The Dàchéng Diaries

Poker isn't chess.

2011-11-28T13:43:00.002Z

I have long assumed that the average German doesn't understand (and perhaps doesn't want to understand) how perilous their situation is. Bundeskanzlerin Merkel understands the depth of the crisis. And I was pretty sure the smart people in Germany do, too. But having read Nil's blog entry "Poker against Mrs. Merkel", I'm now not so sure they understand how close to collapse Germany's banks are. Don't worry if you haven't read Nil's article. It's isn't right, anyway. It isn't even wrong. It's simply so far off base that it's irrelevant.

It all started so innocuously. Portuguese, Irish and Spanish growth was kicked off by a regime of low interest rates in the eurozone, caused by the fragile state of the German, French and Italian economies (which really extended over most of the last two decades - in fact since reunification in the German case).

Seeing this growth, European financial institutions (primarily pension funds and banks) pumped money into these economies, so they could take part in the growth, and get their share of the gravy (to a large extent in housing, through mortgage lending). When those bubbles burst, investors were in a bad situation. They found themselves holding bonds that were unlikely to be paid off (most of these bonds were in mortgage lenders - banks). The biggest group of such bondholders were German financial institutions, and they came up with a plan that they took to Bundeskanzlerin Merkel, a plan that they hoped would save their bacon. Here was their plan:

Preamble 1. It would be a Bad Thing for the eurozone if any eurozone bank went bust. It would cause a crisis of confidence in the euro.

Preamble 2. Those banks (such as Anglo-Irish Bank in Ireland, or Caja de Ahorros Castilla La Mancha in Spain) are about to go bust, taking a large chunk of our profits with them, and possibly inducing a banking crisis in Germany, just as the shaky German recovery is finally gaining pace.

Rather than let them go bust, why don't we make this deal:

1. We lend these banks bucketloads of money that they could otherwise not get on the open market, saving them from bankruptcy, and protecting the euro from a crisis of confidence.

2. You guarantee our loans by getting the Irish, Portuguese and Spanish governments to nationalize the bad banks, so that their citizens become liable to pay back the debt.

~~Reichs~~Bundeskanzlerin Merkel thought about this proposal for a while and said, okay but you know, I've got a problem as well. Our Greek province is short of cash to pay its minions, and nobody will lend them any money. If you'll agree to fund Greece on the same basis, we'll agree to turn these bad bank bonds you own into sovereign debt.

"It's a deal!" squealed the German bankers, delightedly.

For a while everybody thought that it was the greatest idea since the atomic theory, and all the smartypants German bankers thought themselves too smart for their pants, lending money to stupid PIGS at high interest rates, so they'd have the money to pay the German bankers back what they'd lent them earlier at high interest rates! But then the Law of Unintended Consequences kicked in.

First, the Greeks looked at those smart German bankers and thought "what stupid bankers they are! We already can't pay our debts, so they want us to take on more debt! If we can't pay our small debt, what makes them think we're going to pay a bigger one back?" So the Greeks thanked the Germans for their cash, widened the letter-box a little in case the Germans wanted to shovel some more money into it, and carried on with their original plan, which was to default on their sovereign debt.

"But, but...", spluttered the Germans, "you can't do that!", because they never dreamt of anybody doing such a thing, even though Greece is a serial defaulter and has a history of default.

Meanwhile the Irish and Portuguese were muttering to themselves about why they'd been asked to shoulder the private debt of stupid bankers addicted to gambling who'd put their savings (sorry, their customers' savings) on the wrong horse. The poor French, who'd agreed to go along with this whole sorry mess in the hope that Merkel knew what she was doing, refrained from telling her "I told you so", and instead just kept patting Ireland and Portugal on the head, saying "good boy, good boy". Ireland and Portugal are looking enviously at Greece.

Meantime, the Germans carry on pouring good money after bad in the hope that if they pour enough in, they can pay themselves back. When put baldly like this, it is obvious that it won't be paid back, and in fact it's a lot worse than this, because linked to this banking crisis is a general economic crisis.

Germans don't seem to realize how perilous their own situation is.

Jeopardy.

2011-07-27T11:37:00.002+01:00

My most fun WoW session in a long time happened last night, less than half an hour before the weekly server reset, when the dungeon-finder put me into Zul'Aman with a random group. Fewer than 30 minutes to complete the dungeon and collect 140 valor points. What was our motivation? I suppose our main motivation was to collect the 140 VPs. That's why I'd queued. A second motivation was just to test ourselves, to see if we could beat that clock.

In fact we failed to do so, but I haven't been so pumped up and excited by WoW in ages! We were playing as if every death mattered, because it did: it could cause a wipe which might end our hopes of completing the dungeon in time. I've not been so alive in WoW for a long time! Fear! Tingling nerves! Exhilaration!

In one sense, the 140 jujubes didn't matter. I'd happily take a loss of 140 emblems of whatever, just to get another shot at that fun.

In another sense, the 140 VPs did matter. It was the end of the WoW week and the reset meant that I would never get the chance to win those particular 140 again. Would we have been so pumped up if it had been, say, a Thursday server reset for some hot-fix, knowing that we would still be able to get our full quota of VPs during the remainder of the week if we failed this particular time? I don't think so. I mean, we can try a timed run any time of the week, and I don't think it would be so thrilling as this one was. I think it was the fact that our VPs were in jeopardy that caused the extra frisson of excitement.

This goes back to Nils' perfect death-penalty, which is something that you greatly fear happening, but don't suffer much if it actually does happen. We greatly feared the permanent loss of the chance to get our full quota of VPs for the week and were greatly motivated by that. But in the end, their loss was not terrible, because we had not owned them in the first place. We had not mentally accounted these VPs as ours, since we had not yet won them, and we knew at the outset that our chances of doing so were not 100%.

A solution to the problem of wiping in instances.

2011-02-11T10:17:00.006Z

I visited the cathedral in Stormwind today. Looking for Shaina Fuller, the first-aid trainer. She was busy with another student, so I sat down at a nearby bench to wait my turn. Bored, my eyes wandered around the room. Lying there on the ground beneath the seat in front of me was a scrap of vellum. I picked it up. It was memo, between the heads of two organizations I'd never heard of before. Well, I read it, and I was amazed by its content. I quickly stuffed it in my pocket and ran out into the sunshine, unsure what to do about it. I think the best thing to do is bring it into the public domain, so below is a transcription of the memo.

From: Dr. Van Howzen, CEO Azeroth Health Service Executive.
To: Professor Gashweld, Chief Surgeon, Royal College of Physicians
Re: Centres of Excellence

Dear Tiberius,

As you know, the Alliance Trauma Association of Doctors established a centre of excellence in Theramore several years ago, and has shown an excellent record in patient treatment and outcomes. As a result of this success, the Azeroth Health Service Executive has been created to streamline the delivery of health-care throughout Azeroth. Our most urgent task is to improve health service productivity, and to that end we have developed a vision for change. Let me re-iterate our mission statement:
"The Azeroth Health Service Executive aims to provide high quality and equitable care for all its patients, in a safe and secure environment, and to achieve excellence in clinical practice, teaching, training and research".

I now turn to the treatment of trauma injury in instances. Heretofore, trauma injury in dungeons has been dealt with solely by general health practitioners. It is the practice of all instance groups to have one or more dedicated General Practitioners accompany the group and provide immediate emergency support. This has several problems.

