Monthly Archives: April 2011

Never give up, never surrender

Before the weekend, a little comic I played around with (I added a link to the original version in the caption, just so my copyright infringement guilt feels a little lighter).

(Original version)

To end the week on a somewhat lighter note, two links you all want to look into:

Altnotes.com where Gilded has recently set up camp with a new MMO blog. He focuses on analyzing and discussing modern MMO design and mechanics in general, adding a new voice to the circle of blogging MMO critics in the blogosphere. In the spirit of supporting our newcomers, check his thoughts out sometime, it’s worth it!

Rift: The little things over at massively; I’ve always been one to look for the little things in my MMOs, the silly, fun and secret along the way which are all too easily missed in the rush. A formidable list with the very same focus, saves me creating one for Rift then, I guess!

Enjoy your weekend everybody, be it inside or outside those virtual worlds we all love so much!

The beast that wrecked wonderland. Or: Oh noes, I’m an RPer?

The blogosphere is loaded on fundamental design questions and debates lately and it’s not just events like Blizzard’s most recent Call to Arms announcement that make us wonder about where the future of MMOs lies. The more I’m reading, the more I realize how conservative I am – and how I really hopped off the bandwagon somewhere around the Burning Crusade. Very few game design changes have actually appealed to me since then. Maybe I’m just not the average MMO gamer anymore. Maybe I have become too “oldschool” for this genre.

Scrap that “maybe”.

I’ve tried to put a finger on this sentiment lately, but I couldn’t quite find the right word. This recent post by Green Armadillo is a great example of the overall problem though: I really do resent the fact that dungeons have become a synonym for lootbags in MMOs. That is SO far apart from what dungeons used to stand for, game designers might as well stop putting any effort into dungeon design if drops are all that matters. And now, as if loot, gold and tokens weren’t enough, you even have to bribe people further to play cooperatively in there. Sic transit gloria mundi?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg which fast-food, drive-thru MMOs are developing into, with their dungeon finders, achievement points, welfare loot and in-built quest helpers. Big fat red arrows across your fantasy world. Flashy text hovering over your stupid head. Min-maxing guides for teh win.

All the things I want are almost completely opposed to the current trend: no quest helper, no maps, no fast leveling, no soloing major content, no anonymous grouping, no welfare loot, no cookie-cutters, no bottomless bags, no epeen titles and silly achievement points. Instead, more need to cooperate. More need to play intelligently. More consequences when not playing cooperatively or intelligently. More customization. Lore rather than loot. More need to travel without an instant map. More wetting your pants on the way. Proper outdoor PvP. Less linearity and more player-generated content. Player housing. More campfires. A bag-pack with bandages you actually use.

And then it dawns on me, the inevitable conclusion: my wish-list strongly resembles the 100+ pages long RPer’s wishlist that was up on Blizzard’s official RP forums a few years ago, a collection on how to improve the game for roleplaying (unfortunately that topic is long gone). Is to wish for these things, to be an RPer in today’s post-WoW MMO world?

I’m not an RPer in the strict sense. I do play role-playing games, but I’ve always played on PVE servers. I cringe a little at the whole “in character”-stuff some people really take to extremes on dedicated servers. On the other hand, I’ve absolutely no problem with players who enjoy their MMOs that way, it’s just not my cup of coffee to make up a past history for my character, attend ingame weddings or talk in Shakespearean English. But when it comes to everything else that adds atmosphere to fantasy worlds, yes I do want that. It’s been there before.

So, am I an RPer now? A traditionalist? How do you call MMO players like me today? And is it really me who needs a new name?

