How has WoW made an impact on your life, for better or worse?

I have played this game for several years now, and I would like to think my life has been changed for the better.  A while ago I answered a similar question about how WoW has improved my typewriting skills and it opened my eyes to see how an efficient and functional team is formed (Be MOP #103), but that post did not answer the question of if my life was improved on a whole.

While I may be out of hundreds of dollars to pay subscription fees for all the years and spending many, many late nights wiping on that one boss the held back the progression raid group.  I would like to believe that my life has improved because of all the friends I got to meet along the way. Because I played World of Warcraft  I was able to meet people online from all corners of the world that I would never meet if I never picked up this game. World of Warcraft also strengthened the friendship I had with my existing, IRL, gaming friends. I can not count the speculation, discussions, and agreements I had with my friends over lunch or dinner.

I can also point to WoW for this creation of this blog that allowed me to post my thoughts and opinions of the game, all the while improving my writing and social media skills, which has already transitioned to other parts of my life.

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

If you have been paying attention to anything related to Diablo III, you know that two weeks ago Blizzard launched patch 1.0.8 on the North American servers. What makes this news worthy is that players soon discovered a bug that allowed them to dupe or duplicate any amount of gold that was placed on the Auction House. In a matter of hours the player economy experienced a fit of hyperinflation, the type which has not been seen since Post-World-War-I Germany leaving the value of gold completely worthless.

While Blizzard did temporarily freeze the player auction houses and issued bans left and right to the players who exploited the bug, the damage to the player economy has already been done, with unknown amount of gold, some estimate in the billions or trillions, suddenly forced in circulation.

In light of all of this, a question does emerges, “Does Blizzard, and other game companies, have an obligation to the players to monitor and regulate the in-game player economy?”

In all other games the player economy follows a purely capitalist free market model, with players putting their items up on the Auction House and then the player community collectively decides how much they would be willing to spend on the item.

In the past other game companies have been perfectly fine leaving the player-run economy alone leaving players to gamble their gold by working the auction house, but Diablo’s market is not like other player economy.  Blizzard decided to introduce a Real Money Auction House (RMAH) to run alongside Diablo’s in-game auction house.

This allowed players to buy items with gold on the gold auction house and then re-list that item on the RMAH and end up with net-profit of real currency. The process could work in reverse allowing players to place bids on items on the RMAH and sell it on the player auction house for gold.

As a result of two different auction houses that ran on two different types of currency, but with goods that could easily be sold to either type of players (the people who use the AH and the ones who use the RMAH) the Diablo community decided how much gold you could get with one U.S dollar. (Fun Fact: This is how we decide the currency rates between two different nations).

If a person starts playing the market, with real money on the line that person expects some stability with the economy, an occasional bump or hit to the wallet is understandable when trying to play against the needs and desires of other people with disposable income.

When a market becomes unstable the people starts demanding for the government to step in and place regulations to prevent that certain economical disaster from happening again. In American history we the avocation of government regulation in the Great Depression in the 30’s and right after the housing and banking meltdown in the late 2000’s

In real life most of nation’s economy has some government intervention to try to make sure their market does not crash from any tricky trades, this type of economic intervention involves placing regulations how companies can conduct business. More importantly, though, the government has the power to decides the value of the currency in the world market by changing how much money is printed, and in circulation, for that year.

While unable to place regulations on the trades players can make in-game, Blizzard can change the global drop rate of gold in the game from day-to-day, thanks to Diablo’s always on DRM.

Which brings me back to my question of should Blizzard monitor the player market  to (not prevent, because no one can a foresee a glitch) but set in place government-esque policies and protocol and regulate the dollar value of gold in the game?

After I completed the last phrase of the Thunder Isle I lost all interest in playing on my mage, literally overnight my play time with my main plummeted.

What’s the use of participating on the island once the main story ends?

The guild I was  in dissolved a few months ago and with that went my raiding and social group. Even with the worst case of WoW burnout, the raiding group and the appeal of progressive PvE was the only thing bringing me back to play each week and I just don’t have the desire to see end game content when I have the more accessible Raid Finder function.

The battlegrounds and arenas are out of the question, WoW’s PvP  is just not that exciting ever since I have been playing ranked matches in League of Legends. A game where I can switch to any type of class and play style from game to game without having to sink any time leveling  that champion from level one to play competitively. 

