Monthly Archives: February 2008

Another Good News, Bad News Scenario

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Rarely am I organized enough to bookmark game issues so I can check back later and see “whatever happened to that promised fix?” Oh … like, say, the World of Warcraft Global Cooldown changes back in November 2007.

And here was the promise, as writ by Drysc, dripping tree of Blizzard:

We’re continuing to read reports and feedback, and we’ve recently applied a hotfix that should make it easier to chain cast spells without seeing the “Another action is in progress” or “Spell is not ready yet” messages at the end of casting.

That was just part of the fix; the other part has to be addressed client-side and requires a patch.

The fix that’s in the patch is to address players getting the “Spell is not ready yet” when spamming at the beginning of a cast. This message happens instead of just seeing a “quick click” of the spell, which doesn’t affect DPS, but certainly changes the feel of playing as if something has gone wrong. The patch with this other part of the fix will be available on the PTRs within the next week.

We really want everyone to get on the PTR when it does go live, test the changes, and report their findings on the Test Realm forum. We’re continuing to read reports, test the issue internally, and want to reach a resolution that addresses the concerns.

And indeed, the fix is now on the Public Test Realm. It’s called Spell Haste.

Casuals do most of the living and dying in this game, is it too much to have them live and die in a couple of decent epics?

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Whilst I was marveling at the warlock ner … changes as proposed on the World of Warcraft Public Test Realm, aka Patch 2.4 “We Hate You All, but not you rogues because you have so little in this life it would be cruel to take anything away”, I found this nerd rage thread on the WoW PTR forums: To Casuals on a Silver Platter.

I love that thread because there’s a handful of hardcores dueling dozens of casuals — and isn’t that what the Hardcore vs Casual argument is really about? A numbers game, ultimately a profit equation, and in that system Casuals > Hardcore. You live, you learn.

So, hardcore player Altyera of the Dalaran realm, self-described as “… better at this game than you. Much, much, much better”, wrote:

Powerful rewards for people incapable of playing this game seriously? Fine.

Give me something for playing this game well. Give me something for investing three and a half years playing my chosen class to the fullest. Give me something for organizing twenty-five people every week into a well-oiled machine capable of flawlessly tackling complex encounters. Give my members something special for beating the game.

Give me a title for killing every boss in the game. Make my name sparkle and the ground glow at my feet.

Give me a 310% mount for killing Illidan. It’s no less an accomplishment than Gladiator.

Give me an entire array of legendary weapons dropping from Illidan, Archimonde and Kil’jaeden. What casual could complain that they’re not well-earned?

Give me and the top 500 guilds a private forum to converse directly with the developers.

Give me early access to private test realms, expedited character copies and a direct line to the developers while I’m testing content.

You’re giving an awful lot to casual players in this patch. Give me back as much as I put into this game. Great, fun stuff for casuals is awesome, and it’s one reason WoW is so popular. Give the top 1% some incentive to continue investing the time and effort necessary to stay at the top of this game.

Gear that is 3% better than a casual player’s and a couple fancy titles for doing things that no longer matter are far, far less than we deserve.

This is what I love about the Hardcore vs Casual debate as the Hardcores frequently argue: it’s not enough that Casuals get less, or later, than the Hardcores, they have to get much less, preferably much later.

Here’s some more:

Reply #60

The people who consider themselves casuals ruin the game for the people that play it with the purpose of trying to accomplish something they consider great. They spoil the rewards earned by people who put the time, effort, and thought into raiding.

HAHAHA. You casuals are RUINING the game for the people who accomplish GREAT things. Oh fercrissakes.

Reply #13

I have seen people with families and careers get to illidan and farm BT….nobody has an excuses anymore except lack of trying and just plain giving up or being a paraplegic, down-syndrome monkey. Why should they be entitled to free stuff for not trying when the people that actually try get exactly the same things? Its beyond silly…

Parapalegics don’t deserve epics either, I guess. Nice attitude, asshole.

Reply #26

Oh wait, I forgot that most casuals are god-awful at this game.

Pssst, so are most hardcores.

Reply #37

You just can’t talk to them Alty, they refuse, can’t, and never will understand anything about risk/reward in the game, or life.

He’s probably one of those gamers who are CEO of their own start-ups pulling down six figures while married to the super-model wife and raising six children. Even on my own WoW server, we have a lot of those. I assume they’re passing out WoW boxes with subscriptions to Fortune and The Wall Street Journal.

Reply #139

Raiders and hard-core pvper’s make-up the core and soul of this game. Kill that and kill the game. All you are doing is catering to make sh1t so damn easy my unborn child could clear every instance in the game within a week. I’m wondering when they will be giving away epics upon creating an account.

Hyperbole can be an effective argument tool. This would not be a good example of such.

Every EverQuest and Ultima Online player remembers a day when there was no choice like we have in WoW now. I didn’t play UO, but I did play EQ and there was no casual play — everything required a guild, and an able guild at that. (Ok, there was roleplaying and cyber, but we’re talking about gear and character advancement here, stud.) That wasn’t good.

Sure it was great killing Nagafen with 60 people, or getting your class epic (thanks to your guild, and possibly the entire server), but it would have been nice to have another option to get stuff. The stuff didn’t have to be the best, just better than the stuff we had. Choice would have been nice.

Today’s raiders do deserve better rewards, yes — they put in more time and deal with headaches that a solo player will never know — but we should not argue for a big gear gap. Never, never, never should we argue for a big gear gap.

One reason: recruitment.

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