But finally, I realized what this whole mess is called that’s currently happening to the genre (thank you Spinks): the beast that’s wrecking wonderland is called “Gamification”. It’s been going on a lot more rapidly on consoles ever since the XBOX went live and now it’s made its way into PC MMOs too. And I really shouldn’t be surprised: just the way traditional RPGs have become a rarity on console ever since, the classic MMORPG is doomed to disappear. I never realized the parallels in such clarity. MMOs might be part of the world of games, but they never played by the same rules, their virtues were always of a different kind. They were virtual worlds; not linear, scripted scenarios with the goal of instant gratification, stilling players’ achievement hunger and collection drive whenever they please. Those games were about setting, narrative, simulation and cooperative longterm goals. But there’s a whole new mentality out there today, a new type of gamer walking down my virtual streets. A gamer with different values than me.

And I’m fine with it, really – you can collect achievements ’til kingdom come for all I care. But if game studios start developing more and more MMOs for you rather than me, then I have a problem.

And no, I don’t want to start playing MUDs or write fanfiction.

You had me at Bard

I haven’t been entirely honest about why I’ve taken up Rift in some of my past articles. Yeah, Rift is all that: new, shiny looking, a solid package, interesting talent combos, more cooperative and epic events, zomg-awesome dyes for your armor. But it was none of those things that actually won me over to start playing the game. Rift’s major selling point for me was the bard class. BARDS!!! THEY GOT BARDS!

Fucking finally.

That utterly under-represented class in fantasy MMOs, oh I love it so much! I don’t know what it is exactly, I’m not a musician in real life (I play the flute a little but who doesn’t), but there’s something incredibly appealing and romantic about playing a bard in online games. I think it’s the whole imagery: that wandering hermit with the lute on his back, that solemn and thoughtful storyteller in your adventurers party, playing his tunes steadfast in the midst of battle, bringing courage and hope to the hearts of his allies, filling his enemies with dread from afar. Bards are subtle, bards work their magic in different ways. Bards make any camp fire a cosy place.

Notice what’s wrong with this picture? I’m not playing a bard in Rift, I’m playing a pyromage. I’m really sad about it too and wonder whether I should give things another go. Unfortunately, when testing bard for a couple of levels, I didn’t enjoy Trion’s interpretation of them at all. For one thing, bards are part of the rogue/hunter archetype in Rift which are mehhh physical DPS. Now, I could probably live with the melee thing since a bard (in my head) is likely to swing a dagger or mace of sorts, once the enemy has closed in on him. Avoidance certainly works there too. But a hunter / archer / pet class?

Yet the worst thing wasn’t that creating a bard forces you to combine with these subclasses: the really off-putting part in my opinion was combat itself (to be fair, I did only play the bard solo). Playing your tunes is super-hectic: wooops, there’s your lute, it’s gone so fast you can easily miss it (when buffing)! It doesn’t sound really swell either. And then, once you actually go offensive, you’re literally shooting the enemy with notes and staves as if they were just another projectile, arrows or fire bolts. Eugh! Okay, music IS waves but like this you’re really pushing the whole idea of tunes harming the opponent “physically” which is silly.

My bard in FF11

I liked Square-Enix’ take on bards in Final Fantasy XI: There were flutes, harps, horns and cornets to equip and songs to learn in abundance, usually working as AoE in a small range, beneficial to specific classes only. This would force you to move around often and play different tunes for different people. And bards used MP – their abilities were associated with a magical force, rather than stats such as strength and dexterity.

It’s all a matter of preference – and maybe also one reason why we don’t get to see bards too often in MMOs; they’re a tough class to place and give their own spot to in a classic combat setup. Great for lore and role-play, tricky for mechanics and balance?

Anyway, maybe I should really give bards another go in Rift. It feels wrong not to play a class that comes with such unique appeal and there’s always that chance that I judged things prematurely. That said, I haven’t actually run into that many Rift bard blogs or posts so far, I’ve yet to find someone passionate enough to convince me. We’ll see.

Why Trion & Co. lose out to cottage cheese

Hirz, my favourite cottage cheese producer, have recently launched a new “summer special” in their product line: cottage cheese with cucumber. Hirz is a Nestlé brand and stands for consistent and traditional products; no fancy stuff, no groundbreaking novelties in the dairy sector, no fixing of what ain’t broken. Their cottage cheese is creamy and light, not too sour and not too bland and comes in two variations – regular and with chives. I prefer the latter because I’m a bit of a rebel.