With the progressive raiding and battlegrounds just not keeping my attention I am resorted to play the daily and the Azeroth world for my gameplay, the problem is that I almost completed all of the reputation grinds in Pandaria and because I have been a long time completionist there is not much old game content to go back too.

With no new content  I am stuck leveling my monk, which is acting as the new cannery nelf. Yesterday I realized that my Pandaren has been getting more playtime now then when I was leveling my night elf at the end of Cataclysm. 

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

A combination of writer block and mild burnout has prevented me from constructing a proper blog post. I am sorry about the inconvenience, please check back this Wednesday.

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

Look, It’s right there! It’s even above their unannounced MMO.

This has been the one Blizzard game that I have been most excited to play and I was a tad afraid that the game was causally dropped from development, like Starcraft Ghost, because there have not been any of any announcements on the game’s progress since a few months after it was first announced. 

Blizzard has stated that they will not be releasing any new game for the rest of this year, so that means the game where I can play as Sylvanas Windrunner as I deliver the killing bow to Jim Raynor just before Deckard Cain tries to kill steal me will have to wait until *hopefully* early 2014.

To any Blizzard employees who are in development of Blizzard All-Star and are looking for  player testers, I am more than willing to participate in the beta. Just remember, Mid or I feed.

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

The monk daily does not hurt either.

Last month I did the calculations and with various experience boosts that is available to my monk and I found out that I can get up to 95% additional experience points for every quest or dungeon I complete and I’m at the crucial levels where I need it the most.

In Cataclysm, Blizzard’s greatest gift to players was the redesign of the vanilla dungeons. While the resigns and maps made the low level tolerable to run in the Looking for Group I have a feeling that they could only do so much for the high 30-50 dungeons.

I am talking about the dungeons that consists of multiple bosses, spread out in a winding maze definitively and endless waves of trash pulls. All of these dungeons showed the old Blizzard game style of grand spacious zones with the potential of dedicating hours of gameplay to the instance before encountering the final boss to get your chance for  the loot you wanted.

As Blizzard changed the dungeon design from more open and wondering dungeons to more of a streamlined approach that emerged from Burning Crusade and beyond. After running a few of those dungeon runs I can state those old dungeons has not aged well.

It even forced me to take rez sickness because I could not find the entrance to the instance after I died

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

I have had my League of Legends account for more than a year and while I had seen bits and pieces of the hostile in-game community in action it is nothing compared to how some of the players interact in the competitive, ranked games.

While I know that for the most part the LoL community is supportive of each other, there is a very vocal minority in the player-base whose comments are the ones people remember after the play session. Unfortunately these are the players that people end up associating with the game.

The conversation then turned towards the racist.

I think the problem with League’s community is how the entire game is built. An average game creates two teams of five players from a randomly selected pool of thousands or millions and unless you are friends of your teammates, or you specifically reached out and sent a friend an invite to play once you have competed together, after the match you are almost guaranteed to never see your teammates or opponents ever again.

Because of this structure, it allows players to judge other players based on first impressions and how well people have performed in an isolated game.

This type of player interaction only intensifies when you add progression into the mix. With progression, you do not get the chance to move up in the leader boards. The constant threat of failure and demotion motivates people to perform at their most competitive and that’s when the bad side of players comes out.

It is incredibly difficult to work as a team with other people if you do not know how invested they are in the match. They could be playing at their best or they could not care about the outcome of the match. When your progression through the player leader boards is on the line, it can be frustrating seeing one person sabotage the entire game.

The only comparison I could make to what Warcraft’s community is like is this, imagine Blizzard gave an option to enter a normal or heroic raid difficulty in the Raid Finder service and in that normal and heroic raids, it follows the same loot drop design and weekly lockouts as any other guild raid. Imagine the frustration that would come from that option, with League, it’s almost the same thing.

The question emerges, “how do you fix the problem?” and I have no idea how to solve the problem of abusive and unethical player interaction with anything less than a complete overhaul of game. A massive overhaul could be done by fracturing the servers into smaller groups to promote a sense of community, like how Warcraft’s fractured servers promoted server community. Or Riot could go with what Blizzard’s did and only allow proper endgame content (ranked matches) to be available to premade teams. By only allowing premade teams to play competitively Riot would put the responsibility of creating a team consisting of teammates with the same goals on the players (either have fun or progressing through the ranks) to be involved in the games.