It puts GPs at risk, as they are dependant on the rest of the group for protection from injury while they are treating patients, usually in the middle of dangerous encounters. This has led on more than one occasion to GPs suffering from exactly the same kinds of trauma that they are trying to prevent. Studies by ATAD have consistently shown over several years that over 95% of all GPs suffer at least one injury per instance.
In the event of the death of the GP, it is common for the whole party to succumb to their injuries. Studies by your own organization, the RCP, have shown this to be the case in 72% of all encounters where all GPs die.
In many cases, the trauma is so great that the GP's mana-pool is completely exhausted before the end of the encounter. Once again, it is common for the whole party, including the GP, to succumb to their injuries (see Surgeon General Cogspin's report in last month's Journal of the Azeroth College of Surgeons). A common response to this is for GPs on the spot to allow some patients to die in order to conserve their mana. Such patients could be saved.
In other cases, parties find themselves breezing through instances without much injury, leaving their accompanying GPS with little to do. The productivity of these GPs is greatly reduced.
It reduces instance group productivity to have to wait until a GP becomes available and willing to undertake such hazardous activity.
GPs have to be knowledgeable about a wide range of injury vectors including blunt and sharp force trauma, burns, poison, frostbite, and various forms of magically induced injury, both physical and mental. It is inherent in being a General Practitioner that one is not a specialist in any field. Therefore the best specialized knowledge and techniques are unavailable to instance parties.
The only medical technologies and equipment available is that which the GP is capable of carrying personally. This greatly limits the quality of the healthcare delivered.

To address these problems, we plan to create centres of excellence in which specialist doctors can provide high quality and equitable care for patients in a safe and secure environment. No doctor need be forced to accompany adventurers into dangerous environments. Instead they will be able to perform their work in one of our centres, where they are safe from attack, where they have the backup of other specialists (including an almost limitless mana pool), where they have access to the latest technology, and where they can achieve excellence in clinical practice, teaching, training and research.

With medical practitioners now working in our centres of excellence instead of in dark and dangerous dungeons, we must next address how primary healthcare will be delivered to patients in instances. We must rapidly bring injured patients out of these instances and into our hospitals. We pondered several schemes (for instance Gryphon Master Talonaxe of the Society of Flight Masters was approached to discuss the feasibility of an air ambulance service, and we discussed with Zaphod Boombox the provision of goblin rocket packs to adventurers), before finally deciding on the Automatic Remote Supervision and Extraction service. A.R.S.E. is composed of two parts: a supervision service and an extraction service.

1. Supervision. The supervision service monitors the health of adventurers, automatically and remotely. We did consider installing eyes of Kilrogg in all instances but they would have to be manually monitored, and the cost would have been prohibitive; and of course there is always a worry when relying on warlock thaumaturgy. Instead, we asked High Tinker Mekkatorque to advise, and he has commissioned an automatic monitoring device from the Gnomeregan Institute of Engineering. This is a small robust, waterproof device that adventurers will carry in their back pocket, and that will continually transmit health indices to an automatic monitoring station in Ironforge. Clinical trials are already underway in our Theramore centre of excellence and the results are promising. Gelbin tells me that the Institute has provided monitoring coverage over the whole of Dun Morogh and Theramore for our trials, and intends to complete coverage of the Eastern Kingdoms by the end of the fourth quarter of this year, provided funding is made available. Signal coverage will be extended to the rest of Kalimdor next year and to Northrend the following year. We hope to provide a separate service in Outlands in three years' time.

2. Extraction. Archmage Rhonin of the Kirin Tor has been approached to extend the teleportation facilities that are currently provided in instances to allow adventurers to be teleported to a new triage centre in Dalaran. This will have portals to all our centres of excellence so that patients can be triaged quickly and delivered efficiently to the centre which can best treat their injuries. Rhonin and Gelbin have set up a committee to examine how monitoring signals from the A.R.S.E monitor can be delivered early to the Dalaran triage centre, possibly by aggregating such signals in the Ironforge Monitoring Centre and sending them through a dedicated repeater portal.

The nerve centre of the whole operation will be in Gnomeregan. Gelbin tells me that stage two of Operation:Gnomeregan is on schedule and the capital city should be fully ready by the time we begin the build-out. The day-to-day operation will be fully automatic: when the health of an adventurer carrying an A.R.S.E. monitor falls below a preassigned level (settable by the adventurer), such adventurers will be automatically teleported out of the instance to our triage centre, where depending on the type and seriousness of their injuries they will be assigned to a destination centre of excellence and put in its portal queue. At the same time, a fully healed adventurer will be teleported back to the instance in their place. This solution will make party wipes a thing of the past: it will be almost impossible to die in instances, thanks to the excellence of the health care solution that the Azeroth HSE will deliver. Instances will finally become as safe as houses for everyone.

I trust you are in agreement with this plan; I am sure all adventurers will welcome it. I will be in touch again once funding has been secured.

Yours truly,
Gustaf Van Howzen

Well, what to make of this! It is a solution to the problem of wiping, that much is certain.

The Beginning of a Longer Journey

2010-12-10T13:30:00.002Z

I got to level 85 last night, which was quite a short journey; so now the job of gearing up begins. The levelling journey was fun: I chose Mt. Hyjal as my level 80 - level 82 zone, and on opening night, the zone was packed with adventurers - and their bones: the circle of bleached bones around Baron Geddon shows that many adventurers weren't listening to Galrond of the Claw, when he told us not to stand in the fire!

Being with so many adventurers, all corpse-camping quest mobs, was not good for immersion; and neither was the spawn rate of mobs. I know Blizzard wanted to cater for the rush; but it's not very immersive, after killing a boss and while still looting him, to be smacked on the head by the very same boss whose corpse is supposedly at my feet! I hope that after the initial flood, Blizzard can reduce the spawn rate; but I doubt they will, as this sort of thing happened to a lesser extent in Northrend, too - and I arrived there well after the initial flood had subsided.

Mt. Hyjal was okay. Oh, I didn't dislike it, but there was no wow factor. It played as if it had been designed in 2004 (despite the phasing, it could have been Darkshore). Deepholm was fine, very like an underground Hellfire Peninsula, or Blade's Edge Mountains; but for me the glory of the levelling zones was Uldum. Firstly, the visuals were great: the world was both beautiful and convincing (the graphics reminded me of Ulduar - I wonder if it was the same team)? Second, the storytelling was excellent, with two main storylines: the fight between the Ramkahen and their Neferset neighbours was epic, and could easily have spanned more than one zone; and the story of Harrison Jones racing with Commander Schnottz to uncover the secrets of the Titans was engaging. One niggle I have is that the world of Indiana Jones is not really the World of Warcraft, no matter how good the storyline is. Sure an attempt was made to tie the two together, with Brann Bronzebeard's Deus ex Machina appearance at the end; but it still doesn't gel. All the same it was a great story, and I loved seeing it.

Clunkyness.

I'm afraid there were several jolts to immersion in this release; the main cause was phasing, and the limits of this technology are apparent. The more Blizzard use phasing to tell a story, the more we as players are forced to go around the funfair in the order Blizzard tells us: get out of phase with the questgivers and things go rapidly downhill. So you have to do the quests in the order Blizzard wants you to, and no other order is really certain to work. I'm not talking about quest chains here, where one quest does not become available until the previous quest in the chain had been completed. I'm talking about interference from other storylines that might move you to a phase where the first quest chain becomes impossible to complete (because items you need are not in the new phase). Each phase added complicates both design and testing immensely. Where Blizzard carry it off, phasing is great for giving you the impression of changing the world. But the more phases added, the more the interconnections between different phases, the greater the chance to get it wrong, and this release has shown a number of phasing problems already (for instance, try following the breadcrumb quest in Stormwind (Rallying the Fleet) that takes you to the Twilight Highlands, while you still have Call of Duty in your quest log - Supply Sergeant Graves is in a different phase! Worse, it has prevented you, the adventurer, from wandering off the path, and doing your own thing. I wandered into both Uldum and the Twilight Highlands initially without following the breadcrumb quests for both. Let me tell you, that is an eerie experience! So paradoxically, the phasing feature, which was designed to give you the impression that you were controlling or influencing what went on in the world, left me with the impression of less control. I never felt more like a passenger.

