Professor Beej did a nice little guest post over at World of Matticus recently asking ‘why did you choose your healing class? ’ It certainly has sparked a number of stories and responses from the readers, and I was going to add my own response in there, too. Unfortunately, I realized two things: first, that it was a fairly complicated answer that wouldn’t quite fit in the space available; second, I’m overdue for a post here (I could also add a third: this topic has been popping around in my brain for some time; Beej’s post has given me the push I’ve apparently needed to actually do my own. Thanks, Beej!).
I’ve already dealt a bit with how I got started in WoW. That post deals a little bit with my prior computer game experience, which was limited primarily to games like Grand Theft Auto, Indiana Jones, and the like. As far as WoW, I had pretty much no idea of the game and how it worked, beyond what I’d seen as my wife and daughter played. Probably the closest thing to WoW experience I had personally was a brief foray into Dungeons & Dragons in high school. We didn’t play all that much or for very long, and not very well (the most memorable point in it was our party being gang-raped by a kobold king – such is the mindset of a teenage dungeon master). Still, some of the role-playing elements of D&D influenced my approach to WoW and the character creation process, even though I wasn’t going to play on an RP server.
When I sat down at the computer with the intent to play that first time, there was nothing on my mind except knocking around a little bit and seeing what all the fuss was about. I had no real concept of what any class did, except that hunters had pets and mages threw fire around (I knew this from seeing my daughter and wife play, respectively). Unlike Spazmoosifer, who mentioned in his response to Beej that he rolled a priest because the guild he was going to join needed one for raiding, I had no plans for anything beyond that day. So I was ‘stuck’ with the information that Blizzard could present during the character creation process. It was all up to me and my whims.
One of the first things I realized is that I needed to be able to relate to the toon I was about to play. This actually made choosing a faction pretty easy, as I looked over the horde models, they just didn’t do it for me. Orcs, trolls, and tauren just didn’t do it for me. Blood elves? Hah! Undead? No, thank you. I found that I needed my character to be a little more…human. And that’s what I picked. I didn’t investigate the racials, didn’t know (or care) that humans have a passive ability that gains more rep than others. None of that mattered. I just needed to be able to relate to the toon that would be running around in front of me, and I didn't quite connect with what I was looking at.
With the choice of faction/race/sex made I now had to choose a class. As I read through the class descriptions I found that three jumped out at me initially: Paladins, Druids, and Warlocks. Why they appealed to me, and why I made my ultimate choice, is somewhat hard to put down into words. It partly comes from the ability to relate to the character, mentioned above, but it also came in part because of how, despite not being a Role Player, it was important for me to project part of me into the character.
The Druid and Paladin both offered diversity, which was something I liked. The Druid, as a described, ‘command nature’s wrath’ and are ‘masters of the wild.’ I’m a nature guy, a lover of the outdoors, a bird watcher – playing the druid would seem to allow me to express my personality in a particular way. The Druid is ‘who I am.’
The Paladin is ‘a mix of melee fighter and a secondary spell caster.’ Furthermore the Paladin ‘can withstand terrible blows in the thickest battles while healing their wounded allies and resurrecting the slain.’ Wow! They are ‘Guardians of the Light’ who ‘bolster their allies with holy auras and blessing to protect their friends from harm and enhance their powers.’ The Paladin sounded like the ultimate team player, and I’ve always prided myself on being a good team player. When all the other kids wanted to play forward in street hockey, I played defense (of course, my hero of the day was Bobby Orr so I guess it wasn’t that great a sacrifice. Watch this for some highlights of Orr’s ‘Golden Years.’), since we had to have defensemen. It sounded very noble. Like the Druid, the Paladin represented ‘who I am’, but as I read the description, it also seemed a lot like ‘who I want to be.’
Then there was the Warlock. Where Paladins are ‘Guardians of the Light’ and Druids are ‘keepers of nature’, Warlocks are ‘masters of demonic power.’ Warlocks ‘plague their enemies with disease or curses, hurling bolts of fire or shadow energy across the battlefield, and summoning demons to aid them in combat.’ How cool is that? Yet the appeal of the Warlock was not just in hurling fiery damage around (my wife was playing a mage, and I could see for myself how cool that is), it was in the fact that Warlocks seem ‘evil.’ They are the anti-Paladin. Playing a Warlock would be a way for me to live vicariously on the Other Side, to not just flirt with darkness, but to embrace it. Instead of being ‘Mr. Lawful Goody Two Shoes’ (another quote from my old Dungeon Master) I could let my ‘Evil Twin’ run around and wreak havoc – wouldn’t that be fun? In a lot of ways, the Warlock would seem to allow me to ‘get away from myself’ a bit; and after all, isn’t the point of a game to escape?
It actually took me much longer to write those three paragraphs than it did to make the decision. The notion of ‘rolling’ a Druid was discarded pretty much the moment I read the Paladin description. The real debate for me was between the Paladin and the Warlock: Play the good guy that I am/would like to be? Or play the guy that I keep locked away all the time?
In the end I suppose the need to play something that represents both who I am and what I aspire to be overcame the sick thrill of setting your enemies on fire: I chose the Paladin. Given my personality it’s no surprise that I gravitated towards the Holy tree – the ability to help others through healing is one of the things that appealed to me about both the Druid and Paladin (I couldn’t remember why Shaman didn’t appeal to me at the time. Then I reread Blizzard’s description of the class. Talk about damning with faint praise! Perhaps if William Shatner’s commercial had been out then …).I knew early on that I wanted to go deep into the Holy tree – as cool as Avenger’s Shield looked (it was the top of the protection tree at the time), Holy Shock just seemed that much better – even when level 70 was so far away as to be meaningless. Once I started healing I found that I liked it, even when the results were disastrous. Which they often were.
As for my Warlock: when I set about creating him, I admit that I had a vision in my head of what he would be like. I gave him an extra-stern face, and even thought that I’d play him with a different personality – one more befitting a master of the dark arts. Ultimately, I play him just like my Paladin – in other words, he’s like a mini-me. Poor sap!
There you have it. Not quite a direct answer to the question Beej raised, but something of an answer nonetheless. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you chose the class you did: was it for reasons like mine, or because it looked cool, or because you knew you’d get raid spots? Does your toon represent who you are or who you’d like to be, or have no meaning at all? Let me know!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Illusion of Parity
Last week, Rohan of Blessing of Kings wrote a piece extolling the virtues of Blizzard’s ‘limited attempts’ on Putricide. She (He? I ‘m not sure, and I apologize if you read this and I'm wrong!) feels that the weekly limit helps separate the various grades of guilds, and also perhaps leads to more focus and determination during attempts. Limited attempts would likely help my own guild; we frequently come through with the clutch kill after much head-banging when our raid leader declares ‘one more try, then we’re going to call it.”
