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Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The blessing of welfare epics
Rohan from Blessing of Kings posted a series of three articles on "welfare epics", starting with this general one, then refining it into a less biased version, before finally hitting the ultimate reason of why raiders can't understand PvP rewards: PvP rewards improve in quantity, not quality, when you put more effort into the activity. Brilliant observation, because it very much explains how raiders can think of the PvP rewards in terms of "welfare epics", even if PvP players have good explanations on how there isn't any welfare involved, and you can't really "dance naked in the arena for a few weeks and get epics".
It was Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) who called PvP rewards "welfare epics" at BlizzCon. I hope his boss slapped him for that, because that was really, really bad marketing. If you have a multi-faceted product, you don't let the guy who designed one facet of it diss one of the other facets in public. The impression of "WoW is all about raiding" is harmful to the profitability of the game, because raiding doesn't appeal to everybody. A "do whatever MMO activity you like best and get equally rewarded for equal effort" image is a much, much better sell. The posts on Blessing of Kings help to understand how difficult it is to understand what exactly constitutes "equal effort", but for once the reality of WoW is better than the public image.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:38 AM Permanent Link
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Tigole is becoming more and more of a liability to Blizzard and my guess is he's being watched very carefully nowadays.
Tigole is a hardcore raider, one who doesn't mind spending 60 hours a week raiding hardcore. If he were just a player that would be ok. But he's not, he's a developer and his speciality is raid design. This is bad and leads to silly things like silly attunements, rep grinds for crafted gear, Mount Hyjal's endless trashwaves, guilds forcing their users to grind hours upon hours every week for consumables, resist fights, raidstacking for certain encounters, berserk timers, artificial cockblocks and other such fun stuff.
My hope is that they're keeping him on a very tight leash when they get to designing the raids in wrath.
Tigole is a hardcore raider, one who doesn't mind spending 60 hours a week raiding hardcore. If he were just a player that would be ok. But he's not, he's a developer and his speciality is raid design. This is bad and leads to silly things like silly attunements, rep grinds for crafted gear, Mount Hyjal's endless trashwaves, guilds forcing their users to grind hours upon hours every week for consumables, resist fights, raidstacking for certain encounters, berserk timers, artificial cockblocks and other such fun stuff.
My hope is that they're keeping him on a very tight leash when they get to designing the raids in wrath.
# posted by 
: 11/12/07 13:22
: 11/12/07 13:22
that is purely the reason why they hired him in the first place. for raid, raids, raidcontent and more raid.
Well, then they should hire someone like Tobold to tweak out the casual and content driven part of the game...
Copra
Copra
Id actually like to see a 2man instance with t6/s3-quality loots, which you could clear in, say, 2 weeks with few hours playtime (2 weeks to get to 2k rating?) each day and then farm it by playing it few hours once every week (10 games in arenas to maintain your rating?) after that.
That would be fair eh?
That would be fair eh?
# posted by : 11/12/07 15:04
: 11/12/07 15:04
Thanks for the shout-back, although I hardly qualify as a serious let alone hardcore pvper, I fall into the "dedicated" player category.
@anonymous: fair or unfair, who cares? If they implement this kind of content and you enjoy it, you aren't taking anything away from me clearing it and wearing the kit. Nor by clearing BT and wearing full T6, nor by hitting 2600 ranking, getting an epic arena flyer and a gladiator title. When Apple releases a redesigned iPod Nano on the market 6 months after you got yours, do you feel threatened by people who bought that one? Do they ruin the 6 months of enjoyment you got from listening to music on your own nano? Same with S3 and T6.
PS
Altitis has moved and the post above can now be found at the new place.
@anonymous: fair or unfair, who cares? If they implement this kind of content and you enjoy it, you aren't taking anything away from me clearing it and wearing the kit. Nor by clearing BT and wearing full T6, nor by hitting 2600 ranking, getting an epic arena flyer and a gladiator title. When Apple releases a redesigned iPod Nano on the market 6 months after you got yours, do you feel threatened by people who bought that one? Do they ruin the 6 months of enjoyment you got from listening to music on your own nano? Same with S3 and T6.
PS
Altitis has moved and the post above can now be found at the new place.
Badges of Justice give Welfare Epics these days for pve. Do Karazhan 3 or 4 times and the daily heroics, and you can get every epic item available in a month.
Welfare Badges?
Welfare Badges?