Lately, on an annual base, Hirz has started to launch limited editions to test the waters in their regular customer base a little. A couple of months ago they introduced their “cottage cheese & wild garlic” special, which they ran temporarily on smaller production volume, parallel to the top sellers on the shelf. Depending on more positive or negative consumer feedback, quantities would be increased and the sale of the new flavour would be continued. Maybe it would even make its way into their main product line. A small financial investment for a huge company. Virtually no risk.

How jealous game developers must be of cottage cheese producers.

Of tradition, novelty and risk

Ever since Trion have launched their new MMO, they have faced colliding opinions on their new product. First and foremost the “die-hard Warcraft front”, consisting of all those players either too scared to actually give Rift a try or just generally picky and negative when it comes to anything without a Blizzard stamp on, ironically enough complaining that the new MMO is way too much of a WoW clone. Then, there are the more moderate critics who genuinely look for the new and will find it in Rift, acknowledging that it’s by no means as novel as it feels new, but comes with great potential and a promising outlook. At the other end of the spectrum are the “WoW burnouts” who will over-hype anything that isn’t WoW because Blizzard broke an emotional contract of sorts in Cataclysm, and of course a few fanboys you will find for any game in existence (and who therefore are negligible).

In his most recent blog post, Wolfshead elaborates on his ambiguous feelings about Rift and why he believes the game lacks polish in the really important areas, mainly its selling point and signature concept: rifts. After all, it’s the rift events and dynamic content that set Rift apart from other MMOs such as World of Warcraft and make the game appealing to MMO veterans who look for new, cooperative concepts and online worlds that feel altogether more “alive”. But Trion still has a lot of work to do in that department, from basic balancing issues to the question of impact and replay value. As current subscribers we can only hope for future improvements there and maybe marvel about why the devs wouldn’t spend more time and focus on this subject prior to Rift’s launch, rather than on delivering the standard MMO package that Rift has no doubt provided.

The answer isn’t really a though one, though; how far do you dare go with progress and novelty, when facing such a competitive market that is at the same time so shaped by tradition and committed to genre? How far can you risk the initial and crucial success of a one-time launch by deviating from what a great part of today’s MMO players consider the standard, basic package? How do you balance learning from past success with expectations of innovation? And not least, the eternal crux of most developers: how much more time / financial means do your investor and publisher grant you? Which other cooks are spoiling your broth with their deadline pressure and revenue strategies?

Unfortunately this will always be a big factor, not only in determining the launch date for a new MMO but essentially its entire fate from there. A successful launch is absolutely crucial in a bracket that relies so heavily on convincing players to subscribe long-term and needs to achieve such during a short, very sensitive initial “grace period” when MMO players are curious and willing to give a new game a try – but also sceptical. Many promising projects, such as Aventurine’s Darkfall never got the chance to develop their game concept fully, because of lacking financial backup and added launch pressure. Any reasoning here gets stuck in the same vicious cycle: launch an unfinished game because you cant afford to keep developing -vs.- don’t launch a game and run out of money before launch. Your investors want to see cash. You too, really need cash coming in soon in order to continue making improvements. But if you already alienate your player base with a pre-mature launch, who will keep paying? In the long run, you are always doomed to fail. Trying to calculate the financial risk arising from either a post-poned or pre-mature launch, is depressing business.

Now, Hirz never had that problem. They keep their cash cow flowing while launching a new product ever so often, checking if people like it and removing it again from the market after a couple of months. They can afford to have customers test a demo, they can launch limited “samples” without any considerable risk. The wild garlic edition disappeared from shelves after a couple of weeks. I sampled the cucumber version last night and I can’t say that one’s a keeper, either. Lucky for Hirz, they didn’t already spend all their cash and the last three years of development on cucumber edition. Phew.