I’m really not 100% sure why Blizzard went with the limited attempts (first seen with Grand Crusader) or staggered boss/wing releases as we see now with Icecrown. Cynics would argue that it’s to keep the Royalty and Aristocrat guilds (from another Rohan post) from mowing through the entire thing in a couple of weeks, thus keeping people tied into the game a little bit longer. No doubt, had Blizzard released Icecrown Citadel in its entirety, we would have had several guilds reporting Arthas kills before Christmas, with significant progress made on hardmodes. Idle hands is the Devil’s workshop, they say; players who aren’t engaged may drift off to other games or, worse yet, engage in despicable acts of trade chat brutality (Oh, right, they're doing that anyway. Never mind). Blizzard may not mind Trade chat, but they certainly don't want defectors, so it seems a good policy from that standpoint.
Less cynically, one might argue that the staggered release of Icecrown is allowing Blizzard to look at how guilds are faring currently, and fine-tuning the next wing before release. If they see too many people ripping through the Plaguewerks they can ramp up the Crimson Halls. I’d like to think this is part of Blizzard’s idea, but perhaps I'm just being naive.
One thing I do like about the staggered release (or did like, until I got a hard, cold dose of reality) is the Illusion of Parity created by the staggered release schedule. My guild fits squarely into the gentry in Rohan’s hierarchy; I’m well aware of our place, and I try not to compare it with the top guilds on my realm. Yet when Icecrown's Lower Spire was released, I couldn't help but feel that everyone was even. It didn't matter that we hadn't done Grand Crusader: As far as Icecrown was concerned, we were in the same place as everyone else. It was strangely thrilling.
The Illusion persisted even after we failed to clear the Lower Citadel the first week, then the second, then the third. Saurfang held us up, yet the Illusion held: Even though others had mastered Saurfang, nodoby could get in those doors. Muradin was waiting just for us!
I was extremely agitated the night before the Plaguewerks release. My guild had all all night to take down Saurfang. I wanted to kill him in the worst way, so that we could maintain the Illusion. Killing him, getting the clear before the next wing, would be some kind of validation of the Illusion; it would show that we had a place at the table with the upper crust of the server. I wanted it. Bad.
We failed. I was sorely disappointed. We were now behind.
The world didn't end, however. We went back in two nights later and cleared the entire lower citadel, including the obnoxious, dead orc. We were in the Plaguewerks. WE were once again even. The Illusion was restored.
This week the Illusion has been completely torn away. Last week we finally took down Festergut, only to get stymied by Rotface (coordination is always problematic for us). We went in this week full of optimism, and were inexplicably and completely owned by Marrowgar. It was one of those nights where it felt like everyone forgot how to play. Even the Raid Leader's call of ‘one last chance then we call it’ failed to work its magic that night.
And here then is the downside of the Illusion of Parity: in my heart I knew that we weren't near the equal of the Royalty guilds, yet I allowed myself to believe on some level that we were. On some level I guess I want us to be on that level; I allowed my heart to convince my mind of something my mind knew wasn't true. Marrowgar gave me a good Saber Lash for my silliness, and I'll never fall for that again. Unless, of course, we should manage to catch up during the wait for the Frostwing Halls.
I’m really not 100% sure why Blizzard went with the limited attempts (first seen with Grand Crusader) or staggered boss/wing releases as we see now with Icecrown. Cynics would argue that it’s to keep the Royalty and Aristocrat guilds (from another Rohan post) from mowing through the entire thing in a couple of weeks, thus keeping people tied into the game a little bit longer. No doubt, had Blizzard released Icecrown Citadel in its entirety, we would have had several guilds reporting Arthas kills before Christmas, with significant progress made on hardmodes. Idle hands is the Devil’s workshop, they say; players who aren’t engaged may drift off to other games or, worse yet, engage in despicable acts of trade chat brutality (Oh, right, they're doing that anyway. Never mind). Blizzard may not mind Trade chat, but they certainly don't want defectors, so it seems a good policy from that standpoint.
Less cynically, one might argue that the staggered release of Icecrown is allowing Blizzard to look at how guilds are faring currently, and fine-tuning the next wing before release. If they see too many people ripping through the Plaguewerks they can ramp up the Crimson Halls. I’d like to think this is part of Blizzard’s idea, but perhaps I'm just being naive.
One thing I do like about the staggered release (or did like, until I got a hard, cold dose of reality) is the Illusion of Parity created by the staggered release schedule. My guild fits squarely into the gentry in Rohan’s hierarchy; I’m well aware of our place, and I try not to compare it with the top guilds on my realm. Yet when Icecrown's Lower Spire was released, I couldn't help but feel that everyone was even. It didn't matter that we hadn't done Grand Crusader: As far as Icecrown was concerned, we were in the same place as everyone else. It was strangely thrilling.
The Illusion persisted even after we failed to clear the Lower Citadel the first week, then the second, then the third. Saurfang held us up, yet the Illusion held: Even though others had mastered Saurfang, nodoby could get in those doors. Muradin was waiting just for us!
I was extremely agitated the night before the Plaguewerks release. My guild had all all night to take down Saurfang. I wanted to kill him in the worst way, so that we could maintain the Illusion. Killing him, getting the clear before the next wing, would be some kind of validation of the Illusion; it would show that we had a place at the table with the upper crust of the server. I wanted it. Bad.
We failed. I was sorely disappointed. We were now behind.
The world didn't end, however. We went back in two nights later and cleared the entire lower citadel, including the obnoxious, dead orc. We were in the Plaguewerks. WE were once again even. The Illusion was restored.
This week the Illusion has been completely torn away. Last week we finally took down Festergut, only to get stymied by Rotface (coordination is always problematic for us). We went in this week full of optimism, and were inexplicably and completely owned by Marrowgar. It was one of those nights where it felt like everyone forgot how to play. Even the Raid Leader's call of ‘one last chance then we call it’ failed to work its magic that night.
And here then is the downside of the Illusion of Parity: in my heart I knew that we weren't near the equal of the Royalty guilds, yet I allowed myself to believe on some level that we were. On some level I guess I want us to be on that level; I allowed my heart to convince my mind of something my mind knew wasn't true. Marrowgar gave me a good Saber Lash for my silliness, and I'll never fall for that again. Unless, of course, we should manage to catch up during the wait for the Frostwing Halls.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Firsts and Seconds
Remember your first kiss? First date? First car? People love to celebrate firsts. Firsts are significant moments in our lives, and when they are long in the past we still like to look back and remember them, and hash them over with others.
