Posts Tagged ‘FFXI’

On Immersion: Do Trees Fall in Virtual Forests when Nobody’s around?

In his post “Edelweiss“, Tesh discusses how details that may appear insignificant to the player, or merely background information, are key in making a player’s experience of a virtual world real. And I couldn’t agree more.

Beyond the obvious (the backstory, the major themes of the world presented to the player), a major factor of immersion for me is when the game stops being a movie theater that only plays when I’m here to witness it and starts giving the illusion of existing for its own sake.

As I recounted on a comment on Tesh’s post, when I started playing WoW in 2005, it was after spending a couple of years in FFXI. And the defining moment that put those two games apart in terms of immersion was very early on, in one of the starting zones, when I stumbled upon a wolf charging and killing a squirrel.

It was a purely gratuitous detail, but it conveyed the notion that the wolf had “other things to do” than just mill around until a player comes and kills it as part of  any “kill 10 foozles, collect its pelts” grindy quest. But it was that one single event that gave me a true impression, back in the day, that I was playing in a persistent virtual world rather than a scripted movie.

In terms of design, another element also clearly highlighted the difference in terms of immersion between both games, the reaction of NPC guards to hostile monsters. In FFXI, back in the day, for all practical purposes, guards were simply animated statues. When a newbie bit off more than he could chew in the starter zones, and started to flee, the monsters would follow through an entire zone, and if they caught up with the player while he was reaching the safety of the nearest city, the player would get slaughtered right in front of the impassible guards.

More often than not, whether by accident or (sometimes) malice, such a flight would end up gathering a whole mob of hostile monsters, and if the player made it safely to the city, they’d mill about at the gates for about half a minute before going back to their original location, attacking any player they’d come across. But the guards and the monsters never “saw” each other or reacted to the other’s presence.

In World of Warcraft, the behaviour was designed differently: Guards react to threats and will defend, if not necessarily the player, at least their post, and usually make short work of any threat coming their way. And regardless of any other qualities those two games may have, it’s such details, rather insignificant to the player’s character in the grand scheme of things, that give the world a solid, consistent texture.

We all know the popular philosophical riddle: “If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”. In terms of virtual worlds, the question becomes “If no player is in the forest, do the trees fall at all?”. The answer to that question makes a huge difference in the “texture” a designer gives its virtual world, and defines the level of immersion. For decades, computer games have been set in worlds where “no” was the standard answer. For persistent online virtual worlds, going with “yes” opens a new can of worms, to decide how far this concept can be taken. It will eventually lead to the question of how much lasting impact a player or a group of players can be allowed to have on the world. But at the most simple level, having a world that functions, with a bit of randomness thrown in for good measure, independently of the player’s presence, is part of the details that make a big difference on how it is being experienced by the player.

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Master Blogging and Altitis Birthsday

So after a significant slowdown to my posting activities, this is my 300th post on Altitis. Incidentally, the blog is also 1 year (and 10 days) old now.

Before moving on towards 400, let’s take the opportunity to review some facts both interesting and trivial about this place:

  • Collectively, my Damage Meter benchmarking series are what interested most readers, attracting slightly over 10’000 pageviews over time. While I can’t make any promises, I intend to get back to these “soon” to check where we stand now that the landscape has stabilized and the new combat log feature is almost ironed out.
  • My Parrot review remains the most popular post not part of a series, followed quite closely by my CowTip review.

Interestingly enough, as the wow blogosphere always makes a point of mentioning this kind of things, none of the above have ever been mentioned by wowinsider, and for that matter, haven’t been linked to from other blogs. The readers all come in through search engines, 98% from Google.

A quick review of phpbb3 combined with a mention of wowdb comes next in popularity, although I suspect most visitors to that page leave disappointed. From the search terms used, visitors were mainly interested in phpbb3 wow themes, not my short review & ramblings. Well, for wow-themed phpbb3 styles, here’s a short list:

There’s likely to be more out there if you want to google around but the above sampling should give you a good starting point.

My two most popular rants are tied to the Ghostwolf nerf, and I have mainly Mania to thank for that, as most viewers to these pages come from her blog.

One of my oldest theory posts still attracts a decent amount of viewers every day, the second one in the Defense Theory series which explains how PvE defense works, in particular for tanks.

