in which it seems like every dev with a half-baked idea gets to throw something into the mix, regardless of how — or even if — the idea is synchronized with the stated theme. And in the coming months, as we learn more about Battle for Azeroth, I am sure I will continue to berate Blizz for this constant shortcoming.

But today I am going to hand out a compliment: At least so far, I think Blizz is doing a bang-up job of preparing the path back to Azeroth for us.

In past expansions, we do not really get any prep for the next one until the very tail end. Usually the prep is in the form of a major patch that among other changes introduces a quest line or two, or some mechanism, to transition to the next expansion. In WoD, we had the worldwide invasion scenarios, for example. These were designed pragmatically to allow us to catch up alts and prepare them minimally for Legion (and also to give us something to do in the waning days of WoD), but story-wise they laid the groundwork for the Legion experience and ultimately taking the battle to the Legion’s own planet.

In the current expansion, I am seeing a subtle difference in that approach. I have no information on the release date for BfA, but most prognosticators think we are about a year out from it. Yet even this far out we are getting some major transitional mechanics for it, and the data mining for 7.3.5 tells us there are a lot more such transitional mechanics in the works.

Already, for example, the defeat of Argus in the new raid tier removes the ugly scar of the broken planet from Azerothian skies. (I assume this will be visible to all players as soon as the final LFR wing opens.) No longer does this epic fight for our survival consume every waking moment, no longer are we reminded of the looming danger every time we glance at the sky.

Patch 7.3.5 goes further. We will see our artifact weapons start to phase out. We will see the groundwork laid to establish homes for the Allied Races, thus placing Legion’s Broken Shores zones into historical context as the place where we met and formed relationships with these new races.

So, probably a full year out from BfA, we are getting the sense that the war is almost over. We won. And now, fulfilling the dream of soldiers everywhere, we are going home. As in real wars, though, going home is not an immediate thing. There is equipment to clean and repair and turn in, there are a million administrative tasks to complete before we can actually get on that plane, there are security promises to allies that must be fulfilled. But there is an undeniable change: We are no longer engaged in a struggle for our very existence, we have emerged victorious from those dark days, and we are ever so slowly bound for home.

I do not know if this kind of attitude shift was Blizz’s intent, or if more practically they just need to start surreptitiously testing some of the major planned BfA changes and 7.3.5 seems like the ideal cover for it since the beta seems nowhere close yet. Whatever the reason, from an immersion™ standpoint, it works for me. I really feel like we have won a long campaign, and now we can go home with our heads held high. If Blizz can maintain this trend, the transition to BfA will be in my opinion the smoothest ever in the game. (Of course, I think we should go home to our own player housing, but that is a complaint for another day.)

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
(Requiem, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

“Going home” evokes some of the warmest emotions anyone can express in any language.  It feels good. Nicely done, Blizz.

R&R

I don’t know about you, but after two expansions of The Great And Final™ Battle Against <insert name of evilest evil the universe has ever known here>, I need some down time. I want to have an expansion where the worst monsters I have to fight are some local badass tribes, not an entire mighty armada. I am sick of being invaded. I am depressed by the thought of space travel and worlds being torn apart. I am weary of always having to establish hasty and primitive military outposts.

It’s time for some R&R in WoW.

The last time we had any respite was in Mists. The enemies we fought were home-grown: mogu and sha and such, and none of them came from another planet or seemed capable of assembling vast armies. Even Garrosh was just a local boy gone bad. Mists allowed us to take a breather from saving the universe, and I think we need to do so again.

I have no idea what the setting of the next expansion will be, but I really want it to be back on good old Azeroth, with no interplanetary or time-warped excursions. (And, since I am wishing, no underwater zones either, please.) I mean, there is an entire half of the planet we have not even seen — surely there are land masses there we have not yet discovered.

You may have guessed where I am going with this, and of course it is a lost cause, but  my R&R wish for the next expansion comes with the The Great WoW Untouchable Subject: player housing. We have been fighting unbeatable enemies nonstop for two expansions now, and dammit we deserve to come home to a cozy fire, take off our boots and smelly socks, have a beer and some hot stew, and relax a little. Maybe putter in the garden or play with one of our hundreds of pets.

Blizz officially detests this entire idea, though I cannot for the life of me understand why. Every time a dev is asked about it, they do everything but spit to express their disdain. This, in spite of the fact that garrisons gave us proof of concept — separate instances for individuals or invited groups, the ability to have collected pets and mounts wander about, a productive garden and fishing area, even the ability to decorate and select guards. Garrisons were player housing in all but name (and of course they lacked an actual commander’s house).

Where Blizz went wrong with the whole garrison idea was that they — typically — went way overboard with them, requiring them for every player and making them the focal point for the entire expansion. But they could easily use the basic technology in the next expansion for player housing. Here’s how:

• Make them entirely voluntary. Players wishing to obtain one could either do a quest line for them, or purchase after getting some faction rep, or purchase outright, whatever. Players not wishing to bother with them would not be disadvantaged, in the same way that players currently not opting to do pet battles are not disadvantaged in the game.
• Severely limit the perks. A good model for this might be Sunsong Ranch, which offered a few gathered items if one “worked” the ranch, a mailbox, and a hearthstone. No profession huts, no auction house, no bank, no quest hub, no garrison-type scenario battles, and definitely no content gating.
• Make the whole endeavor a kind of mini-game, like pet battles. Encourage special quests to obtain various cosmetic enhancements — interior design, bigger yard, picket fence, barbecue patio, stable for your mounts, permission to allow your pets to wander around and curl up by the fire, etc. Attention Blizz: Just think of the “content” potential, think of all those additional player hours!
• Adapt the current transmog system to add a sort of transmog ability to the player housing, allowing cosmetic changes to suit the player’s mood. Whatever items you have collected would appear in various housing slots in a collection tab, and you could save entire sets and modify them at will.
• Include the garrison ability to invite other players to your house, because what good is a house if you can’t throw a party now and then?
• Allow players to choose from a small range of architectures for the housing — night elf, some kind of horde, worgen, etc. Along with the selected architecture would come appropriate landscaping to match.

Yeah, I know. It will never happen, even though there is exactly zero reason to not do it. Of course it would take dev resources, but honestly even if it cost “a raid tier” I think it would be worth it. Maybe not to the 1% hardcore players, but probably to the other 99%, though of course Blizz is not all that interested in them. Honestly, though, it would be a nice change if Blizz stopped designing for the minority of hard core players and threw a little love towards the great unwashed majority. No, it doesn’t lend itself  directly to esports, but it might keep enough people interested in the game itself to nudge them into esports spectators.

Come on, Blizz, we have all been good soldiers, we have fought every battle you asked us to fight, we have saved Azeroth over and over again, we have spent nights in cold, austere military camps, we have gone everywhere you have ordered us to, hopped from invasion point to invasion point, galloped miles and miles over fel-scarred hellish rockscapes. We have done everything asked of us. Is it too much to ask you for a little R&R in a cozy home of our own? I mean, when it comes down to it, what else are we fighting for?

So many questions, so little time

Looking back over my education, I think the single most important skill I learned was to ask questions. The Jesuits who schooled me were big believers in the Socratic Method, so we were not only encouraged but required to ask questions as part of every learning process. Sure, fractions and Shakespeare and the date of the Magna Carta and the underpinnings of an agrarian economy are all good to know. But when it comes right down to it, asking the right questions at the right time of the right people has saved my bacon in life more times than I can count.

So today I have been thinking about Patch 8.x. Yes, I know we are not even a year into Legion, and the hints from Blizz are that we have a lot of time left to experience it (my bet at the start was that we are looking at Legion being with us for very close to 3 years). Still, I feel like speculating a bit, in the form of a series of questions.

Location.

• Is the 7.3 excursion to Argus a prelude to the next expansion, or is it just that — a one-off adventure?
• Will we ever see the other side of Azeroth? Is there an other side?
• What if any lessons did Blizz learn about time-travel worlds like Draenor and underwater zones like Vashj’ir? This is less a question than it is a hope — I hope they learned both these ideas were big mistakes.
• Will Blizz expand its recent trend of making classic parts of Azeroth relevant to current game play? 

Stats.

• What will be the nature of the next stat squish? I think a dev mentioned that much of the code has been rewritten to accommodate very large numbers now, it still is cumbersome for humans to speak of character health in the millions and boss health in the billions, for example. What about ilevel? Very soon even in Legion we will break break into 4-digit ilevels. Will secondary stats and damage/healing numbers be squished in 8.x?
• Will stats be simplified in the next expansion? What is the official Blizz view of the complexity of stats in Legion? Do they understand the frustration of players when a higher level piece of gear is not an upgrade? Are they happy with the proliferation of web sites and apps designed to do the intricate math necessary to determine a piece of gear’s worth to a player? 

Quest hubs and population centers.