Samples of online worlds

There are no samples in the world of games; there is early testing in closed circles, there are alphas and betas, and thanks to the interwebz there are easy to download demos of existing games today, allowing a more informed choice on whether to buy or not. For MMOs, we got trial accounts – but that’s not really the same as samples. Imagine Trion had the chance to test the waters first by launching a free, limited edition of Rift for a few weeks, to see what their potential customers really enjoy. A Rift “mid-launch” of sorts, only half-way through production, where players could experience the first 15 levels and starter maps, a glimpse of all core mechanics such as questing, talent specs, rifts and professions. Let people play like that for 1-2 weeks, then shut the servers down, assess feedback and re-focus. No half-assed, feel-good betas for an already finished game one month before launch, but a real sample of your work in progress. Real feedback and direction, real customer centricity. And much less risk to yourself.

I’ve no idea how applicable such food business models are for online game development; it’s obviously a ridiculous comparison (I enjoy nonetheless). MMOs rely heavily on the entire framework of a consistent, existing world – I don’t believe they get developed in independent, modular “bits and pieces”. Blizzard probably couldn’t have launched a “WoW: Elwynn Forest sneakpeek”-edition before creating most of the game first. Then, there’s the whole copyright and NDA fuss.

That’s not the point though; there’s always room to optimize and re-think business and development strategies – if we ask for new concepts and gameplay innovation, we might as well ask for that too. It strikes me as utterly bizarre that a business dealing with so many crucial factors and dilemmas, such huge time and financial investment involved and so large an audience to recruit, wouldn’t think of ways to test their market and survey their potential playerbase’s wishes before launching a fully fledged, multi-million enterprise meant to last for several years.

All this care for cottage cheese but not for online worlds? You lost me at multi-million.

P.S. Cottage cheese rules! Especially on Skorpa (Swedish crisp bread).

Significant Friday

It’s Friday everybody! That sweet fifth day of the week we look forward to so much, that gateway to the weekend and blessed relaxation. Yet of all the days of the week, we tend to pay Friday the least reverence. Yes in fact, we often completely omit the existence of Friday, talking about how it’s already the weekend or “thank God it’s Thursday tomorrow, finally the week is over!”. And that sucks for poor old Friday. Freya would not be pleased. Where’s your Friday appreciation?

Fridays are usually celebrated with a Frivolous Friday post on this blog. Which is a great excuse for me to write rambly texts, bombard the world with silly pictures or links that made me laugh for one reason or another and generally be not so SRS. You need to give your week a break sometime.

But not today. Today there will be no sillyness here – today I shall (and so should you), in quiet contemplation and gratitude, honor Friday as is its due.

Thank you Friday, for being my last day of work every week. Thank you for an empty office in the morning, so I can enjoy my coffee in peace. Thank you for generally being less of a pain in the ass than your brothers and sisters, especially Monday and Thursday. Thank you for an early leave in the afternoon, because I need to go and buy stuff for tomorrow’s barbecue. Thank you for another episode of Grey’s Anatomy, latest season. Thank you for less traffic on the road and less smelly people in my tram and bus. Thank you for the last afterwork drink in the evening and first toast to the weekend. Thank you for staying up as late as I like, because Saturday mornings are for other people. Thank you Friday for always being there, each week on time.

Have a good Friday everybody. And remember to appreciate your days.

How much is too much authenticity?

When you start talking about better authenticity in RPGs or MMORPGs, there is always at least one person you will have to convince that there really is such a thing in fantasy games too and then explain exactly what you mean. Because fantasy worlds are all about the impossible of course, y’know magical stuff going on, places and races that zomg DON’T EXIST and – so, what are you talking about anyway with your authenticity…?

I love that part of the conversation. It’s like with the person who tells you how “it’s all just a game” when you’re upset about something, which is another way of telling you to shut up really (which in return gives you every right to /slap them with a large trout in good old IRC style).