One last thing. Blizzard told us that in Cataclysm we'd find the mobs a lot tougher than in Wrath of the Lich King - they were going to beef them up, make them less of a pushover. Well, from my experience, this is not true, at least in Mt. Hyjal, Uldum and the Twilight Highlands. Sure the mobs have more power, but so do we adventurers; and I still found myself able to kill mobs with 3 or 4 shots, usually before they managed to lay a finger on me (thanks to two great mage talents: Nether Vortex) and Incanter's Absorption. One or two of the bosses made me get out my mirror images to tank for me, but none of the fights were taxing. In fact in some cases, Blizzard already provides tanking NPCs for us. The instances certainly are different, however, and I appreciate that. It is very easy in the Stonecore, for instance, to overpull, and crowd control is a necessity again. I am looking forward to gearing up and trying the raids.

A loss

2010-12-08T18:12:00.002Z

It was a bittersweet moment when I finally found cataclysm gear to beat the gear I spent so long acquiring for ICC. I sharded my Bloodmage gear with great reluctance. Having worked so hard to get it, our ICC gear means a lot more to us than just the stats attached to it - it carries memories. All the same, the piece I most happily sharded was the Bloodmage Hood. Was there ever an uglier headdress for a mage?

More than 25 quests

2010-12-06T11:02:00.003Z

The Cataclysm hits tonight. Many adventurers are stocking their quest-log with 25 completed quests to hand in as soon as midnight arrives; but did you know you can hand in more than 25 completed quests?

The secret is to choose quests where the quest-giver asks you to get them something. But you don't accept the quest beforehand. You arrive just after midnight at the quest-giver, with the items the questgiver wants, then you accept the quest and hand over the goods in the same heartbeat.

A good example of this is the quest The Valiant's Charge. You go to the Argent Tournament quest hub with your 25 already-completed quests, and also with 25 Valiant's Seals. You hand in whatever completed quests you have there, then you accept The Valiant's Charge from the quest-giver and hand it in an instant later, handing over the 25 seals you had brought with you. So for about 5 seconds extra work on Tuesday morning, you've managed to hand in a 26th quest.

Here's another example: Hot and Cold. You just turn up with 6 frozen Iron Scraps that you had collected earlier. Again, for this to work, you mustn't have accepted this quest prior to turning up to hand it in. Also, as it's a daily, at least one of the 25 quests you did have in your log must not be a daily, as you can only hand in 25 dailies.

I couldn't immediately think of any other good examples, but I'm sure you can!

Ninjaed

2010-11-26T12:10:00.003Z

My account was ninjaed yesterday. When I complained to a GM he told me they wouldn't lift a finger to help; because the ninja was Blizzard itself.

I went to bed on Tuesday evening with 635/700 quests completed from my Loremaster of the Eastern Kingdoms achievement. I knew that there were changes afoot -Blizzard gave us three days' notice that these changes would be coming in the Shattering, rather than the Cataclysm - so with just under 600 quests complete, I tried to finish the achievement. But despite my efforts, I just couldn't complete another 100 quests in 3 days. So I was resigned to losing a few of the quests that count towards the achievement.

Imagine, then, my surprise when I woke up the next day to find out I had only completed less than 20 quests in the Eastern Kingdoms. That surely isn't fair. That is just wrong. Three days' notice that you're going to lose 600 completed quests? (To rub salt into the wounds, many of the supposedly rewritten "new" quests were carbon copies of ones I had already completed.)

Blizzard appear to be trying to rewrite history - to pretend that I hardly quested in the Eastern Kingdoms at all. We are living in Ghostcrawler's world now, and the world of Tigole et al. has been written out of history. It is now year zero.

However, just because the questgivers no longer want adventurers to perform the tasks they formerly begged for help with, that doesn't mean those tasks never existed and that I did not perform them. What Blizzard took from me was far more valuable than gold. Blizzard has stolen my past.

About sociopaths

2010-10-29T13:32:00.003+01:00

I was listening to the radio on the way to work, and heard this hugely entertaining discussion on psychopaths in the workplace:

http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2010/pc/pod-v-26101018m42stjmspsycho.mp3

Or pick it up here:

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_thejohnmurrayshow.xml

or listen to it here (it's the first item in the show)

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thejohnmurrayshow/2010-10-26.html

Why people stand in the fire

2010-10-06T15:07:00.004+01:00

Why don't we get the hell out of the fire? Elder Game has a very intriguing answer. But first, to understand it, take a look at this video of basketball players, and see if you can count how many passes they make:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Excellent test, don't you agree! Now head on over to Elder Game and read his interesting article on Deathtrap Design

A Draenei in the Deadmines

2010-10-03T18:39:00.003+01:00

I have recently been levelling my first Draenei, and I can tell you, I've really enjoyed the experience: it's completely different to my previous experiences in the old world.

Firstly, the low-level experience is set at a particular point in time: just after the shaceship "the Exodar" crashed on an island off Kalimdor. Your tasks are all centred around the immediate aftermath of this event, as you try to help fellow victims of the crash, and repair the damage caused to the land you crashed in. You quickly discover that you've been followed to this world by your enemies, the Blood Elves, and you make first contact with some of the other species in your new world. The story is told immersively and you just can't stop playing, so much do you want to get to the next episode.

In contrast, all the WoW vanilla starting zones are set in a fairly timeless period, and the quests are more concerned with teaching you the mechanics of controlling you character, rather than immersion. So it's kill ten kobolds in Northshire and steal their candles. For no good reason other than that somebody asked you to.

So I really enjoyed the work I did on behalf of my fellow Draenei on Azuremyst Isle and Bloodmyst Isle. The first jarring moment in this immersion came when I reached the Exodar itself. There, Draenei commoners were celebrating Brewfest! What? How did we get involved in Brewfest? Did we meet the dwarves? I only just made first contact with our nearest neighbours, the night-elves, along with an expeditionary naval force from Stormwind.

Never mind. That was just unfortunate timing. I found a ship that took me to Darkshore and continued my explorations there.

When I started a night-elf, long ago, I found Teldrassil (once out of the starting zone) to be quite an immersive place, also. Plenty of good stories to be a part of, and not all of them involved killing ten rats. The night-elf quests in Darkshore and Ashenvale continue in this vein, and are among the best stories in Azeroth, even if there is quite a bit of Naga bashing and Murloc murdering involved. But the night the music died for me was the night I was given a quest in Blackfathom Deeps.

It is no longer possible to gather a group to go to Blackfathom Deeps simply by asking players around Astranaar and Ashenvale. They look at you as if you had two heads. A knowing smile crosses their face, the word "noob" forms at the back of their mind, and they tell you to use the dungeon finder. Another crack in my immersive experience.

So I did. I queued up for a random dungeon and found myself in the Deadmines. What the?! How did I get here? I wrote before about the gripping story of the Defias Brotherhood that leads up to the killing of Edwin van Cleef. What a sorry, half-baked version of that story my draenei met. Why on earth would he want to kill these miners, those goblins, yonder pirates and the various other denizens of the Deadmines that he met? What a horrible, horrible experience it was to be in the Deadmines without having been through the quests leading up to it. I thank the light that I at least experienced the world of Warcraft before the introduction of the Dungeon Finder. Boy, it isn't even a year old, at this point, but it has irrevocably changed the way we experience the world.

I remember how it used to be, how difficult it could be to get together a group, and I can see all the advantages there are to using it; I remember trade full of desparate requests of "LFM UK normal" and so on. All the same, Dungeon Finder as it currently stands completely breaks the immersiveness of the questing experience. I understand why Blizzard did what they did when creating the Dungeon Finder: they had already tried to fix the problem of putting together groups a couple of times, and each time it had failed, for various reasons. This time, they threw in everything they could think of, to give it every chance of succeeding. And succeed it did! Now it is almost the only way people do 5-man instances (I would hazard a guess that more people solo instances than put together a 5-man team without using the Dungeon Finder).

How could it be fixed?

Well, as I said, Blizzard threw everything that they could at it, in the hopes of making it a success where they had previously met with failure. Unfortunately, their over-egging of this particular pudding has been the cause of its problems (which are problems of success, not problems of failure, let's remember). Now that Dungeon Finder is well established, perhaps its time to remove some of the eggs from the pudding.

One idea would be not to queue you for instances that you haven't yet found the entrance to, or at least the summoning stone of. I think this must be foremost in re-establishing immersion.
Only form groups with people of your own realm, or at least give you the option of only queuing with people from your realm.
Drop you and your group at the summoning stone for the instance, not in the instance itself (I know this might cause problems with cross-realm parties, but they are not insurmountable).
Do nothing except create the group. After all, the problems people previously had was simply in getting a group together at all. It could previously take half an hour of barking in the trade channel to do it (how little the LFG channel was used!). Just form the group, and let the members take it from there.
Remove the free emblems or satchel of helpful goods. There should be life outside of instances as well!
You don't really want people entering the instance for the first time to be doing it with people doing it for the hundredth time. That takes all the magic out of it for the first timers.

I'm sure you have better ideas than me. I'd love for Blizzard to think about them.

Gevlon the Bully

2010-10-01T10:29:00.010+01:00

So Gevlon doesn't believe that "morons and slackers" can benefit from education (his definition of morons and slackers are people who don't want to play WoW the way he thinks they should), and rather than fix his problem, he would rather eliminate them.

Well, I'd rather expel sociopaths, liars, bigots, and bullies from our game, and Gevlon is all of these.

For a long time, I thought that Gevlon was just harmless. Here was a guy with some wacky economic ideas that had been tried out in the 19th century and found wanting (and led to revolution in many of the countries they were tried in), and some weird ideas about how you should play the game the way he wants you to play it. A harmless, bright but ignorant kid, I thought, who doesn't yet know much about the ways of the world. But his lack of education on such matters hasn't stopped him peddling an economic theory from the age of steam and he has been engaged in a political endeavour to persuade WoW players of his socio-economic theory of Eloi and Morlocks (or "socials" and "goblins", as Gevlon calls them). Gevlon thinks of himself and his fellow travellers as Morlocks, and everybody who doesn't buy into his theories of how the game should be played as Eloi, and ripe for exploitation and elimination.

Gevlon the sociopathic bigot

This example really made it concrete to me that he is, in fact, the sociopath that he claims to be. He has no qualms about hurting other people greatly if it makes his life slightly easier. In general he does this by first making the people he is hurting appear subhuman: they are M&S, socials, filth, retards. The subtext is that they deserve whatever he wants to do to them. Once they are labelled and defined as Eloi, then those who label themselves as Morlocks may feast on them without pricking their consciences (many of Gevlon's followers are not the sociopath that he is, and have a conscience). This namecalling and labelling is a constant feature of Gevlon's blog, and its regular readers will by now have become so exposed to this hateful bigotry that they have become inured to it. It is bigotry and prejudice nonethless.

As a sociopath, Gevlon has no affinity for (and only a theoretical understanding of) the underlying concepts and mechanisms of society (perhaps this is because his real-life society exploded so dramatically in 1989. I don't know, and I don't want to make excuses for him). For Gevlon, the only person that counts is number one, and he will do whatever he can to hurt you if it makes things slightly more comfortable for himself. His philosophy is not utilitarian, he is not after the greater good. He is after the good of only himself. Sometimes this also benefits his stooges, but he is just as happy to harm them to benefit himself (for instance, getting his stooges to transfer realms to Inglourious Gankers, then pulling the plug on it once he got bored by it).

Gevlon the bully

Unable to fit into normal society sociably, Gevlon has no idea how to persuade people to see his point of view, and his best attempt is to try to bully them into submission with rudeness and namecalling. See, for instance, his attempts to persuade players to follow his orders in Alterac Valley (this came after this classic pair of posts "sitah and helcsi" and "its not my faliure", where Gevlon completely fails to understand Ten's comments on the leadership skills needed to gel an unco-ordinated group into a successful team, as team-building is a social endeavour). Or his recent attempt to bully people in Wintergrasp into following his orders, by kicking them from the raid if they don't. Gevlon is much more bullying in matters concerning the auction house, of course, where failure to follow his one true path could get you labelled a moron or a slacker or both. And if your game is to collect pets or achievements instead of gold or bosskills, you are labelled a moron by Gevlon. Anyone, in fact, who plays the game differently to Gevlon risks his wrath.

Gevlon the liar

Gevlon is a liar. He has admitted as much and even boasted about it (see LF10M VoA25, if you didn't already read it). He thinks this makes him seem clever. He and his fellow Morlocks feel it is acceptable to lie to what they see as fair game. By labelling the other raid as M&S, in other words subhuman, it's okay to abuse them. Also, he lies to the whole realm. But that's okay, the rest of the realm must be M&S or they'd be in The PuG; and you can lie to the M&S. Even those who join your raid. Well, PuG members, don't be so sure Gevlon doesn't see you as fair game, too. His lies and his bullying behaviour are for the good of one person: Gevlon. And sod the rest of you.

Bullying, lying, bigoted, sociopathic behaviour isn't tolerated in most societies. We should not tolerate it in WoW.

I become neglected, and am provided for

2010-09-06T12:34:00.002+01:00

Kudos to Raimondas for showing how to make 2000g at level 10 starting with no money! Now you never need to be stuck for cash again!

I begin life on my own account, and don't like it

2010-08-20T12:16:00.005+01:00

What professions should I choose as I start off in Azeroth? Well, that's easy! As you are beginning your journey, it is wisest to choose gathering professions - mining, skinning, herbalism. If you plan to do this, then you will have an easy time, because your professions will be making money for you from scratch - everything you gather can be sold for excellent profit in the Auction House. As you mine, or skin, or pluck, your skills in these professions will increase, making other ores minable, other carcasses skinnable and other herbs pickable.

The only thing you have to bear in mind is that it's easy for you to level your character faster than your gathering professions, and find yourself adventuring in an area where many of the collectibles are too difficult for you to collect. If that happens, you'll find that because you aren't able to gather as much, your professional skills aren't increasing as fast as your XP, so that in the next zone you enter it'll be even harder to gather stuff. It's a runaway train, and the only way to stop it is to nip it in the bud: if you find yourself in an area full of, say, mageroyal, or tin ore, and your gathering skills aren't yet good enough to collect it, then the best thing you can do is take a break from adventuring, and go back to the zone you just left and start gathering peacebloom or copper ore until you increase your professional skills to the point where you can start using them in the new zone. If you don't do this, your professional skills will stagnate through lack of opportunities to improve them.

Skinning has one slight advantage over mining and herbalism: you rarely need to go out of your way, for two reasons: because the animal you are skinning is one that you will often have killed yourself, and whose warm corpse you will be wanting to loot, anyway; and because very often when you are killing things, other adventurers will be killing things right beside you, and you can skin their kills without much extra work!

So, you can happily begin your professional life by picking two of the three gathering skills and sell what you collect in the Auction House. If you do this while levelling, you will be rich, because the fruits of your labour are always wanted by other professions.

Another popular strategy is to pick one gathering profession and a manufacturing profession that uses the raw materials you gather. If you're a mage, herbalism and alchemy are popular choices, hunters often choose mining and engineering (so they can make their own ammunition). Miners often choose jewelcrafting or blacksmithing, and herbalists who don't take alchemy often choose inscription. Don't bother with inscription, unless you are prepared to make a real industry out of it. It's the sort of industry that you would want to devote all your bag space to, and then some. It's the sort of profession that you want to devote a whole alt to.

Other popular combinations are skinning and leatherworking, mining and blacksmithing. Don't pick these. The idea is that you can make your own armour and save yourself a ton of money. Trust me, it never happens this way. You simply end up wasting your gathered materials making items to skill up your manufacturing profession, and you end up having to dump these manufactured items on the AH for less than the cost of the raw materials, because nobody wants them, not even you: you will get armour that's roughly as good as you can make, just by questing and looting.

What is important is that you realize that you are not stuck with these professions forever. As you reach higher levels, you will easily be able to afford to throw one away and quickly level another from scratch with materials you buy in the Auction House. Let me briefly tell you what each profession involves:

Alchemy: turning plants into potions
Blacksmithing: Turning metal into armour, weapons and so on (you must be at an anvil to do this)
Enchanting: disenchanting armour, weapons and so on into magical essences, and using these essences to enchant other pieces of armour, weapons and so on to increase their stats.
Engineering: making ammunition, and fun gadgets (bombs, rockets, goggles, toys) that mostly are only usable by engineers
Herbalism: plucking plants (for resale or reuse in another profession)
Inscription: making ink from herbs to create glyphs (and offhand items and trinkets).
Jewelcrafting: prospecting raw gems from metal ore, making jewelry (necklaces, rings, etc) and cut gems that increase their user's stats.
Leatherworking: Turning leather into armour.
Mining: digging up metal ore (for resale or reuse in another profession)
Skinning: turning dead animals into leather (for resale or reuse in another profession)
Tailoring: turning cloth into clothes (including cloth armour).

Of course, I didn't know all this when I chose my professions: I chose tailoring and enchanting - a common combination, but probably one of the worst for levelling mages.

First, I chose tailoring because I wear cloth armour and I thought it was a great way of using all the cloth I was picking up off kills; and it is, but the items you can manufacture as a low-level tailor are not the sort of items most people want to buy. The exception to this is bags, but the standard bag that everyone buys is the Netherweave Bag, and it's a long time before you learn to make those.

Second, I chose enchanting, as I thought it a magely thing to choose; and it is, and it also has a sort of gathering skill built in, disenchanting. This is handy because it allows you to disenchant armour that would otherwise be useless to you into magic essences (shards, dusts and so on) that you will use for enchantment, or for resale. Those enchanting materials can net quite a pretty profit, but in general, enchantment is a drain on your wealth rather than a benefit, as the low-level scrolls of enchantment you make while levelling are generally not as valuable as the mats you used.

Once you have maxed out a manufacturing profession, then the story changes; then you will be able to make rare and in-demand items that level-capped players need. For instance tailors can make spellthreads, which every top-level spellcaster needs and will pay a fortune for. Each profession has something like that, and will start to generate income for you, as well as providing special items that only you can use. Once you reach the level cap, and have enough money to be able to power-level a profession (i.e. buy all the materials you need in the auction house to get from level 1 to level 450 in the profession in a few hours) then it's time to review your professions and perhaps choose a profession for the bonuses it can provide you. Until then, choose at least one gathering profession, and either a second gathering profession, or a manufacturing profession that uses the fruits of your gathering or provides you with items you know you will need. Don't rely on being able to sell what you manufacture for more than the cost of the raw materials.

Finally, you should always pick up the secondary professions, cooking, fishing and first-aid. They don't take up one of your two professions, so you can have two primary and all three secondary professions (or four if you are a rogue: they get lockpicking as well).

A Little Cold Water

2010-06-01T13:33:00.008+01:00

On the goblin subject of "time is money, friend", Tobold recently asked:

"Are you really trying to tell me that all the progress in the form of levels and gear you get in a MMORPG is a function of your *skill* in playing that game, acquired by many hours of training? Balderdash!"

I think we need to differentiate between you the player, and the character that you are playing. In RPGs (MMO or otherwise), it is the character whose skill increases as he or she spends time training. "Look! I have learnt a new spell, and can now cast frostbolts at my enemies. My skill in magic has increased." This says nothing about player skill. Their skill in magic is still zero. Players are roleplaying a character. The person that is making "progress in the form of levels and gear you get" is the character, not the player.

In this roleplay, it is quite easy to accept that time spent by our characters in practicing their skills actually improves those skills. It just so happens that the time the character is active is equal to the time the player is playing him. The same is not true concerning money. We do not so easily accept that our character's in-game wealth should depend on the player's expenditure.

I (the character) acquire items by in-game activities such as killing kobolds and taking their candles. Then one day I wake up and find the Eternal Staff of Uber-Pwnness in my mailbox. How did it get there? What is the in-game activity that explains its arrival? If there is none, if I get it simply because the player playing me bought it in real life, I have broken out of the play I am in, the actor is suddenly jerked back from the story to the stage. The same thing happens to me if it appears in your mailbox instead of mine (and I become aware of it, for instance by seeing it on your back).

Why do we play MMORPGs? Everybody has their own reasons, and I'm sure Tobold realizes that the fantasy of killing the Lich King (and not the reality of pressing keys in front of a screen) is a reason for many people. In other words, we play for the story, more than the gameplay. Of course the gameplay isn't unimportant, but RPGs in general and WoW in particular have such great stories. Without the stories, we are just killing ten rats to collect 10 XP.

Each time we are jerked out of Azeroth and put back into our living rooms, our enjoyment of the game diminishes. There are plenty of times this happens, and it seems to be getting more frequent recently: the dungeon-finder teleport, frost-emblems that magically appear in your purse as soon as a boss dies or a "heroic" is completed, greed steeds, pandaren monks, Mr. Chilly, and even the older battleground teleports (though at least I can sort of believe that I'm being teleported there by the battlemaster I spoke to earlier), trading card items, and the Zhevra mount and its replacement, the X-53. It's hard enough to ignore these immersion-breaking elements. I don't want to see an increase in them.

I understand that for many people, its a game of collecting (gear, bosskills, gold, achievements, reputation, titles, pets, mounts, recipes), and the acting is not so important, and I can understand that they may not be so perturbed as me, as long as the thing they collect is not impinged by a real-money transaction. However, once it does impinge, many (not all) collectors are also perturbed by it.

For instance, mount or pet collectors who want the whole collection must now go out and spend real money on top of their game fee for the new RMT pets and mounts. I see many players on blogs saying "yeah, so what? These items don't affect the game. They are cosmetic. Blizzard would never introduce RMT items that matter in-game". What they mean is "yeah, so what? These items don't affect my game." They don't matter in-game if your game is gear-collecting or bosskill-collecting or title-collecting. But they do matter in-game if your game is pet-collecting. To a pet collector, dismissing them as "cosmetic" has a hollow ring.

Anyway. In an MMORPG, it is not surprising that a character should improve his skills as time passes and he practices those skills and trains them. In WoW the time a character spends and the time a player spends on this is the same (not so in EVE, where characters may continue to train when the player is offline). However if we allow players to acquire items in-game simply through out-of-game RMT, that spoils some of the fun of many role-players and collectors - and we are all role-players to some extent: we are trying to kill monsters, not move pixels - and we are all collectors to some extent, even if what we are collecting is boss-kills.

Finally, to return to the original quote from Tobold, above, I doubt there are many people who think that WoW is mainly a game of player skill (though of course there are some who do not possess even the small modicum of situational awareness needed to GTFOOTF). Of course, some players are more skilful than others, but it is character skill that distinguishes a level 1 mage from a level 80 mage, not player skill. Player skill only matters when the characters are notionally equally skilled and geared.

Mr. Micawber's Transactions

2009-10-08T21:14:00.005+01:00

Companion pets are great fun. What white witch doesn't love to have a black cat padding quietly behind her? Actually, I now have quite a collection of pets, and I accidentally discovered something worthwhile: pets are a tradable commodity!

Companion pets are an especially good source of gold for low-level players, who might have a few silver coins spare and can buy a beautiful black Bombay Cat from Donni Anthania, the cat lady just between Northwind Abbey and Stormwind City. You can then auction it in Stormwind for a good profit.

However, if you can get to the Blackwater Auction House in the goblin-held cities of Tanaris or Booty Bay, you can make a even more money there, because horde traders make the trip there to buy these alliance pets (pets that the vendor will only sell to alliance members). They can't get them any other way.

Other pets you can easily get at low levels are the Snowshoe Rabbits from the Amberstill ranch in Dun Morogh, and the owls of Darnassus. Any time you're passing, just pick up a few and sell them in an Auction House.

Also, if you happen to be visiting the Blackwater Auction House, you can often pick up horde pets. Those Golden Dragonhawk Hatchlings are especially pretty!

Have fun with these beautiful creatures!

Our Housekeeping

2009-09-30T13:46:00.003+01:00

I hope it goes without saying that after you have killed the enemy, their mangled corpses should be subjected to the indignity of a strip-search while their blood still gushes hotly, and that you should loot everything you can carry.

What have you been doing with all that linen and woollen cloth that you've found on them? Chances are, you've been selling them to a vendor. Well, stop that, right now! There are at least two things you can do with them that are better than that.

Firstly, various professions can use these scraps of cloth. For instance, if you are a tailor, you already know that they can be turned into the most beautiful costumes; if you have the first aid profession, you can turn them into bandages.

Secondly, if you don't have a use for the cloth, sell it to an adventurer who does. Your fellow adventurers pay a lot more than vendors for it. But how do you sell it to somebody else? The Auction House is how. Go to the auction house, select an auctioneer, and search for the cloth you want to sell. You'll find loads of it, at various prices. Decide on the price you want to sell your cloth for (make sure the price you set is above the price a vendor would give you for it), and post it! If you select a low enough price, you'll find it will sell easily, and often within a few minutes. You'll get paid by a letter in your mailbox an hour after the sale.

And it's not just cloth that sells well. Every green item that you loot and that you can't use youself can be sold in the auction house. The secret here is that people will usually buy these item not to wear, but to disenchant into various magical powders, crystals, essences and so on, needed by enchanters. This gives even the lamest green item a value much higher than the vendor puts on it.

As well as green items, many white items also sell well at auction: consumables (like cloth) that are used in other professions or for quests. For instance those small eggs that you get from the birds in Westfall are worth quite a bit to chefs.

Also, while you're at the auction house, don't forget to buy some bags. You can get some from vendors. You can get bigger bags from tailors who sell their wares at the Auction House. Obviously, the bigger your bags, the more loot you can carry.

I don't want to turn this into a guide to using the auction house here; that's been done very well already in loads of places, including Just My Two Copper (http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/). I just want to draw your attention to its importance. Don't be poor. Sell your loot in the Auction House. At the very least, the AH is a great way to turn your unwanted loot into gold. The trading game can also be fun in its own right; I love trawling though the auctions looking for bargains that I can resell for profit later.

By the way, if you want to get the most out of the Auction House, you'll really want to get the AuctioneerAddon. This improves your pricing by tracking historical prices and letting you see when items are cheap or overpriced. If you never get any other World of Warcraft addon, get this one. And check out Marcko's guide to using it: http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/2009/02/22-steps-to-using-auctioneer-correctly.html

Boosting

2009-09-02T00:46:00.007+01:00

The first time I went into the Deadmines instance, my first instance, it was awesome. My group and I were really challenged by the enemies we met there, and we felt we were heroes when we completed it and got out the other end with Edwin van Cleef's head. That was a real achievement. I was just 19. Level 19.

Some days later, I was duelling in Goldshire, when a level 50 player asked me and my protagonist to accompany her. She brought us to Westfall, to Moonbrook, and I realised we were going to go into the Deadmines. Just the three of us. At first, we had a hard time, since the mobs targetted me and my protagonist. We hadn't yet learned what a tank was, and so we didn't know to let the tank take the aggro first before we started attacking. Moreover, being lower level than our leader, our aggro radius was greater, and so as we travelled alongside our level 50 leader, mobs started attacking us. This made things tricky for the level 50. Eventually she suggested we hang back and let her get stuck into the mobs and really get their attention before we started attacking. This made for faster progress, but left me and my protagonist with little to do; by the time the level 50 hit the mobs twice, they were dead. We sort of became passengers. There was nothing heroic about it. Luckily, I'd already got my achievement.

The first time I went into the Stockades, when I was 24, it was in the company of a level 24 hunter who had invited a level 80 death knight along. It was a complete waste of time. The death knight went through the stockade like a hot knife through butter, and the hunter and I were reduced from fighters to cleaners. All we did was sweep up after the death knight. I take no pride in the Stockades "achievement". A failchievement, really! I can never get it properly now. I've never been back.

"Looking for boost in Stockades" is a common cry on the trade channel. Some low-level character is asking for a high-level character to accompany him to the Stockades and essentially get the achievement for him. There are several reasons why one might want to do this, but let me assure you, you never want to be boosted in a dungeon if you've not yet completed the dungeon for yourself. If you get a high-level character to do it for you (obviously with you in their company), you'll never be able to feel the pride of achieving something for yourself. Moreover, you've paid Blizzard for this content. Why would you additionally pay some level 80 character so that you can skip it and pretend you've done it? For that's what boosting means, even if the lower level character fires off a few spells, or swings his sword a bit as well.

There are legitimate reasons why you might want to be boosted:

you've already met the challenge and done the dungeon with a level-appropriate group and completed the achievement, and now you just want to "farm" it for some particular piece of loot that you didn't get the first time round.
you've completed the content in other alternative lives, and now you're just speed-levelling past content you already know well, in order to reach the end-game.
you are a coward and are not fit to be honored by the heroes of Stormwind, but you want to hide your cowardice by appearing to have achieved a brave act.
you are lazy and cannot be bothered doing your part for the alliance, but you want to hide your laziness by appearing to have achieved something for the alliance
you are a show-off who wants people to admire you, but you're actually too lazy or too cowardly to actually achieve something admirable.

If you're a newbie like me, who loves killing the horde, I doubt you belong in any of these categories. Don't accept boosts. You'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

Why would somebody offer boosts? Perhaps because a friend or guildmate has asked you to, and you want to help them (actually, I don't believe you are helping them if they are newbies like me). Perhaps because you're a show-off who would like a low-level character to think how great you are (possibly because you can't show off with your peers because you aren't their equal). Anyway, friends or guildmates won't be asking you for a boost over trade chat, so I assume if you're asking for or offering boosts in trade chat, that you belong to one of the "slacker" categories. As a matter of fact, I keep a note of people I see offering or soliciting boosts. I want to avoid grouping with either of them.

Teamwork

2009-08-31T22:50:00.008+01:00

If your only experience of grouping has been fighting Hogger, you probably don't yet know much about fighting in a five-man group.

Team Roles

There are four roles, normally: tank, DPS, healer and leader. Whoever is leader is also one of tank, DPS and healer. The group leader should normally be the highest level member of the group, or the most experienced member. If you are nominally leader, but not the highest level or most experienced member, you should invite the veteran to be leader. If you don't you risk the group having two leaders or none!

It is the job of the group leader to make sure everybody knows what is expected of them (Tank, DPS or Healer). Team members should follow the team leader's directions.

Leader: the leader's role is to assign combat targets, and make sure that the team is ready before giving the attack order.
Tank: the tank's role is to draw and keep the enemy's aggression. He is not expected to dish out punishment to the enemy, but rather to take it. Normally, this means defensive stance, shield and lots of taunts and mocking blows to keep the enemy attacking the tank and not the DPS or healers
DPS: DPS stands for "Damage per Second". The DPS's job is to do maximum damage to the enemy in the shortest possible time, while keeping their threat to a minimum, thus making the tanks job easier.
Healer: mainly the healer must make sure the tank, who is taking all the beating, is not killed. Of course, sometimes, enemies will attack DPS or healers, so the healers must also keep an eye on the whole team!

Fighting

Before each fight, make sure you are buffed and have buffed all your teammates! Buffs are beneficial spells you can cast on yourself or your teammates, such as "Arcane Intellect", or "Mark of the Wild".

The group leader may assign targets to particular members. Otherwise, the usual target is whoever is beating on the Tank! Tanks should be in defensive stance, and should be aware that spells may attract mobs to squishy DPS spellcasters, and should make sure they maintain threat (for instance by taunting the mobs who are attacking DPS).

Don't pull prematurely. Wait until the leader gives the order before attacking. I would go so far as to say that the most common cause of wipes is attacking a target before the team is ready.

Don't run! If you're being beaten up and likely to die, call for help, but don't run. Running makes it harder for your healers to target you, and harder for your DPS and tank to target the enemy who is attacking you; and since the enemy can usually run as fast as you, you normally won't outrun them, anyway (and in a dungeon instance, they will never stop chasing you). Even worse, by running you may draw other enemies into the fight, and instead of just you dying, the whole team may be wiped. Even if you are definitely going to die, stand your ground. Better to take one for the team than to wipe the team.

Looting

I think it's best to stick to group loot. This gives everybody a chance to roll on valuable items, and because it isn't first-come first-served (like free-for-all) it doesn't encourage looting mid-fight. You can concentrate on the fight without worrying that a less-principled team member is busy robbing the bodies.

Normally, when you are given the chance to roll on a valuable item, it is polite to choose "Greed" or pass. If you really need an item, ask the group leader (in party-chat, not whisper) if you may roll need. Normally you should only roll need on items that you can use immediately (either you can equip yourself with the item, or learn to use the item). You should not roll need on an item because you have an alt that needs it, or because you want to disenchant it.

Don't loot while the fight is still going on. Sometimes it isn't obvious that a teammate is still in trouble because they're behind you. It would be a Bad Thing if you were looting while your teammate was being killed!

I enlarge my Circle of Acquaintance

2009-07-03T23:52:00.004+01:00

What should you look for when choosing a guild? That depends on your motives. I have been in a number of guilds for different reasons, and I foresee that as I progress I may find reason to change guilds again.

First, you may choose not to join a guild. Many people find solo adventuring very satisfactory and feel no desire to join a club - for that´s all a guild is. There´s nothing you can´t accomplish as a solo adventurer. That said, there are many ways in which a guild can make things easier for you, which I´ll talk about below.

The first guild I joined, I joined for money. As simple as that. I had 5s54c in my pocket when I met a level 60 warrior who was yelling out that he would give 1g to anybody who would sign his guild charter. Let me tell you that was the easiest 1g I ever earned, and the most useful. By all means I advise you to take this offer yourself, if you're not yet in a guild. You need the money, he needs the signature. Both parties profit.

What's that all about, by the way? Why would a level 60 warrior be down in the market square in Stormwind offering gold to all and sundry to sign his charter. Surely he's more selective about who he wants in his guild? Surely the last person he wants in his guild is somebody who's just joining for the money? What's the catch? There is no catch. Or rather, the catch is, he doesn't want you in his guild - but the offer of 1g is genuine. The player who is offering money for your signature is not planning to steal anything from you (what have you got that might interest a level 60 warrior, after all). He's wanting to set up a 'banking' guild. This is a guild that will eventually only have 1 member, and that member will be his banker. Once the guild is up and running, it's probable that you and all the other signatories will be kicked out of the guild, 1g richer than when you joined it. What the guild master really wants is to be able to create a guild bank where he can store more items than he could store in his private bank account. Don't worry. Be happy. Take his 1g payment, leave when he finally has his guild up and running, and take the next guy's 1g. All parties will be happy.

Eventually you may want to join a proper guild. Maybe you just want to see what being in a guild is like. I encourage you to try a few before you settle down. Sow your wild oats. Different guilds have different flavours. Try a few out, and then decide what you like.

You'll see various advertisements in the trade and general channels from guilds who are looking for new members. These advertisements often contain a number of code words that will help you identify the kind of guild that's being advertised:

Guilds that advertise "we have our own tabard and bank tab" are generally new guilds - it's a big deal for them that they have their own tabard and bank tab because the guild master and officers have just spent a bucketload of money getting them. New guilds often die out. Try not to join a new guild until you have had experience of an established guild. I don't mean that you should never join a new guild. In fact, I think that eventually you should. Just not until you know what an experienced guild has to offer.

Guilds that use the words "progression" or "raiding" should be of no interest to you until you are level 80. You will certainly be of no interest to them.

Guilds that are "friendly" or "social" are certainly worth experiencing. Sometimes this is code for "not interested in joining the rat-race to level 80 and beyond. Just interested in having a good time, sharing some jokes, hanging out and having fun". There's nothing wrong with that, and it's worth trying out.

Guilds that are "levelling" guilds can be both friendly and social, but what their members have in common is this: they are very interested in joining the rat-race, and reaching level 80 and beyond. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's worth trying out. Very often, these are new guilds who have got beyond the "have tabard and bank tab" stage, but have no members at level 80 yet.

In my opinion, you should try out several guilds before choosing a long-term partner. You'll quickly realise what style suits you - social or levelling (of course most guilds are on a continuum between these two extremes). Once you are level 80, if you are considering raiding you'll perhaps look at the serious raiding/progression guilds. By then you won't need any advice from me.

Before joining a guild, I recommend you look at their member profile on the armoury. The EU armoury is at http://eu.wowarmory.com/ and the US armory is at http://www.wowarmory.com/

A levelling guild with less than 50 members will either die, or will require a lot of hard work from its members to get it up to a critical mass. On the other hand, a guild with more than 200 members might seem a bit impersonal. One of the most important things to know about guilds is that they're usually set up by a group of people who know each other well, perhaps having been together in other guilds, or perhaps grouping together often as they levelled up. Sometimes such a group can make you feel a little like an outsider. I left such a guild some time back, after a guild photo-shoot. The location chosen was the surface of the lake in Darnassus. If you couldn't walk on water? Too bad, noob. You weren't in the photo. I left the very next day.

I mentioned earlier that there are many ways in which a guild can make things easier for you. I´ve more or less covered these already: they can provide you with pals (for the crack), they can provide a ready-made pool of players around the same level as you with whom you can group and level and PvP, and after you´ve reached max level, it provides team-mates with which you can raid.

I also mentioned earlier that I think you should eventually join a new guild. Actually, the more I think about it, what I really mean is that I joined a new guild and liked it enough to want to stay. Why? Because in a new guild, you make a difference. You level up with the other new members of the guild, you get to know them, they get to know you. You make friends. Of course, this can happen in any guild, new or old. It can happen outside of a guild. All I can tell you is this. I like being in a new guild whose members are known to me. I wish it was a bigger guild, since we could more easily plan guild dungeons. I know that whatever happens to the guild (it's at the grow-or-die stage right now), I've enjoyed it.

If you ever want to start your own guild, I have one piece of advice: don't.
Just don't. It's a lot of work, and the rewards are uncertain (unless you're just creating a bank guild). Maybe it'll turn out like the guild you hoped for, maybe it won't. More than likely, there is already a guild out there that is a good match to what you want. It's probably a better match than the guild you build will eventually be! But if you insist in ignoring my advice, at least take Matticus' advice: http://www.worldofmatticus.com/guides/build-your-own-guild/

By the way, whatever guild you join, don't accept a boost. You'll regret it. More on boosting later.

I am Sent Away

2009-05-27T23:19:00.007+01:00

There comes a time in the life of every child of Elwynn Forest when we have to spread our wings and fly away. Of course, we've all been to Stormwind already, and met the high-level Jenkins and heroes, and beggars and bankers; but really this is still home. No, usually our first trip abroad is to Westfall, and what a difference there is between Westfall and Stormwind. While Elwynn forest has a magical fantasy mediaeval touch to it, Westfall has a different
atmosphere: dustbowl America - a formerly rich but now rundown farming community, now almost derelict and overrun by weeds and other undesirables.

The story of Westfall is the story of that shadowy organization, the Defias Brotherhood, and it's a great story, though this isn't obvious when you first arrive. In fact the initial quests in Westfall are a little tedious - kill twenty of this, collect 8 of that - and the magic mechanical scarecrows, while they add to the not-in-Kansas atmosphere, do not fit into the world - no attempt is made to explain what they are, where they came from, how they came to life. They are just there, as out of place as a laser-gun-toting murloc. But never mind that, follow the yellow-brick road to Sentinel Hill and Gryan Stoutmantle. That's where the real story starts.

And it's also where you get to fly! When you were fighting the great Hogger, you noticed high-level characters passing overhead on flying steeds, and thought "wow, it must be wonderful to be able to fly! I'll bet you have to get to level 80 before you can do that"! When you get to Sentinel Hill, however, you discover you can join that elite group. You don't even have to own or train the mighty beasts that will soon be transporting you to Stormwind, for they are a taxi service. And what a great service! The journey from Stormwind to Sentinel Hill probably took you a week or two. The return journey, high above the scene of your recent epic deeds, takes a minute or two. I'll never get tired of flying!

Anyway, back to Gryan Stoutmantle. At first, the quests he gives you just feel like more of the same "Kill Ten Rats": kill 15 Defias trappers, kill 15 Defias smugglers, kill 15 defias pillagers and looters, and so on. But gradually, the story begins to come into focus with the Defias Brotherhood quests starting with a trip to Lakeshire to learn more about this shadowy organization.

This excellent slow-burning quest chain leads you, via Stormwind city, deep into the Deadmines in Moonbrook village, the first instance dungeon that most players, where you hunt down the leader of the Brotherhood, and then leads to the next instance, the Stockades in Stormwind, to interview his deputy, finally leading to the higher echelons of Stormwind society and your first audience with the King. Great stories like this are what make me want to play more. The stories, not the loot. Make more great stories like this, Blizzard, and you will be loved forever.

I Fall into Disgrace

2009-03-25T20:01:00.004Z

I suppose the first experience most people have of the benefits of grouping together is when taking on Hogger. The first thing I noticed is that people using the 10-day trial account are at a significant disadvantage here - they can't invite anybody to join their group. Instead they have to rely on somebody else to invite them. I joined such a pick-up group recently. We were a warrior, a priest and me. I was the highest level character, at level nine. The people were nice, but once it came to fighting Hogger, I made a huge mistake: as a mage, I'm only wearing cloth, and when (after one particularly fiery strike from my fireball spell) Hogger decided he was going to ignore the warrior in our group and swing his axe at me, well, I panicked.

What I should have done was coolly cast a Frost Nova spell at point blank range as he swung at me, then stepped back and let the warrior take his attention, and let the priest heal me. What I actually did was - I ran! I ran blindly away from Hogger. Hogger ran after me, and the warrior ran after Hogger. The priest couldn't target me to heal me, because I was moving so fast and both Hogger and the warrior were interfering with his target selection. You know what happened next. I got too close to a nearby gnoll camp and four stout gnoll warriors came out and gave Hogger a hand! They made mincemeat of the warrior and me, then Hogger returned to give the poor priest his full attention. We were wiped out.

However we learned from our mistakes. I learned the value of standing my ground and being prepared to die if it meant the group would succeed. I also learnt the value of making sure Frost Nova was available on my action bar. And the group leader learned the value of kicking a poor player out of his group!

What a pleasure it was, then, to meet a friendly Paladin who seemed to know what he was doing, and who invited me and three others to join him. We hung around, killing gnolls, until Hogger made his re-appearance, and were able to make fairly short work of him (because we'd been diligently killing gnolls beforehand, there were none around to intrude on our battle).

The pick-up group is one of the things that makes online gaming so interesting. You meet with some strangers, you work together on a task for a short time, you have some fun, some banter, then you go your separate ways. After a while you notice that you see the same characters again and again, because - guess what - they're levelling their characters at about the same rate as you are, and are often on the same quests. You avoid the people you don't get on with, you team up again with the people who are on your wavelength. Pretty soon you're becoming friends.

I have a change

2009-03-18T20:26:00.003Z

The first thing I did on leaving Northshire was to head down to Goldshire, and got Innkeeper Farley to set my hearthstone to the Lion's Pride Inn.

What a fun place Goldshire is! Loads of exotica - my first sighting of elves and draenei and high-level characters mounted on all sorts of beasts - and my first duel. Of course I was rubbish and got killed immediately. Didn't know what I was doing. Anyway playing about dueling is a fun way to practice Player vs. Player fighting (PvP), and eventually I managed to win a duel and gain the "Duel-icious" achievement.

Goldshire is a great place to be based in, since so many of the Elwynn forest quests either involve you starting or ending there, or returning there to empty your bags (by selling the contents to Tharynn Bouden). I love the stories behind the quest chains!

I Observe

2009-02-28T15:13:00.008Z

As a new player in World of Warcraft, you observe strange things that later on you become innured to. And I don't mean the magic and mayhem. I'm talking about the AI.

But before I get to that, let me first mention collision detection. When I walk into a wall In Real Life, I don't get anywhere. I can't walk through walls. The same is true in World of Warcraft. Similarly, if somebody chucks a spear at me, it gets stuck in my chest both in WoW and In Real Life. How come I can walk through monsters and players then?

Anyway, back to the main theme of today's diary entry. The AI. I'm talking about the stupidity of the beasts and other enemies (known collectively as "mobs") that you're going to slay. They see you coming, but they don't react until you're very close. In Real Life, if I am out in the open and you see me coming towards you like I was planning to kill you, you would react accordingly: prepare to defend youself, run away, call for help; something like that. These dumbos don't do anything until you get very close to them.

Okay, I can see that in the training grounds of Northshire Abbey, such artificial behaviour is helpful while you're learning how to control your movements; but once I'm out beyond the training grounds, I'd prefer more realistic and challenging reactions from the computer-controlled enemy. For instance, if the enemy can see you, they should react, just as you can react when you see them. Instead they wait until you are a few metres away (and usually well within spellcasting range) before reacting (this distance is called your aggro radius).

And then how do they react? They attack you. That's it. That's their one move. They don't call for help; they don't run to a defensive position; they don't run away, even when they are clearly outclassed (okay, there are a few mitigations. Your aggro radius increases a little when you attack a mob, so other nearby mobs may suddenly take notice of you and join the attack. Also when they are near to death, some mobs will finally try to do what they should have done when they first saw you coming: run away). It's stupid that mobs outside your aggro radius can see one of their comrades a few yards away getting shot at, but they just dumbly ignore it like sheep or Eloi.

Blizzard have deliberately chosen this behaviour, I know not why. They are capable of better AI, as anyone who has met the Gnomish Alarm-o-bots in Gnomeregan (more of which anon) and elsewhere can testify. They have just chosen an extremely dull and dumb behaviour for most mobs.

Your aggro radius reduces as the difference in level between you and your mob opponent increase. This means that higher level characters can ride through Elwyn Forest without getting attacked by low level mobs. I'd go one step further - I'd have the mobs running away and hiding!

Better AI is not difficult, and Blizzard would not have a problem applying it. Why don't they? I think it's because they just don't want to do anything that inconveniences players: they don't want the mobs to be smarter than their paying customers (and God knows, you can see plenty of stupid behaviour from players).

This is also, I think, why there's virtually no penalty for dying (another weirdness that experienced players quickly become innured to). I don't like it. I almost wrote "it encourages recklessness", but what's reckless about getting yourself killed in WoW? There's no penalty for bad play. This makes WoW too easy.

Addendum: A Dwarf Priest spotted 100 weird wonders of the World of Warcraft: http://dwarfpriest.com/2009/10/10/100-rules-of-warcraft/

I Am Born

2009-02-26T12:29:00.004Z

As a new human mage, I came into the realm of Azuremyst a few months ago at Northshire Abbey, a complete novice to World of Warcraft. I knew nothing. Not even how to walk (funnily enough, we learnt to run before we could walk). Well, I've forgotten so much about how I learned those very basic things a few months ago, that I thought I'd jot down what I do remember before that, too, fades from memory!

I was tickled pink when I learned how to dance! (simply type /dance (and hit the enter key), or click on the emote button for a list of emotions you can display). Simple things amuse the innocent. I danced, I flexed my muscles, I waved, cried, begged, laughed. Man, I must have spent a half an hour just messing about like that.

One big mistake I made was to leave Northshire Abbey before I reached level 5. This just got me killed a lot! Inside the training grounds of the Abbey, I was fairly safe, but outside, I couldn't safely leave the path or I'd get stiffed by a Defias thief, or a spider. Lesson learned. I went back to the Abbey and kept up my training there until there were no more quests for me to do there.