• Will we see new faction capitals? Blizz seems — both in WoD and Legion — to have concluded that faction capital cities are too resource-intensive to justify them. If Sanctuary Cities are the norm for the foreseeable future, will we see more of them in Horde areas, with Horde racial architecture?
• What has Blizz learned about the garrison concept? It was innovative but not well liked in WoD, and it was extended — as Class Halls — in Legion. Is this idea now a core game mechanic going forward? Will we see the concept applied as guild halls in 8.x?  More wishful thinking on that last one, I am afraid.
• Why is Blizz so dead set against player housing? This is really more of a pet peeve question and not so much of an insightful one about the next expansion. Certainly the technology is there — that was proven with garrisons, and with Sunsong Ranch before that. And there is player demand for it, though I am not sure how much. Yet Blizz steadfastly refuses to do it, citing from time to time the “war footing” nature of the game as being antithetical to cozy homesteading. My own opinion, completely biased, is that there is a culture at Blizz that insists WoW is a “hardcore” game, and to give players housing is just too girly and frilly for them to contemplate. They put it in the same category as playing house or cutting out paper dolls, and that would destroy the manly studly war aspect of the game. (Yeah, yeah, let the hate mail begin. But deep down you know I am right.)

Class development.

• Will there be another major rewrite of classes in 8.x?
• What is Blizz’s long range vision of class roles and balance? Are they on a path to achieve this, or do they have none and merely make change for change’s sake each expansion?
• And the big question: Can Blizz stop screwing with hunters for at least one expansion? (Sarcasm flag.)
• Will we see the pendulum swing once again towards class-provide raid buffs?

Gear.

• Is the concept of artifact gear a one-and-out for Legion, as Blizz has claimed? 
• Are there any big contemplated gear changes in 8.x, for example cutting the number of gear slots, maybe by eliminating necks and rings?
• Will we see some sort of non-RNG mechanism for getting gear in 8.x?
• After the debacle of legendaries in Legion, what is the future of legendaries going forward? Will we return to a single long-questline legendary, or have we crossed a line and henceforward they will fall like candy?

Miscellaneous.

• Is Blizz happy with the complexity level of the game now? If not, in which direction do they think it should go?
• Are there in-game advertisements in the works? Tie-ins with other Activision franchises, such as the King line of games?
• What is the future for professions? Will we see them get less relevant and more complex, or will we see some semblance of a return to their classic role? Will Blizz move towards a Final Fantasy approach? Are they indeed an integral part of the game’s economy, or would it be possible to eliminate them altogether?
• Will alt play remain viable in 8.x? It is narrowly so in Legion, but Blizz’s clear preference is for players to have very limited number of alts.
• Are there significant quality of life improvements in store for 8.x? Off hand, I can think of a few: account-wide banking, better group finder interface, unlimited quest log, *coughplayerhousingcough*, removal of that ridiculous talent-changing tome requirement, improving exit process from caves once a quest is completed, increasing the number of stable slots for hunter pets, adding mythic dungeons to the auto-group finder, probably lots more.
• Will Blizz help to make the role of guilds more robust? Like alt play, the trend since mid-Mists has been to make guilds less and less relevant, with the removal of most guild perks and advantages to guild membership.
• With the apparent advent of interplanetary travel, will we eventually see honest-to-goodness actual working space ship “mounts”? Will space actually be a working environment — like an underwater area only without water — or just more of an abstract concept?
• What will be the eternal-grind mechanism of 8.x? Because we know there will be one, just a matter of how Blizz repackages AP (like they repackaged garrisons into class halls).

And last but certainly not least:

Will we get a concept of the next expansion at Blizzcon this year?

What questions do you have?

A place for us

A couple of disconnected blogs I recently read got me to thinking about the human need to feel at home, an innate need identified and studied by psychologists, behaviorists, architects, interior designers, novelists, retailers — the list goes on and on. Think back to your Psych 101 class and you will recall this need is so basic it was identified by Maslow in his Hierarchy. (I suppose there are psychologists who take issue with Maslow’s work, but it always made sense to me. If you were not paying attention in Psych 101, you can get the gist of his theory in this totally unofficial Wikipedia article.)

The first blog I read that started me on this chain of thought was Matthew Rossi’s regular Blizzard Watch Q&A from yesterday. One of the questions was from someone complaining that the Blizz crossover promotion between Heroes of the Storm and WoW was ruining HotS for him, because there were all these scrubs jumping in and being stupid about how they played.