What do you think? For League players, do you think that the community is bad enough to justify a change in the game, and if so what would you recommend?

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

Before I begin, I want to point out that I wrote a first impressions of the Marvel Heroes MMO at Pixelistis, you can find my experiences and opinions of the beta HERE.

The Warbot as quickly become my favorite pet

in-game. Red battle Fuel for LIFE!

I was asked to visit the Dark Portal for Children’s Week and even though its apart of a six-year-old expansion this structure still takes my breath away

I have no idea how I got this screenshot, but it is the coolest shot of a mogu that I have ever taken

I want to get on my soap box and state that this is the worst part of the Isle of Thunder daily quest zone. I have a pretty high end laptop and I still had trouble, I would hate to see how players with low end computers handle this quest.

What?, how did a screenshot of Bioshock get into the gallery? That’s not right….

Enjoy the weekend and I’ll see you back here Monday.

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

Awww these little are seems to grow up so fast.

This is the time where the heroes of Azeroth temporarily adopt an orphan and show the little NPC the world in an extravagant sightseeing tour that showcases you and the young ones the lesser known part of the world, introducing them influential members of Azeroth with special events that is only available for this event.

I was happy to get involved in this holiday, because  is a nice change of pace from my recent gameplay have been revolved around sitting in Stormwind zoning in and out of dungeons. It was fun exploring the different parts of the world, revisiting the different areas of Azeorth that you might not be tempted to go to without this quest.

the best part of re-exploring the world is not the main objective and the choice of pets you get as the reward, but instead the little things you did not notice the first time passing through.

For example it took the Outland orphan quest chain to made me realize that I am spoiled by Catalysms’s and Pandaria’s flight paths

I honestly thought that I missed some Flight path points when I opened up the map for the first time

And I also found out that there is a vendor in Stromwind that sells the Blue and Red War Fuel for the Warbot. The pet and the War Fuel was a promotional giveaway from Blizzard with they teamed up with Mountain Dew for their Warcraft gamer fuel promotion.

The gimmick was that you could fill your warbot with one of the two favors and if your warbot ran into another warbot with a different flavor, they would fire missiles at each other until only one was left standing.

I kept a few stacks of recently un-discontinued fuel in my bank as a relic of a the past, always afraid of wasting them, but now? Oh, I’m going to keep my little Warbot out all the time, in the hopes of meeting another warbot in the streets.

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

I, like many healers, like to play a game to see how low the tank’s HP can get in a boss fight before healing them up.
I’m not very good at it

Soon after I zoned into the first insistence I remembered exactly why I lost interest  playing on my Mistweaver. See, my monk is not a part of a guild at the moment and because of that every time I zone I enter a new server I am bombarded with private messages and guild invited asking me if I want to join their “Level X, causal progression guild with Fast Track buffs and free armor repairs” and because I am a persistent player, I have refused each and every one of those guild invites, determined not to give in to the constant demand and validate these guild reciters actions with one more person added to their roster.

It seems odd, but I am not against spamming for your raid or your guild. I was around for the end of Burning Crusade and experienced the first two-thirds into Wrath of the Lich King expansions (before 3.3′s cross server’s ) I know that spamming is an important part of finding other players who are interested in joining your guild or your pick up group to complete the daily heroic quest. What I do not like about this givinte addon is that it takes all the effort away from spamming people.

I know it’s an app, but that is no excuse to be lazy.

Not to sound like an grumpy old man but back in the day if you wanted someone to join your guild you would have to go to the major cities and have a nice little elevator speech ready for trade chat. You would have to either manually type it out every-time or click a marco that you prepared before hand. The important thing back then was that you had to be there, giving up a bit of your potential play time to find these people there was a choice to be made there.

But now there is not lost in game play, no matter where the recruiters are they can send out an automatic guild invites and messages to anyone, anywhere. It is all automatic now, and I am not alone when I ask for Blizzard to step in and address this this player created issue that has touched every server in Warcraft.

But I want to know what you think. What is your opinion to the Ginivte addons? and Do you think Blizzard should step in and set regulations on how many guild invites you can send out? or do you think that it’s the players responsibly  to find a relief to the constant whispers?

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Be MOP focuses on the Mists of Pandaria expansion of World of Warcraft with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the game’s life cycle. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays