A sense of entitlement

I came across this gem on one of the blue trackers on MMO Champion, on the subject of T11 being made puggable.

So casuals will constantly be a tier behind for the rest of the life of this game? If that is what is actually coming out of your mouth I'll save myself the time and unsub now. What a piss poor vision for your game. There are normal and heroic versions of raids for a reason. That heroic difficulty was implemented so that the two segments of the population (casual and hardcore) would both have something to do. You are now bifurcating the raiding population AGAIN, by telling casuals that they have to run around in the left overs.

[PS. The answer is: YES. IF THEY CARED ABOUT THAT THEY WOULD NOT BE CASUAL PLAYERS.]

Note the difference between "casual" and "I need to be one of the cool kids but I'm terrible at the game so pls make the coolest stuff especially for me".

I can live with Blizzard's resources being diverted to work on crap like the sparkle pony and the flion, but it really rubs me the wrong way that the money I pay blizzard is being spent on hiring people to actually spend time composing well-worded responses to retards like this.

Video games matter?

I would like to rant for a moment about Extra Credits, a video series on that website that hosts Zero Punctuation. Man, what a bunch of windbags. I get that it's interesting to talk about philosophies of video game design and so on, but it was about the point where they decided they were going to speak for all video game players and be the self-appointed lone voice of reason in an industry of morons that I started finding them less "interesting" and more "excruciating", as they gently explainined to the unwashed masses what a "true female character" is, why we should care about video game piracy, and how Missile Command had one the most meaningful storylines of any game ever. It's all very.... pseudo intellectual. [You have to imagine the venom with which I speak that term.]

Recently they've come up with a new tagline; "Because video games matter". This to me perfectly defines what I dislike about this series. Sure, in terms of the millions of people producing, purchasing and playing them, video games "matter", but by the same definition, so does pornography.

These people are video game connoisseurs. Yes, sometimes games are made with strong characters, compelling story, "meaningful choices" and other peripheral features, and as long as it's built on top of a fun experience those things are a fantastic addition, but the games that actually do this well are a serious minority. Video games are a pasttime, just pure entertainment, and no amount of pretension is going to convince me they "matter" in the real world.

A name change

A comment was made to me recently recently that all I do in this blog is QQ about stuff. I found I couldn't necessarily disagree except to assert that it's all constructive QQ.

Thoughts for Tuesday 28th June

Something that I always thought was odd back in Wrath was when there were seperate titles for 10- and 25-man versions of raid achievements, though the 25-man versions had a more blatant prestige to them, that the 10-man version always seemed to have a nicer... poetry to them;

the Astral Walker vs Starcaller
the Immortal vs the Undying
Twilight Vanquisher vs of the Nightfall

at least until Heroic Lich King bucked the trend with;

Bane of the Fallen King vs the Light of Dawn


One of the recent additions to our raid made a comment last week that he thought it was awesome that we raided and progressed, but still had fun while doing it.

I thought it was interesting, because it didn't really occur to me that having fun while playing a video game was anything remarkable.

It's a portal, not a stone!

Why does it irritate me so much when people refer to the Warlock Ritual of Summoning portal as a "stone"?

And as long as I'm whinging, and I know this isn't the timeliest of complaints, but "Shadow Labs" -- where the fuck did the "s" come from? There is no "s" in Labyrinth!

I am just a sad, pedantic little man.

Demonology

I hated this spec when I tried it back in Wrath. Compared to Destruction, it felt slow, uninteractive and overly-focussed on maintaing a full list of dots. So for a long time I assumed that it would be the same in Cata, up until I actually tried it.

Hand of Gul'dan is the exciting new spell, and forms the centre of the rotation, being your highest damage nuke, increasing the damage of your demon, refreshing the duration of Immolate, and [if talented] an AoE snare.

The spec focusses mainly on increasing the damage your minion does through applying dots and Curse of Gul'dan, but the special thing now is the benefit of being in melee range to use Shadowflame and Immolation Aura. The spec actually reminds me an awful lot of playing an Enhancement Shaman, with the hybrid-yness of being a caster in melee, using a smattering of abilities that all deal damage in slighty different ways, and that it's less about the direct damage individual spells do, but about the combinations of spells and abilities that feed into each other to contribute to overall damage.

Also, you get to transform into a huge motherfucking demon.

I just don't like refreshing dots. It's not compelling gameplay to me. I feel less like I'm directly damaging the boss than on a production line responsible for the upkeep of damage spells. I liked Destruction in Wrath basically because the weakness of DoTs at that time meant you only really had to worry about Immolate and your direct damage spells. Demonology, as I mentioned above, was the opposite.

Destruction in Cata has not only had the full compliment of Warlock dots made worth casting again, but now has an additional short duration buff to keep up with Improved Soul Fire. Demonology, with Hand of Gul'dan to automatically refresh Immolate, only regularly needs to keep an eye on Corruption. Even I am happy to deal with that.

Three more Spirit Beasts in patch 4.2

Because people love to have rare and unique things, so obviously the best way to improve the game is to add more and more rare and unique things.

Now everyone can be rare and unique!