I have never played HotS, never intend to play it, and getting some big old ugly chunk of 1’s and 0’s to ride in WoW does not make me want to try playing it. But I can sympathize with the questioner. Remember back in Mists when everyone had to win some number of PvP battlegrounds as part of the quest line for the legendary cloak? (Now that’s when legendaries meant something! And you kids get off my grass!) Anyway, I always thought this was a terrible idea — the regular PvPers hated amateurs coming in and ignorantly screwing up established tactics, and the non-PvPers resented having to be there doing something they had no interest in learning or ever doing again.

Here was a prime example of Blizz deliberately messing with the basic human need to feel at home. The regular PvPers felt their space had been invaded by ignorant and clueless strangers — like when your in-laws suddenly show up at your door — and the non-PvPers were thrust into a situation where they did not know the rules of behavior or the terrain or how to interact with others. Neither group felt at home. It was a guaranteed lose-lose situation.

Now, I suppose Blizz did it because having a robust PvP play option attracts more people to the game, and maybe they were losing these kinds of players so they thought if more people tried PvP they would actually like it, thereby increasing this aspect of the game. I have no idea how it turned out, probably some players did in fact decide PvP was kind of fun. No matter. The point I am trying to make here is almost everyone involved in this activity at the time disliked it. Why did they dislike it? Because suddenly a part of the comfortable little niche they had made for themselves in the game was gone.

I would argue that much of the angst we players express with Blizz is due to the sudden removal of some aspect of the game we have come to feel at home with, in the Maslow sense. This is deeper than just stodgy old players uncomfortable with change, this is akin to having your home destroyed by a tornado. More than once.

Each of us defines the central aspect of WoW differently, or to put it another way, we each establish for ourselves what we believe to be our “home core” in the game. We may not even know that we do this, and we might be hard put to describe what that core is, but it is there for all of us. When that core is shaken or demolished, especially if it seems to happen frequently, then we start hollering. This I think is why the hunter changes of the last two expansions have seemed so heinous to me — prior to WoD, I doubt if I would have defined being a hunter as the home core of my game, but when Blizz began to demolish first the SV spec and later the entire hunter experience, suddenly I realized the very foundation of my game enjoyment had been removed. I was left to find another home core or rebuild on the old one. For humans, both these situations are difficult, just ask Maslow.

Which brings me to the other blog that got me thinking along these lines — a piece by Bhagpuss over at Inventory Full on player housing and the dilemma MMOs face on the subject. The quick summary is that there likely is a Goldilocks solution as to whether or not to have player housing and if so how much or little it should affect the game, but that this solution is difficult for most game makers to arrive at. In fact, recent history for MMOs shows that few companies have succeeded.

As some of you may know, I favor the idea of player housing. I really liked my little Sunsong Ranch home. In fact I still go back there every couple of weeks, just as a place to log off from, with a cozy bed and a bubbling pot of stew on the stove. It gives me a peaceful feeling of being at home, of taking off my boots and warming my tired feet by the stove, anticipating supper and reflecting on the day’s adventures.

If we had had just a few opportunities to customize that space — beyond becoming bff’s with whoever that was that decorated it for us — Sunsong Ranch would have been close to perfect as player housing in my opinion. It was completely optional, it did not in any way affect your game play beyond the initial zone quest sets, and it was instanced so that it was really just your own.But Blizz took this notion of an instanced individual space and made it into a monster in WoD in the form of garrisons, and into an annoyance in Legion in the form of class halls.

Anyway, my point is not to rehash all the problems with garrisons or class halls. (However, for crying out loud, can we get a lousy place to sit and maybe be able to buy a beer in the hunter hall??) My point is that some players — maybe even a lot of players, who knows  — really enjoy having a small space of their own, a place they can call home, even in a computer game. And Blizz has demonstrated they have the technology. The garrison technology was great — an individual instance that you could invite groups to, a few chances to do limited customization — it was just the typical Blizz overreaction that made it bad by requiring every player to have one and to develop it and make it the central jumping off point for an entire expansion, and by offering amenities like a bank and an auction house and portals so that you never had to leave it.

Maybe if Blizz gave us some decent optional and limited player housing — a place of our own — we would not be so quick to yell at them when they make huge changes to our class play style or professions or gear. No matter what they did , we could still come home at the end of a long day questing or raiding, kick off our muddy boots and put our feet up by a nice fire, and feel at home.