In WoW firsts are also memorable and significant, particularly in the world of raiding. The first kill of a boss is often met with whoops over vent, gratses from guild chat, and commemorative screenshots showing the raid posed with the dead boss at their feet. It’s even more meaningful when it has taken you many attempts spread out over weeks or even months to kill that boss. The thrill of the kill is often accompanied by an overwhelming sense of relief: Relief that the hard work finally paid off.
Yet as important as that first kill is I believe the the most important kill is actually the Second Kill. Unfortunately, the second kill is rarely memorable: I remember our first Nalorakk kill not only because it was the first, but because both tanks dropped dead with the troll-bear under 10% health. We took him down because a quick-thinking Rogue managed to jump in for a spectacular bit of ‘Evasion Tanking’ while everyone left standing threw everything they had at him (including yours truly – ‘Hammer of Wrath’, FTW!). The second one? Sorry, that’s just not in my memory banks at the moment. I do however remember our second Kologarn kill. The only reason I actually remember it is because, after several weeks of being stymied by the VERY LARGE fella, we finally defeated him. Just prior to encountering him the following week, one of our guildies commented that he thought ‘it was a fluke’ that we even beat him the first time. We one-shotted him for our second kill, and proved to ourselves that it was no fluke.
More recently, we took down Deathbringer Saurfang for the first time on Monday. It was our 23rd attempt over multiple weeks when we finally beat him. We cheered, we took screenshots, the works. Privately I worried: it felt to me like we had gotten lucky in that he cast his one Mark of the Fallen Champion on one of our tanks. How easy it was to heal through that. I wondered if we would be so fortunate next time, and if we would be able to handle it. Two days later it seemed as if our first kill was indeed a fluke. We got a Mark on a non-tank much earlier than expected, and it ultimately lead to yet another loss to the ‘Lone Orc’. However, we regrouped and proceeded to execute a perfect kill the next attempt, without Saurfang casting a Mark at all. It seemed my concerns were unfounded after all.
And herein lies the importance of the Second Kill: The Second Kill validates the First Kill, proving that it was no fluke or result of good fortune, that you have the abilities to do it again. Anyone can get lucky once, but the Second Kill shows that you’ve mastered the boss, not the other way around. So next time you find yourself sitting around the fire with a tankard of ale and an audience, show a little love for the Second Kill. Besides, you’ve probably told the tale of the First Kill a hundred times already.
In WoW firsts are also memorable and significant, particularly in the world of raiding. The first kill of a boss is often met with whoops over vent, gratses from guild chat, and commemorative screenshots showing the raid posed with the dead boss at their feet. It’s even more meaningful when it has taken you many attempts spread out over weeks or even months to kill that boss. The thrill of the kill is often accompanied by an overwhelming sense of relief: Relief that the hard work finally paid off.
Yet as important as that first kill is I believe the the most important kill is actually the Second Kill. Unfortunately, the second kill is rarely memorable: I remember our first Nalorakk kill not only because it was the first, but because both tanks dropped dead with the troll-bear under 10% health. We took him down because a quick-thinking Rogue managed to jump in for a spectacular bit of ‘Evasion Tanking’ while everyone left standing threw everything they had at him (including yours truly – ‘Hammer of Wrath’, FTW!). The second one? Sorry, that’s just not in my memory banks at the moment. I do however remember our second Kologarn kill. The only reason I actually remember it is because, after several weeks of being stymied by the VERY LARGE fella, we finally defeated him. Just prior to encountering him the following week, one of our guildies commented that he thought ‘it was a fluke’ that we even beat him the first time. We one-shotted him for our second kill, and proved to ourselves that it was no fluke.
More recently, we took down Deathbringer Saurfang for the first time on Monday. It was our 23rd attempt over multiple weeks when we finally beat him. We cheered, we took screenshots, the works. Privately I worried: it felt to me like we had gotten lucky in that he cast his one Mark of the Fallen Champion on one of our tanks. How easy it was to heal through that. I wondered if we would be so fortunate next time, and if we would be able to handle it. Two days later it seemed as if our first kill was indeed a fluke. We got a Mark on a non-tank much earlier than expected, and it ultimately lead to yet another loss to the ‘Lone Orc’. However, we regrouped and proceeded to execute a perfect kill the next attempt, without Saurfang casting a Mark at all. It seemed my concerns were unfounded after all.
And herein lies the importance of the Second Kill: The Second Kill validates the First Kill, proving that it was no fluke or result of good fortune, that you have the abilities to do it again. Anyone can get lucky once, but the Second Kill shows that you’ve mastered the boss, not the other way around. So next time you find yourself sitting around the fire with a tankard of ale and an audience, show a little love for the Second Kill. Besides, you’ve probably told the tale of the First Kill a hundred times already.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Great Tank/Healer Shortage of 2010
Gordon of We Fly Spitfires set off a bit of a blogostorm last week in his guest post on Matticus (Tanks and Healers Should Get The Biggest Rewards), an inciteful if not necessarily insightful post placing tanks and healers above the dps classes. Had he posted this on the O-Boards he surely would have been branded a troll (actually, at least one commenter did); as it was, he’s received some 90+ comments in 3 days, a direct response from Spinks on her blog, a kinda-sorta response from Klepsacovic (although he did say his post was written before the flap), and Larisa, to name a few. Most of the bloggers and commenters on the original post agree that special rewards for tanks and healers would be wrong, but I actually didn’t start writing this in response to the question-that-wasn't-really-a-question posed by Gordon. Instead, I wanted to address the root cause of the issue: the tank/healer shortage, and the reason for it.
Prior to implementing the Cross-realm LFG Blizzard had already taken steps to address the tank/healer shortage by introducing dual specs with the release of the Ulduar patch. This was designed as a way to encourage people to branch out into other talent trees without having to constantly pay for respeccing, reglyphing, regemming, etc. In raids it would allow a dps to not have to sit out a particularly healer-intensive boss fight, thus missing out on glory, loot and badges. Outside of the raid it allowed healers and tanks to switch over to actually do decent damage while questing or doing dailies. And it was surely hoped that it would alleviate some of the bottleneck that existed when trying to find tanks and healers for heroics or to fill that last spot in the raid. While dual-specs helped somewhat, the fact that Blizzard had to resort to Cross-realm LFG indicates the problem still exists. I see two reason for the tank/healer shortage: Numbers, and Mindset.
First the numbers. There are 10 classes available in WoW. Four of those classes can tank; four can heal. Four are ‘Pure’ dps classes. Looking at class breakdown based on census data from Warcraftrealms, about 47% play a tank-capable class. There’s fewer playing heal-capable classes: 39%. Based on this data, healers in particular would seem to be the choke point. However, there are no ‘pure’ tank or healer classes; just because 47% of the survey group plays a tank class doesn’t mean 47% of the players are tanks. Since the census data doesn’t currently show us who plays what role, we have to look at the different specs and make an admittedly big assumption: that there’s a roughly even breakdown of players by spec.
10 classes, 32 specs (druids get credit for 2 dps specs; Death Knights get credit for 2 dps specs and 2 tank specs*). If we look now at tanking specs, there are 5: Prot Warriors and Pallies; Bear Druids; Frost and Blood Death Knights. For healers we also have 5: Holy Paladins and Priests; Discipline Priests; and Resto Druids and Shaman. 10 tanking and healing specs vs. 22 damage-dealing specs: Is it any wonder there’s a tank and healer shortage? The options for tanking and healing are far more limited than for damage dealing, not just in terms of pure numbers of available specs, but also in play styles: DPS can be right up at the feet (well, rear end) of bosses or standing at a distance. Healers and tanks are always at the back or front, respectively.
The second issue causing the shortage is mindset. When dual-specs first came out, I spent a month hemming and hawing over what I would do. Finally I told my guild that I was going to take Retribution as my second spec (Holy is number 1) and I began picking up Ret gear on off-spec rolls, though I continued to defer to any other Paladin in the raid that might have even the remotest interest in it. I kept dragging my feet on actually getting the dual spec however, until the eve of patch 3.2. That night I finally forked over the gold for….a second Holy spec. I told myself then that I really needed time to experiment with the new ‘Bubble Spec’, but the truth is once I started using that spec, there was no going back, and no real reason not to change one spec over to Retribution, except for one thing: I’m a healer. It's what I do. I don’t like to dps on my Paladin, and I don’t like tanking. Having two or even three specs isn’t going to make me change that, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one who feels that way: you’re either a healer or a tank, or you’re not. Yes, there are players who are perfectly capable of excelling at any role, but I suspect most players are like me: we have a role that we like to fill with our toon, and we stick to it as much as possible. Unless Blizzard radically changes the nature of the game I don’t think you’ll see any great change in the numbers, and we’ll always have a disparity of numbers.
Finally, I have to wonder if this problem is even that great a problem at all. Maybe the current tank/healer shortage of 2010 is being caused by heightened expectations – we’ve all been suckered into believing Blizzard’s slick advertising pitch: ‘Use our New-And-Improved LFG System and make those irritating wait times *snap* disappear!’ In short, we have been sold on a belief that we wouldn’t have to wait, and this belief was upheld in the first two weeks when everybody and his uncle was running random heroics in an effort to get emblems, cheesy pets, and easy achievements. Now that the novelty has worn off, the wait times have gone up, and our patience has gone down. In a response to a comment on her post, Spinks said “…there is still an issue there of supply and demand, and keeping the customer base happy with regular instance runs rather than having to wait 15-30 mins in the queue.” I seem to recall having to hang around Dalaran sometimes for 30-40 minutes, spamming trade and general, while constantly refreshing the LFG/LFM window once the guild and friends’ list was exhausted. The current system is much more a ‘fire and forget’ and go back to whatever you were doing until the Ready Check pops up. Seems to me much of the problem is in our own minds and not with the system or lack of tanks and healers. But then again, so many of the problems in the world of the World of Warcraft are of our own making.
*I admit to knowing very little about Death Knights and how they work, as mine is sitting gathering dust in Hellfire Peninsula at level 60. I might have actually shortchanged them a tanking and dps spec.
Prior to implementing the Cross-realm LFG Blizzard had already taken steps to address the tank/healer shortage by introducing dual specs with the release of the Ulduar patch. This was designed as a way to encourage people to branch out into other talent trees without having to constantly pay for respeccing, reglyphing, regemming, etc. In raids it would allow a dps to not have to sit out a particularly healer-intensive boss fight, thus missing out on glory, loot and badges. Outside of the raid it allowed healers and tanks to switch over to actually do decent damage while questing or doing dailies. And it was surely hoped that it would alleviate some of the bottleneck that existed when trying to find tanks and healers for heroics or to fill that last spot in the raid. While dual-specs helped somewhat, the fact that Blizzard had to resort to Cross-realm LFG indicates the problem still exists. I see two reason for the tank/healer shortage: Numbers, and Mindset.
First the numbers. There are 10 classes available in WoW. Four of those classes can tank; four can heal. Four are ‘Pure’ dps classes. Looking at class breakdown based on census data from Warcraftrealms, about 47% play a tank-capable class. There’s fewer playing heal-capable classes: 39%. Based on this data, healers in particular would seem to be the choke point. However, there are no ‘pure’ tank or healer classes; just because 47% of the survey group plays a tank class doesn’t mean 47% of the players are tanks. Since the census data doesn’t currently show us who plays what role, we have to look at the different specs and make an admittedly big assumption: that there’s a roughly even breakdown of players by spec.
10 classes, 32 specs (druids get credit for 2 dps specs; Death Knights get credit for 2 dps specs and 2 tank specs*). If we look now at tanking specs, there are 5: Prot Warriors and Pallies; Bear Druids; Frost and Blood Death Knights. For healers we also have 5: Holy Paladins and Priests; Discipline Priests; and Resto Druids and Shaman. 10 tanking and healing specs vs. 22 damage-dealing specs: Is it any wonder there’s a tank and healer shortage? The options for tanking and healing are far more limited than for damage dealing, not just in terms of pure numbers of available specs, but also in play styles: DPS can be right up at the feet (well, rear end) of bosses or standing at a distance. Healers and tanks are always at the back or front, respectively.
The second issue causing the shortage is mindset. When dual-specs first came out, I spent a month hemming and hawing over what I would do. Finally I told my guild that I was going to take Retribution as my second spec (Holy is number 1) and I began picking up Ret gear on off-spec rolls, though I continued to defer to any other Paladin in the raid that might have even the remotest interest in it. I kept dragging my feet on actually getting the dual spec however, until the eve of patch 3.2. That night I finally forked over the gold for….a second Holy spec. I told myself then that I really needed time to experiment with the new ‘Bubble Spec’, but the truth is once I started using that spec, there was no going back, and no real reason not to change one spec over to Retribution, except for one thing: I’m a healer. It's what I do. I don’t like to dps on my Paladin, and I don’t like tanking. Having two or even three specs isn’t going to make me change that, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one who feels that way: you’re either a healer or a tank, or you’re not. Yes, there are players who are perfectly capable of excelling at any role, but I suspect most players are like me: we have a role that we like to fill with our toon, and we stick to it as much as possible. Unless Blizzard radically changes the nature of the game I don’t think you’ll see any great change in the numbers, and we’ll always have a disparity of numbers.