Authenticity is a big topic and issue for RPGs of all flavours; to pick just one example –

Even in a magical world of flying islands and ferocious dragons, most players don’t feel it’s authentic that characters should be able to teleport around anytime and from anywhere to any given coordinate. Mage portals or gateways are cool, but all the time? No, not very authentic. Way too imbalanced – too OP to be credible. We might be in wonderland but this ain’t the zoo, there are rules! Also, what about travel and exploration, two very essential parts of this genre? We all know what would have happened to the Lord of the Rings if old Gandalf had possessed such OP powers (yep, no book for you sorry!)

Or much simpler: it’s cool if there are firebolts coming out of that warlock’s hand, but it’s not very realistic if he can wipe out an entire army of foes with a wiggle of his little finger. It doesn’t work that way.

Putting rules into fantasy

So, how does it work? What’s the measure and leeway of fantastic rules and when do we feel that there are too many restrictions in place or not enough? What constitutes authenticity in an RPG?

Now, developers do have some leeway of course, not every MMO handles authenticity and realism in the same way – just think of the “anti-jumping front” in Final Fantasy Online for instance (there were long beta topics about to jump or not to jump before FF14 was released in 2010) vs. WoW, where players can jump around merrily whenever they please. Choices go all the way from there and become more crucial when it comes to a game’s encounter mechanics or ability and stat balance. Should anyone be able to solo a skeleton army? What hitbox should a worm have? For how long should an enemy of same level be able to chase you? Should death come with a penalty – should there be death at all? The answers to these questions are not only in a number or equation. Not for any self-respecting fantasy game.

I don’t know if game development teams have any department which is solely dedicated to “script writing”; meaning working on the theme, content credibility and overall coherence of the world, far beyond the point of lore writing or map concepts. I feel they should have.

To me personally, atmosphere and coherence are everything. I can live with a game that has sub-par graphics, crappy itemization or dodgy class balance (departments being dedicated massive amounts of time and money to), what I absolutely can’t live with is a fantastic world that lacks any atmosphere or credibility. That’s my very personal assessment obviously, I got my Bartle result for a reason; exploration, travel, danger and conflict are crucial aspects for my personal game enjoyment. Can’t care less for achievements, titles or gear (unless shiny) and chitchat and company are great but only as long as the world feels great too.

Even if we disagree on these points, there are things we will all agree on, the overall “framework” so to speak. We might approach RPGs a little differently, but we’re all looking for the full fantasy package. I’m heavily influenced by the so-called high fantasy or sword&sorcery genre which is based on the traditions of Tolkien to D&D or anything with a Wizards of the Coast label on, books, games or concept art. All of them of course going back on much older tradition and lore, medieval times, folk tales and mythology. But for western RPGs at least, it’s that corner of the creative world where many of today’s MMO archetypes, classes, races and even settings were established for a wider, commercial audience (and any alterations thereof). If you read through the profiles and influences of the Sons of the Storm for example, you realize just how big a part that tradition plays.

Too much authenticity or long lost sons?

Lately and ever since leaving WoW, I’ve found myself back to my roots more again. There’s many game features or aspects I haven’t seen in a long time and used to enjoy in classic RPGs. All of them are part of a good fantasy tale; but not everything is necessarily suitable for the online concept – maybe. In any case, three features currently on top of my wish list are:

Player character age
Sustenance and sleep
Injury and status ailments

1) In Fable the Lost Chapters, your character will age through the course of the game and receive permanent battle scars depending on your combat focus. Fable was obviously also somewhat of a breakthrough in terms of player alignment and ethos at the time, offering not only the choice for good or evil but adding impact to that choice in terms of how players could experience the game from there and how they’d look.
I’ve always enjoyed that idea: that my character’s looks (and equipment) tell a story. I think I’m past the wish for eternal youth, too. But if we assume an average playtime of 5 years for the same MMO, how to solve the aging issue? The concept of aging forces the issue of a life-span and inevitably death.