# posted by : 11/12/07 17:00
: 11/12/07 17:00
Being a former player, and one who was equally involved in PvP and PvE, I find points of view like the one Blessing of Kings exhibits rather hillarious.
- They lack argumentative power for an environment where players should be able to play the way they like
- They are self-glorifying, raiding-propagating, other-types-of-play-bashing people
I'm sorry, but I have to stop writing now in order to prevent my fingers from typing very unsophisticated and abusive things.
- They lack argumentative power for an environment where players should be able to play the way they like
- They are self-glorifying, raiding-propagating, other-types-of-play-bashing people
I'm sorry, but I have to stop writing now in order to prevent my fingers from typing very unsophisticated and abusive things.
# posted by : 11/12/07 17:22
: 11/12/07 17:22
I never understood loot envy or loot focus. I'm kind of missing that gene.
I think the role of loot in PVE raiding works better than in PVP at this point. In PVP you'd want skill and not gear to play a key factor. In raiding it serves a pacing function.
I really think Blizz should have made gladiator sets that everyone gets for arenas and make arenas so only those sets work. Then arena fights would actually be gear balanced. Right now arenas have an odd gear component that I find not very helpful.
But that's gear for function, not gear for status :P
I think the role of loot in PVE raiding works better than in PVP at this point. In PVP you'd want skill and not gear to play a key factor. In raiding it serves a pacing function.
I really think Blizz should have made gladiator sets that everyone gets for arenas and make arenas so only those sets work. Then arena fights would actually be gear balanced. Right now arenas have an odd gear component that I find not very helpful.
But that's gear for function, not gear for status :P
# posted by : 11/12/07 19:11
: 11/12/07 19:11
"you can't really "dance naked in the arena for a few weeks and get epics"."
That's funny...as that is *EXACTLY* what I do. Works just fine.
I create a 2v2 team with a friend's account, log in both characters and Q up. Join with one character and let the other team kill me, repeat 5 times. Swap to the 2nd character and repeat 5 times. Voila free epics for yes, literally dancing naked in the arena.
So why exactly does this not work?
That's funny...as that is *EXACTLY* what I do. Works just fine.
I create a 2v2 team with a friend's account, log in both characters and Q up. Join with one character and let the other team kill me, repeat 5 times. Swap to the 2nd character and repeat 5 times. Voila free epics for yes, literally dancing naked in the arena.
So why exactly does this not work?
@nuff
I was hoping that someone like you would comment, because I'd like to know something:
Since your gear will be useless for high-end raiding, and
You will have zero skill at PvP...
What, exactly, do you plan to do once you've freeloaded your way into these epics?
Stand by the mailbox?
I was hoping that someone like you would comment, because I'd like to know something:
Since your gear will be useless for high-end raiding, and
You will have zero skill at PvP...
What, exactly, do you plan to do once you've freeloaded your way into these epics?
Stand by the mailbox?
# posted by : 12/12/07 19:26
: 12/12/07 19:26
"Voila free epics for yes, literally dancing naked in the arena.
So why exactly does this not work?"
Because it will take you weeks and weeks of doing that to get fully geared in epics. I recently saw a figure of 38+ weeks to get the required number of arena points to become fully geared in Season 3 equipment, assuming you lose every game. That's not "welfare epics" that "lunatic epics". You could have running something as simple as Kara been geared up three times as fast.
So why exactly does this not work?"
Because it will take you weeks and weeks of doing that to get fully geared in epics. I recently saw a figure of 38+ weeks to get the required number of arena points to become fully geared in Season 3 equipment, assuming you lose every game. That's not "welfare epics" that "lunatic epics". You could have running something as simple as Kara been geared up three times as fast.
# posted by : 12/12/07 21:41
: 12/12/07 21:41
LOL I remember being told this with the old PVP system, after the tweaks just before BC, how I could get my gear in a few weeks if I just played a few games a day.
When I did the math I realized it would take 6 to 8 weeks to get my one handed weapon.
Of course the flip side of that is someone who is on the underpopulated faction of thier server can gear up 3 or 4 times as fast because of instaques. Not sure how it works in arenas because I never did them.
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When I did the math I realized it would take 6 to 8 weeks to get my one handed weapon.
Of course the flip side of that is someone who is on the underpopulated faction of thier server can gear up 3 or 4 times as fast because of instaques. Not sure how it works in arenas because I never did them.
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