Finally, I have to wonder if this problem is even that great a problem at all. Maybe the current tank/healer shortage of 2010 is being caused by heightened expectations – we’ve all been suckered into believing Blizzard’s slick advertising pitch: ‘Use our New-And-Improved LFG System and make those irritating wait times *snap* disappear!’ In short, we have been sold on a belief that we wouldn’t have to wait, and this belief was upheld in the first two weeks when everybody and his uncle was running random heroics in an effort to get emblems, cheesy pets, and easy achievements. Now that the novelty has worn off, the wait times have gone up, and our patience has gone down. In a response to a comment on her post, Spinks said “…there is still an issue there of supply and demand, and keeping the customer base happy with regular instance runs rather than having to wait 15-30 mins in the queue.” I seem to recall having to hang around Dalaran sometimes for 30-40 minutes, spamming trade and general, while constantly refreshing the LFG/LFM window once the guild and friends’ list was exhausted. The current system is much more a ‘fire and forget’ and go back to whatever you were doing until the Ready Check pops up. Seems to me much of the problem is in our own minds and not with the system or lack of tanks and healers. But then again, so many of the problems in the world of the World of Warcraft are of our own making.
*I admit to knowing very little about Death Knights and how they work, as mine is sitting gathering dust in Hellfire Peninsula at level 60. I might have actually shortchanged them a tanking and dps spec.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Dungeon Blues
Well, the new LFG system has been out for just about a month now, and the reviews are…decidedly mixed. It seemed that when the system came out, everyone jumped into LFG/random and loved it. Within a few days, heck, maybe even hours for some – people were gathering Emblems of Frost and were piling Emblems of Triumph at an unprecedented rate, and shelling them out again in an orgy of spending entirely appropriate for the season. Even the World’s Worst Paladin (who is in my guild, and no, it’s not me) decked himself out in 4 pieces of T9 in short order, though I doubt it will help him that much. The concerns about the potential clash of server cultures and the fears that people would use the anonymity of cross-server groups for evil seemed to be largely unfounded. Bosses went down at ridiculous rates, the emblems poured in The world was new again, and everyone was happy (unless you had the misfortune to get Oculus multiple times).
As the month wore on the cracks began appearing in the foundation of the new system. It started up with complaints in guild chat – ‘OMG, this group is FAIL’; ‘This tank can’t hold aggro’, ‘We wiped on the first pull so I dropped’. Perhaps the worst was my GM (Retired) who was Vote-Kicked from a PuG on his druid. Why? They didn’t like the way he was healing. Nobody died and there were no wipes to that point, they just didn’t like something that he was doing (disclaimer: he hadn’t played his Druid in a while and was admittedly rusty, but he’s Ulduar-geared and a good player). Meanwhile, forums and blogs began to fill up with horror stories: DPS running off and pulling mobs from all over; tanks who pay no attention to anybody; bossy healers teleporting out of dungeons mid-fight for slights real or imagined; tanks showing up in the wrong spec, with the wrong gear, and under the defense cap; players of all classes and roles who seem to show zero aptitude for the game, and either an inability or unwillingness to learn. Meanwhile, the tolerance level of skilled players for anyone not equally good sinks lower and lower, and we hear more stories of people being openly scornful of those who are not up to those standards.
It may not be as bad as it sounds. After all there are plenty of times my guildies make no comments whatsoever about the PuGs they’re in (and they pug a lot. There’s plenty who log on and jump right into LFG without ever checking to see if anyone in guild wants to join them, but that’s a rant for another time), and bloggers are more likely to blog about memorable experiences – which typically result from bad experiences. For myself, the few Pugs I’ve run have been brisk, business-like affairs: efficient, but with all the warmth of a politician’s handshake. I have no horror storiers of my own, but then again I’ve pugged with exactly 8 random people since the new LFG launched (yes, I do run random heroics, but I stick to guildies and friends).
Yet the ‘Dungeon Blues’ continues to be sung, and I think Starets Sayas may have put his finger on the cause in a comment he left on a Matticus post:
"When the dungeon finder first started, evidently there were a lot of powerful toons signing up and it was great. But evidently a lot of those toons are back to guild runs or something. Because the last few days, it seems like I’m being asked to carry more and more groups. I’m not always up to the task."
Read more: http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/12/22/i-can-carry-you/#ixzz0brGw8pUH
WoW players love new content, new achievements and pets. When 3.3 hit it brought a lot of players out of the woodwork; a large number of these were quality players who had cleared the old content and had little reason to play. Now they had a reason to play again, and these players flooded the LFG system. Within a few weeks however, things started to settle down again. I suspect that many of these players farmed the heck out of the emblems of triumph initially and used them to pick up whatever they needed from those vendors. At this point, top-end players are looking exclusively to the Icecrown raids and Emblem of Frost vendors for upgrades, not heroics, and they’ve already got their Perky Pugs. The loss of these players leaves a smaller pool with a higher concentration of ‘lesser’ players – this explains to me why we’re seeing more complaints of bad play. In the initial weeks, you were more likely to find yourself in with ‘better’ players because there were more of them in the pool.
While this can explain the declining quality of play reported in Pugs, it does not explain the declining quality of people. There’s no correlation between playing skills and people skills. It’s this decline that worries me more – I can handle being in a group with a bad players, but I can’t tolerate people who are rude, inconsiderate or downright mean. Perhaps it’s nothing unusual. Perhaps it’s just that the new LFG system has given the Trade Chat Heroes of the realms something to do besides the Murloc game. Maybe they’ll eventually get their fill of emblems and go back to doing what they do best and we’ll hear less about them. As for me, I’ll continue to avoid them by running randoms with my guild or my friends. I’ll still get my emblems, and I won’t have to put up with loot ninjas, name calling, or vote kicking. And if I never get a Perky Pug, who cares? I’ve still got Sleepy Willy.
As the month wore on the cracks began appearing in the foundation of the new system. It started up with complaints in guild chat – ‘OMG, this group is FAIL’; ‘This tank can’t hold aggro’, ‘We wiped on the first pull so I dropped’. Perhaps the worst was my GM (Retired) who was Vote-Kicked from a PuG on his druid. Why? They didn’t like the way he was healing. Nobody died and there were no wipes to that point, they just didn’t like something that he was doing (disclaimer: he hadn’t played his Druid in a while and was admittedly rusty, but he’s Ulduar-geared and a good player). Meanwhile, forums and blogs began to fill up with horror stories: DPS running off and pulling mobs from all over; tanks who pay no attention to anybody; bossy healers teleporting out of dungeons mid-fight for slights real or imagined; tanks showing up in the wrong spec, with the wrong gear, and under the defense cap; players of all classes and roles who seem to show zero aptitude for the game, and either an inability or unwillingness to learn. Meanwhile, the tolerance level of skilled players for anyone not equally good sinks lower and lower, and we hear more stories of people being openly scornful of those who are not up to those standards.
It may not be as bad as it sounds. After all there are plenty of times my guildies make no comments whatsoever about the PuGs they’re in (and they pug a lot. There’s plenty who log on and jump right into LFG without ever checking to see if anyone in guild wants to join them, but that’s a rant for another time), and bloggers are more likely to blog about memorable experiences – which typically result from bad experiences. For myself, the few Pugs I’ve run have been brisk, business-like affairs: efficient, but with all the warmth of a politician’s handshake. I have no horror storiers of my own, but then again I’ve pugged with exactly 8 random people since the new LFG launched (yes, I do run random heroics, but I stick to guildies and friends).
Yet the ‘Dungeon Blues’ continues to be sung, and I think Starets Sayas may have put his finger on the cause in a comment he left on a Matticus post:
"When the dungeon finder first started, evidently there were a lot of powerful toons signing up and it was great. But evidently a lot of those toons are back to guild runs or something. Because the last few days, it seems like I’m being asked to carry more and more groups. I’m not always up to the task."
Read more: http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/12/22/i-can-carry-you/#ixzz0brGw8pUH
WoW players love new content, new achievements and pets. When 3.3 hit it brought a lot of players out of the woodwork; a large number of these were quality players who had cleared the old content and had little reason to play. Now they had a reason to play again, and these players flooded the LFG system. Within a few weeks however, things started to settle down again. I suspect that many of these players farmed the heck out of the emblems of triumph initially and used them to pick up whatever they needed from those vendors. At this point, top-end players are looking exclusively to the Icecrown raids and Emblem of Frost vendors for upgrades, not heroics, and they’ve already got their Perky Pugs. The loss of these players leaves a smaller pool with a higher concentration of ‘lesser’ players – this explains to me why we’re seeing more complaints of bad play. In the initial weeks, you were more likely to find yourself in with ‘better’ players because there were more of them in the pool.
While this can explain the declining quality of play reported in Pugs, it does not explain the declining quality of people. There’s no correlation between playing skills and people skills. It’s this decline that worries me more – I can handle being in a group with a bad players, but I can’t tolerate people who are rude, inconsiderate or downright mean. Perhaps it’s nothing unusual. Perhaps it’s just that the new LFG system has given the Trade Chat Heroes of the realms something to do besides the Murloc game. Maybe they’ll eventually get their fill of emblems and go back to doing what they do best and we’ll hear less about them. As for me, I’ll continue to avoid them by running randoms with my guild or my friends. I’ll still get my emblems, and I won’t have to put up with loot ninjas, name calling, or vote kicking. And if I never get a Perky Pug, who cares? I’ve still got Sleepy Willy.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Social Noob: The Story of Mick
I must confess, when I saw the title of a recent post by Klepsacovic – ‘What to do with Social Noobs’ – I thought he was going to be taking potshots at Gevlon’s newest experiment. I was surprised instead to find it a post about people who may or may not be able to master WoW, the game, but are unable to master social interactions that are (mostly) necessary to gameplay. He examines a couple of different types of social noobs, from the outright selfish a-hole (i.e., people who are deliberately rude, disruptive, etc.) to people who may not mean harm, but are just unable or unwilling to communicate well with others. In the end he asks, ‘Can we save the social noobs from themselves?’
Last night we were forced to use the Booterang* (one of my all-time favorite in-game items and quests, by the way) on a guild member. He was a social noob. Is he an outright selfish A-hole or just stupid, and is there any hope for him? This is his story. We’ll call him ‘Mick’.
Mick was tanking an Ony-10 pug. The raid leader forgot to set MasterLooter. When the big girl fell, and the loot windows popped up, Mick rolled need. On everything. My first inkling that there was trouble came when I got the following whisper:
‘Who’s the GM of your f-ing guild?’
Talk about social noobishness! This is not usually the way to open a conversation. If he walked up to me on the street or in a place of business, I would have gotten defensive, or maybe hostile, who knows. Fortunately I stayed cool and responded politely. He told me about ‘f-ing ninja Mick’. After making some inquiries with Mick, the original whisperer, and one or two other folks in that raid, we kicked Mick out of our guild. I only hope that he had the decency to return the loot for proper distribution. The angry whisperer calmed down as the event unfolded, though he did apparently spam trade chat for a bit about the ninja (I have yet to see anything on our realm forum about it, hopefully that will be the end of it), and I think our guild reputation has remained untarnished.
There are multiple faults here. One of course is the Raid Leader, for goofing and forgetting to set Loot Master. I suspect we’ve all done this once in a while; in a guild raid it’s not an issue, but obviously can be trouble in a PuG environment. Mick for sure is at fault – you don’t exploit an opening like that just because it’s there. However, I also have to think that WoWsociety is also partly at fault: for assuming that all members of this society know the ‘rules’. I suspect that much of the social noobishness in the game comes from people who have just not learned the rules.
My own first run-in with WoW rules came back in Blackfathom Depths so long ago. We killed a boss, and a nice chest piece dropped. I rolled need and won. A little later something else dropped, I rolled need and won. Someone in the group said “You’re not supposed to roll on everything!” Thus chastised, I don’t think I rolled on a single thing for the entire rest of the run. But here’s the thing: How was I to know? This was my first toon, and probably my first real group. Nobody had ever explained the protocols of loot to me; there’s no real manual, maybe some guidelines on the Blizzard website, but at that point in time I wasn’t really using those kinds of resources. I had no friends or guild to guide me. I was completely on my own, trying to figure out how this strange society worked. I was both a WoW noob AND a WoW social noob. There I was, level 23 or so and already a loot ninja, though nobody called me that (and I might not have really understood if they had).
But what about Mick? Should he have known better? He’s no WoW noob, he’s been playing for about 3 years. However, he’s also a bit new to raiding and high-level heroics (from his character history, he never had a level-capped toon until hitting 80 last spring); is it fair to expect him to know those rules when he’s relatively inexperienced?
There would only seem to be two ways to learn these rules: From written sources (i.e., websites, magazines, etc.), or from other players. Written sources are not good for everyone – I’m amazed at the number of players I’ve run into who can’t seem to bother to look up information on the web for themselves, and while there are certain behaviors that cut across the entire game society, there are also many customs that are specific to each server. That leaves other players as the best source of the rules. For my part, I learned by taking cues from the people I played with, from paying attention to what party and raid leaders said, and from coming right out and asking. In this way I moved out of the rank of social noob even when I still played like a WoW noob. However, in order to raise yourself out of ‘social noob’ status you have to have the desire and the ability to learn. From what I observed about Mick, he did not have the ability to learn.
It’s a shame, too. Despite his annoying tendencies (in-guild he was a lot like Chester the Terrier: Anyone-wanna-run-something-let’s-do-something-are-we-raiding-tonight-we-should-raid-something-who-can-enchant/gem-this-what-enchant-should-I-get-for-tanking-where-do-I’AAAARGHHH!) he was enthusiastic about the game, and desired getting involved with raiding. His first actual guild run was Tuesday night; he did passably well, and spent a lot of time afterwards discussing tankie stuff with our other tank (on the other hand, one of the people from his fated Ony run told the GM how he was not using a tanking weapon while tanking. /sigh). I don't believe he's an 'outright A-hole', though the folks in the raid would disagree. In the end, it was his inability to socialize well and to learn from the people around him -- in short, his social noobishness -- that cost him a guild spot. Though not for long: I noticed by the end of the night he’d caught on with another. I wish them well.
*The Booterang is supposed to knock sense into worthless, lazy peons. I would like to think it knocked some sense into Mick, but we're more than happy to let his new guild find out.
Last night we were forced to use the Booterang* (one of my all-time favorite in-game items and quests, by the way) on a guild member. He was a social noob. Is he an outright selfish A-hole or just stupid, and is there any hope for him? This is his story. We’ll call him ‘Mick’.
Mick was tanking an Ony-10 pug. The raid leader forgot to set MasterLooter. When the big girl fell, and the loot windows popped up, Mick rolled need. On everything. My first inkling that there was trouble came when I got the following whisper:
‘Who’s the GM of your f-ing guild?’
Talk about social noobishness! This is not usually the way to open a conversation. If he walked up to me on the street or in a place of business, I would have gotten defensive, or maybe hostile, who knows. Fortunately I stayed cool and responded politely. He told me about ‘f-ing ninja Mick’. After making some inquiries with Mick, the original whisperer, and one or two other folks in that raid, we kicked Mick out of our guild. I only hope that he had the decency to return the loot for proper distribution. The angry whisperer calmed down as the event unfolded, though he did apparently spam trade chat for a bit about the ninja (I have yet to see anything on our realm forum about it, hopefully that will be the end of it), and I think our guild reputation has remained untarnished.
There are multiple faults here. One of course is the Raid Leader, for goofing and forgetting to set Loot Master. I suspect we’ve all done this once in a while; in a guild raid it’s not an issue, but obviously can be trouble in a PuG environment. Mick for sure is at fault – you don’t exploit an opening like that just because it’s there. However, I also have to think that WoWsociety is also partly at fault: for assuming that all members of this society know the ‘rules’. I suspect that much of the social noobishness in the game comes from people who have just not learned the rules.
My own first run-in with WoW rules came back in Blackfathom Depths so long ago. We killed a boss, and a nice chest piece dropped. I rolled need and won. A little later something else dropped, I rolled need and won. Someone in the group said “You’re not supposed to roll on everything!” Thus chastised, I don’t think I rolled on a single thing for the entire rest of the run. But here’s the thing: How was I to know? This was my first toon, and probably my first real group. Nobody had ever explained the protocols of loot to me; there’s no real manual, maybe some guidelines on the Blizzard website, but at that point in time I wasn’t really using those kinds of resources. I had no friends or guild to guide me. I was completely on my own, trying to figure out how this strange society worked. I was both a WoW noob AND a WoW social noob. There I was, level 23 or so and already a loot ninja, though nobody called me that (and I might not have really understood if they had).
But what about Mick? Should he have known better? He’s no WoW noob, he’s been playing for about 3 years. However, he’s also a bit new to raiding and high-level heroics (from his character history, he never had a level-capped toon until hitting 80 last spring); is it fair to expect him to know those rules when he’s relatively inexperienced?
There would only seem to be two ways to learn these rules: From written sources (i.e., websites, magazines, etc.), or from other players. Written sources are not good for everyone – I’m amazed at the number of players I’ve run into who can’t seem to bother to look up information on the web for themselves, and while there are certain behaviors that cut across the entire game society, there are also many customs that are specific to each server. That leaves other players as the best source of the rules. For my part, I learned by taking cues from the people I played with, from paying attention to what party and raid leaders said, and from coming right out and asking. In this way I moved out of the rank of social noob even when I still played like a WoW noob. However, in order to raise yourself out of ‘social noob’ status you have to have the desire and the ability to learn. From what I observed about Mick, he did not have the ability to learn.
It’s a shame, too. Despite his annoying tendencies (in-guild he was a lot like Chester the Terrier: Anyone-wanna-run-something-let’s-do-something-are-we-raiding-tonight-we-should-raid-something-who-can-enchant/gem-this-what-enchant-should-I-get-for-tanking-where-do-I’AAAARGHHH!) he was enthusiastic about the game, and desired getting involved with raiding. His first actual guild run was Tuesday night; he did passably well, and spent a lot of time afterwards discussing tankie stuff with our other tank (on the other hand, one of the people from his fated Ony run told the GM how he was not using a tanking weapon while tanking. /sigh). I don't believe he's an 'outright A-hole', though the folks in the raid would disagree. In the end, it was his inability to socialize well and to learn from the people around him -- in short, his social noobishness -- that cost him a guild spot. Though not for long: I noticed by the end of the night he’d caught on with another. I wish them well.
*The Booterang is supposed to knock sense into worthless, lazy peons. I would like to think it knocked some sense into Mick, but we're more than happy to let his new guild find out.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
'Let's Do It on Normal Mode'
I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend with my guild in recent months: a willingness to throw in the towel early. This popped up the first time our ten man group finally reached Yogg-Saron. That first night we took a whopping total of 9 shots at him (though that included our unintended ‘Alone in the Darkness’ attempt kicked off by someone stepping too far into the room) before we reached our time limit for the night. We actually got to Phase 2 once, but with so few players alive that there was no hope of getting anywhere. Most of those first nine attempts ended in Phase 1, but we were learning and progressing, even if it didn’t show in the final results.
A few nights later we went back with high hopes, sure that we would be able to down Yoggy in our three hour time frame. We had a couple of clunker attempts but found ourselves doing much better, getting into Phase 2 with everyone alive, which is where it fell apart. At that point, after six attempts in about an hour’s playing time, someone begged off claiming fatigue. ‘Have to work tomorrow,’ he said. When we discussed trying to replace him someone else said ‘I’ll stay, if we can actually get somewhere.’ I wanted to reach through the internet and strangle the guy – what did he think we’d been doing for the last hour? As it turned out, we ended up not getting replacements that night; we also elected not to extend the lockout, and we haven’t been back since.