2) Having to feed your character is something I haven’t seen since Dungeon Master on Atari – and oh, how I wish I had the old sound file ready to play (*GULP!*)! I definitely wouldn’t want to worry about breakfast, lunch and dinner in MMORPGs (keeping the fridge stuffed is bad enough in the real world); but I think the aspect of sustenance or at least having to frequent a tavern or innkeeper every now and then, either to eat or sleep, is something worth integrating in a game (certainly makes a lot more sense than all the empty inns all over the world). Maybe add beneficial effects to it, like useful buffs or removing harmful debuffs? Grant bonuses in form of a “revitalized” XP bar or reputation gain (“you are now exalted with iron-dwarf drunkards!”)?

3) I’d like to see battle injuries and/or debuffs that actually require a long time to cure or special services / ointments – and often. In classic RPGs your character will often need to carry a variety of curing and healing items with himself that either work inside or outside of combat only, curing a variety of negative status effects. If we assume a weaker or absent healer role in the same game, such items (or associated services) gain in significance. A lot of added value comes to mind here: how players will deal with their HP bar, combat tactics when facing certain foes, but also how useful a profession will be for example.
But it’s not just about that: an adventurer’s bagpack should carry meaning, not just act as portable bank slot for loot. If you’re out there exploring the world and facing its dangers, surely you would bring a full survival pack, from that trusted elvish rope down to flint and tinder, first aid items and spell ingredients? Yes, I’d like more of this in MMOs.

I’m not a devoted RPer but I still think features such as these can be enjoyable in any online game. The ultimate question is how they add impact to your world and gameplay and whether they create any meaning or choice; added authenticity or just an extra chore? For player aging, the issue is mainly a cosmetic one and yet not easy to solve for a potentially never-ending game. But I have faith in future development teams and that’s why I disagree with the fourth poster in this forum topic: Yes, we all play for entertainment (I hope), but not everyone defines “fun” in the same way. To me personally, rep grinds and daily quests were always a chore in WoW because they added very little. On the other hand, I was sad to see spell ingredients matter so little and disappear entirely in Cataclysm (although the loss wasn’t great with their meaning so small to begin with).

Online adventures shouldn’t simulate everything from the real world, no doubt – but they’re still heavily based on real experiences and concepts, from times past as much as the present. The way how a developer implements and integrates “authentic features” is essential; I’m sure that with proper context, we all gladly bring our rain coat and umbrella along.

The spirits that I called

From the spirits that I called,
Sir, deliver me!

“Back now, broom,
into the closet!
Be thou as thou
wert before!
Until I, the real master
call thee forth to serve once more!”

When reading Tessy’s final blog post last night, I was instantly reminded of this famous poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Goethe is to German literature, what Shakespeare is to English and so back in school we would naturally read and analyze this formidable piece of literature quite meticulously – and years later, when standing in front of my own students teaching German classes, I was happy to return the favour (muaha). While Goethe’s work is probably not widely known in an English speaking society, that particular poem is definitely a well-known one and that’s not just thanks to adaptions like Disney’s Fantasia opening.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has a very simple message even the youngest can understand: be careful what you wish for – and: don’t go behind the back of your superiors (the part I will shamelessy ignore in this article…I think). While his master is away, the spiteful apprentice dabbles at forces of magic he cannot yet understand or control and as a consequence, creates utter chaos in his study, nearly being drowned to death in the process. That’s what the poem’s most famous citation stands for, having become a frequently used proverb in the German language: “die Geister, die ich rief, die werd’ ich nicht mehr los” – which literally translates into “the spirits that I called, I can lose no more”.

In her goodbye post, Tessy draws another analogy from fairy tales she enjoyed as child, to explain why World of Warcraft is slowly but surely losing its shine for her. She says “All the bumps in the roads have been smoothed out and all the detours have been made unnecessary” and concludes later: “I’m not saying the game has become too easy – I just think it has become a bit too smooth.“

And that conclusion is only an arm’s reach away from a rather ranty article I wrote some time ago, when starting off with this little blog, complaining about the decreasing difficulty level in WoW and how it can kill what makes adventure come alive to many (not all) MMORPG players. It’s a natural law: challenge and sense of achievement go together. To take away the first, is to take away the second. To overcome challenges and hardship together fills us with a sense of heroic satisfaction and enjoyment we can never get by other, more forgiving means. A rep or daily quest grind can never be a challenge in the same way, much rather than being a test of your mathematical skills – it’s all a matter of time and easy enough to calculate. Well, another matter of time is when removing all the pebbles on the road will start vexing players.

I’m not speaking of painful gameplay and mind-numbing, idle tasks and downtimes here by the way; I don’t actually believe in the virtue of suffering. I do however believe in a balance between challenging and rewarding game features. To define “challenge” in online games is obviously another can of worms, but for simplicity’s sake let’s just assume that we all want to run and scream in terror every once in a while.

Are the whiners always the same people?

The missing link between Tessy’s observation and Goethe’s poem is of course this: a playerbase wishing for changes long enough and whining about anything that makes the game a little hard / unfair / unsatisfactory to them in a particular moment in time, might end up with exactly what they wish for (given the master’s willingness to listen). And before knowing it, they have spoiled all aspects that made the game fun to them in the first place. You know, a little bit like lovers who over the course of their relationship attempt to change one another, until one day they wake up beside a completely different person – one they don’t recognize and don’t love anymore.

MMOs, like other real or virtual worlds, are rather delicate works of design; to meddle with balance, fixing a little here and there and changing things on one end and not the other, can easily cause disaster. I’d never claim that Blizzard didn’t do substantial amounts of calculation and testing in their re-balancing and patching acts, of course they do – but every change, no matter how small, actually changes something. And very often, players do not actually know what they want: they think they do, but they should really leave it to those who know better (y’know, those who do this shit for a living). Because the thing that players will not and cannot consider (and apparently some devs can’t either or will ignore), are long-term consequences. You might not see the greater picture when you complain about classes not having enough solo-ability (and then, in a year’s time, complain about all classes being way too similar); for short-term and long-term change are quite an unhappy couple in MMOs.

How many times have we not witnessed class or content difficulty whining in WoW’s official forums, only to read a diametrically opposed echo of said whining a year down the road? Really, this is erm….what you asked for? Now you figure, huh? But then, there’s really no way of keeping the whiny voices on any gameforum apart: they might sound exactly the same, but how can you tell they go back to the same people? (No, I don’t feel inclined to track nicknames.)

Which is something justly pointed out to me by Chastity of Righteous Orbs, a few months back when he wrote an article on linearity in WoW and how he didn’t enjoy all the cut-scenes during Cataclysm’s quest lines. Personally, I felt the short ingame movies were a brilliant addition to the game, making quests and lore feel more immersive. It’s certainly been a common complaint among WoW players for years that the game really lacked this sort of player inclusion (the way you find yourself inside the clips with Harrison Jones for example). But there you go: “among WoW players” – which ones exactly? The ones screaming loudest on the forums at the time? The ones simply louder than those who didn’t wish for ingame movies (and therefore had no reason to speak up before)?

When we hear “the players”, “the PVPers”, “the druids” (loads of’em…) moan on gaming boards, we don’t actually know who they are. We don’t know which players were whining before and we don’t know which players whine later (after change happened). All we know, really, is that there will be whining. Ample empiric evidence has been given!

Yet, maybe they exist? Those players that did ask for XY in the past and only later realize the gravity of their wish? Players who cry for buffs on today’s forums and then cry the same be nerfed later, in an even louder voice because hindsight is such a beautiful thing? Are there any sorcerer’s apprentices in today’s WoW community or is it always different people?

I’ve no clue, I’m usually rather consistent in my whining (and I avoid official forums like rabies – way too many whiny hybrids around). But if the waters are rising all around me because the apprentice is messing with his absent(-minded) master’s work, there’s one hope I cling to – that it’s all just a story in a book and everything will be fine in the end. Alternatively, I’ll grab another book if the old one got wet beyond repair. Yep, I can always do that.