Maybe Blizz should dig out their old Psych 101 textbook. It might make them realize that always screwing with core player engagements like class and spec identity is more disruptive than it is helpful, and that maybe if they were to let us have a tiny space of our own in the game we might be happier. Just a thought.

Hither and thither

I feel kind of untethered when I log on to WoW these days. It’s both a good and a bad feeling. Good, because I have the freedom to do whatever I feel like doing on any character. Bad, because in the back of my brain there is this gnawing worry that I should be doing something organized and constructive in preparation for Legion, even though I know it is still months away. I suppose the feeling is just the price I pay for being a compulsive planner.

Completely off topic, but I love archaic English terms like hither and thither. They are a reminder of a time when the language was  quite prescriptive. Hither and thither were the motion equivalents of here and there. “Here I stand,” but “Come hither.” Or, “We wandered hither and thither, no destination in mind.”

Don’t get me wrong,  I love that English today is so malleable, I love the rapidity with which linguistic constructs appear and disappear. But archaic English gives us an intriguing look into the things our ancestors thought important enough to be linguistically precise about. Similarly, the things modern English is precise about today certainly reflect what is important in modern life.

There must somewhere be a PhD dissertation on this subject, I am going to look it up.

(If you have not guessed, this post will be pretty disjointed. I will wander hither and thither, stopping briefly here and there.)

I’ve become more appreciative of my garrison lately. I have remedied Blizz’s poor housing plan by commandeering the gardener’s cottage. I just wish I could put up a sign to that effect, it might keep the riffraff out. Still, it is a cozy place to retire for the night. Also, it is close to the fishing pond and a great view of the ocean. Consequently, I am doing a bit more fishing on all my alts, either as a way to pass the time while waiting for a queue to pop, or just as a relaxing activity while I listen to music.

I keep thinking soon I will not have a nice tidy place to call my own, that I will be expected to bunk with a bunch of smelly hunters or depressingly dark warlocks with their yammering minions. I know we will keep our garrisons, I just hope Blizz lets us also keep our garrison hearthstone so that we can easily get there. I will be annoyed if instead of the hearthstone they replace it with something like a portal in a capitol city.

(I would make yet another plea here for true player housing, but I think it is a lost cause.)

One of the things I just noticed as I was going about some basic garrison chores is the actual contents of the garrison resources pile. When you empty it, you get a quick glimpse of the inside of the bottom box, and it is — a box of rocks. Two, to be exact, two big old building stones. Which makes me wonder — what is  being built these days? Certainly nothing in my garrison. I am beginning to suspect one or more of my employees is dealing garrison rocks on the black market. Note to self: look into this.

I’ve been spending some time with my lock and my druid lately. I am to the point where I can bring my lock to our weekly alt runs, and I think I will start doing so. My main has nothing more to gain from normal HFC, and we always have a ton of hunters anyway.

I decided to pursue the ring on my druid, so I am just at the first abrogator stone (125) collection stage. Which means running the tier 1 raid — tedious. Though I am still a novice at resto druid healing, I find I enjoy it. There are so many instant heals that it almost feels like the hunter of healers because of the mobility. I finally overcame my phobia about 5-man healing on it and easily healed all the dungeons you have to run in the initial stages of the ring quests.

From what I read of balance druids in Legion, I think that also may be a viable spec. It seems clunky to me in WoD, but it is the spec I use for Tanaan dailies — would be good if resto had more than 2 offensive spells. Still, I am enjoying the class.

In terms of gold, I am frantically trying to make hay while the sun shines, to use one of my gramma’s favorite expressions. I think as soon as we get the Legion pre-event, the gold will stop flowing from our garrisons. Also, at that point very few will be interested in buying WoD mats, gizmos, or crafted gear. So I am dumping everything I can now, including whatever I can make with the hundreds of cd mats I have for every profession. I have outfitted a few guildie alts with crafted pieces, donated some still-useful stuff to the guild bank, am selling what I can on the AH or DE-ing it to sell the mats, and vendoring everything else. The gold crash is coming, and I don’t want to be caught with an inventory I can no longer move for more than a few coppers.

I still have to figure out the best disposition of the 200+ pieces of BoA Baleful gear in my banker’s bank. Suggestions are welcome.

Well, I warned you this would be kind of disjointed. It’s my birthday, and I am taking the rest of the day off. I think I saw the spousal unit sneaking a brightly wrapped box into the house, of a size to perfectly accommodate a cool electronic gadget. My inner child is hopping up and down with anticipation! (Watch it turn out to be a handheld mixer or knife sharpener, I will kill him.)