A second recent event occurred last week when we decided to tackle 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader. A month or so ago we had made an attempt at it, just to see what it was like. It was hard, and we weren’t ready. This time we hand-picked our top players (as opposed to the open invites for normal) and went in. The results were far better than our first time in – we were just a hair off on our dps on the first attempt, so that the worms were entering the arena while Gormok was still up. We gave it a credible shot, then had the obligatory 2-3 wipes due to stupid stuff. After our 4th attempt (30 minutes or so in) it happened: ‘Maybe we should switch over to normal mode.’ (NOTE: this was not one of the two principals involved in the Yogg bailout – neither of them is in the guild now) This angered me because I felt that leaving at that point would not be giving ourselves a fair chance. Ultimately the raid decided to continue on with the Grand Crusader. We stuck it out for 10 total attempts and, while we ultimately failed to take down the Beasts, we made enough progress so that we can say confidently ‘We’ll get them next time.’
I’m not really clear where the change in attitude has come from. In the last year as a guild we’ve worked hard. We’ve had our share of triumphs and cock-ups, we’ve wiped on fights that we should have considered ‘farmable’, and surprised ourselves with some unexpected wins. From the time we started raiding Naxxramas right up through most of Ulduar, our raiders were determined to see through to the end. What happened?
I think the issue here is with the content. It seems as if most of the non-hard mode encounters are very easy, once you’ve defeated it once. As an example, Kologarn gave us fits when we first went against him. And then we beat him for the first time. Next week when we went back to face him again he proved to be no trouble at all. This was very different from our experiences in Karazhan and Zul’Aman, where some bosses always seemed to give us trouble, no matter how often we beat them. Had we simply managed to get enough gear to make Kologarn (and Auriayah, and the Keepers) easy? Or had we just discovered ‘The Trick’ to beating each of them?
Crusaders’ Coliseum is largely the same on normal. Our first time in there it was Lord Jaraxxus who gave us all kinds of trouble. He’s trivial now. Aside from the Faction Champions we have no trouble whatsoever in normal 10 man mode. And, to be honest, though I don’t yet have the achievement for ToC-25 (the groups I’m in have all fallen apart by the time we get to Anub’arak), it’s really not that hard from a healers’ perspective. But hard mode – that’s another story.
Hard mode is supposed to be hard; I don’t object to that at all. Unfortunately I think the disparity between ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ (whether it be hard mode vs. normal, or a boss that’s simply ‘hard’ like Mimiron or Yogg vs. one that’s ‘easy’) is too great – not for me, but for some of my guildies. They’ve forgotten what progression means – wipes, frustration, repair bills, less emblems this week. They’ve also forgotten how thrilling it can be when you finally get that boss down after so much head-banging. Maybe when we start getting into Icecrown it will be different. Maybe they just got tired of Ulduar over and over again, or watching the same conga line of bosses run through the gates of the Coliseum. I certainly hope that's the case, because I’d hate to wipe a couple of times in Icecrown and have someone say ‘eh, let’s go back and do Ulduar, we need the gear.’ As much as I’d still like to finish off Yogg-Saron, I’ve got my mind on Arthas – and I don’t want to wait until Cataclysm to visit him.
A few nights later we went back with high hopes, sure that we would be able to down Yoggy in our three hour time frame. We had a couple of clunker attempts but found ourselves doing much better, getting into Phase 2 with everyone alive, which is where it fell apart. At that point, after six attempts in about an hour’s playing time, someone begged off claiming fatigue. ‘Have to work tomorrow,’ he said. When we discussed trying to replace him someone else said ‘I’ll stay, if we can actually get somewhere.’ I wanted to reach through the internet and strangle the guy – what did he think we’d been doing for the last hour? As it turned out, we ended up not getting replacements that night; we also elected not to extend the lockout, and we haven’t been back since.
A second recent event occurred last week when we decided to tackle 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader. A month or so ago we had made an attempt at it, just to see what it was like. It was hard, and we weren’t ready. This time we hand-picked our top players (as opposed to the open invites for normal) and went in. The results were far better than our first time in – we were just a hair off on our dps on the first attempt, so that the worms were entering the arena while Gormok was still up. We gave it a credible shot, then had the obligatory 2-3 wipes due to stupid stuff. After our 4th attempt (30 minutes or so in) it happened: ‘Maybe we should switch over to normal mode.’ (NOTE: this was not one of the two principals involved in the Yogg bailout – neither of them is in the guild now) This angered me because I felt that leaving at that point would not be giving ourselves a fair chance. Ultimately the raid decided to continue on with the Grand Crusader. We stuck it out for 10 total attempts and, while we ultimately failed to take down the Beasts, we made enough progress so that we can say confidently ‘We’ll get them next time.’
I’m not really clear where the change in attitude has come from. In the last year as a guild we’ve worked hard. We’ve had our share of triumphs and cock-ups, we’ve wiped on fights that we should have considered ‘farmable’, and surprised ourselves with some unexpected wins. From the time we started raiding Naxxramas right up through most of Ulduar, our raiders were determined to see through to the end. What happened?
I think the issue here is with the content. It seems as if most of the non-hard mode encounters are very easy, once you’ve defeated it once. As an example, Kologarn gave us fits when we first went against him. And then we beat him for the first time. Next week when we went back to face him again he proved to be no trouble at all. This was very different from our experiences in Karazhan and Zul’Aman, where some bosses always seemed to give us trouble, no matter how often we beat them. Had we simply managed to get enough gear to make Kologarn (and Auriayah, and the Keepers) easy? Or had we just discovered ‘The Trick’ to beating each of them?
Crusaders’ Coliseum is largely the same on normal. Our first time in there it was Lord Jaraxxus who gave us all kinds of trouble. He’s trivial now. Aside from the Faction Champions we have no trouble whatsoever in normal 10 man mode. And, to be honest, though I don’t yet have the achievement for ToC-25 (the groups I’m in have all fallen apart by the time we get to Anub’arak), it’s really not that hard from a healers’ perspective. But hard mode – that’s another story.
Hard mode is supposed to be hard; I don’t object to that at all. Unfortunately I think the disparity between ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ (whether it be hard mode vs. normal, or a boss that’s simply ‘hard’ like Mimiron or Yogg vs. one that’s ‘easy’) is too great – not for me, but for some of my guildies. They’ve forgotten what progression means – wipes, frustration, repair bills, less emblems this week. They’ve also forgotten how thrilling it can be when you finally get that boss down after so much head-banging. Maybe when we start getting into Icecrown it will be different. Maybe they just got tired of Ulduar over and over again, or watching the same conga line of bosses run through the gates of the Coliseum. I certainly hope that's the case, because I’d hate to wipe a couple of times in Icecrown and have someone say ‘eh, let’s go back and do Ulduar, we need the gear.’ As much as I’d still like to finish off Yogg-Saron, I’ve got my mind on Arthas – and I don’t want to wait until Cataclysm to visit him.
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