Now for some other interesting or odd stats:

  • Last week, Altitis ranked second in Google for clicked queries on wrath talent trees (in fact I’m still second as I write this). There’s definitely a hunger for information on the matter out there. Unfortunately for visitors looking for this kind of information, what they get here is my post on how I believe it is too early to engage in in-depth discussions about wrath talents.
  • Some people are apparently still interested in my clumsy attempts to write my own armory crawler in php.
  • To the three people looking for Stop the Warrior: although we both are frequently commenting on each other’s posts and sometimes shouting out (or at) each other, his blog is over there. And while we’re at it, his GM, who holds a (probably deserved) bad opinion of me, has her own blog as well, and if you’re interested in insights into how guild management works in a serious raiding environment, you should have her on your blogroll. No excuses, go subscribe now.
  • What gives honor in AV? Killing other people of course, but also burning towers, holding onto towers until the end of the match, killing the opposing Captain (that’s either Galvander or Balinda depending on your faction), protecting your own captain until the end of the game, killing the enemy general.
  • Armchair from treehugger: dunno what you were looking for, but it sounds hurtful.
  • Casserole FFXI: sounds tasty
  • Cheese Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the good old mystery about the Darnassian Bleu still hasn’t been solved.

While there’s a lot of additional sassy keywords in here, this is probably enough of self-congratulation for a single post. As always, allow me to thank everyone of you for reading and commenting on Altitis, it’s your silent or outspoken presence which gives this blog a reason to be.

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An Apology to Stop, and a Reply on Death Knights

A week ago, Stop replied to my short Death Knight post. Unfortunately, his reply got caught by Akismet, making it the first false positive I got.
To add insult to injury, I’ve been focusing a lot on my sandbox and remained slack in my administration of my live blog, of all things, so his comment has been stuck in the spam moderation queue through all this time.

While Stop and me have a long history of intra-blog arguing, he certainly never deserved to end up in a spam filter. Sorry for this embarrassing oversight. To make up, here’s his comment in full and my reply:

“So do you think DK’s will be like druids and be able to put out the dps with a tanking spec? Do you think Blizzard will modify both Prot Warriors and Paladins to add more utility, either through dps or healing, within the Prot tree for when they aren’t healing? Do you think a raid will have room for a DK if all they can do is tank a gimmick encounter?

If I had to guess, I’d say DK’s will be the new druids.

Also, I want to get rid of Rogues from my melee group pending no group buffs in Wrath. Thoughts?“

From the first reports, it sure sounds like the DK will hold aggro by producing a healthy amount of damage (with all the caveats about Wrath being in alpha). What I’m curious is how much DPS the class will be capable of when in DPS mode in terms of integrating them into a group / raid setting when not tanking.

Just going of on a tangent here, but for a moment I thought to myself “what if it turns out that the max DPS in some situation can only be achieved in the tanking setup?”. That reminded me of FFXI where one of the most efficient leveling party strats was using two ninja / warriors trading aggro. How did that work? Basically, the ninja job (class in WoW) aquired an ability to create shadows of himself. These would act as shield charges, each successful hit removing a shadow instead of dealing damage to the ninja. In the earlier levels, a ninja would get 3 shadows (4 later on), and you could actually do low to mid-level party setups with little to no healing capacities in your group with two competent ninjas constantly trading aggro as soon as their shadows were down, while dishing out respectable DPS themselves.
In WoW, aggro trading is currently used mainly to swap tanks after they receive too many stacking debuffs, or because a boss regularly goes switches to the second highest threat target. An FFXI ninja-like setup where two tanks were to trade aggro for the purpose of shortening battles through high DPS sounds definitely interesting. There’s a big but here, however, in the sense that it would make a multi-class tanking corps an issue. But enough empty speculation, back to DKs.

There’s been plenty of virtual ink spilled on hybrids in WoW. If I were to state that one of the main issues with tank scarcity and burnout resides in the fact that a prot warrior or paladin in particular have it even worse than healers for soloing nowadays (except the ruins of Karabor for tankadins, I know, but compare the phase I SSO dailies between a tankadin / prot warrior and any other class for what happens outside Karabor for a second opinion), I wouldn’t exactly be able to stir up a raging controversy. I still hold that with four roles (tank, healer, melee DPS and ranged DPS) available and a relative ease to switch to at least one other role at the cost of a mere gear swap instead of a talent respec, druids are the most accomplished hybrids in the game at present, and should be the minimum standards to which other hybrids should be raised, and I include warriors as tanking / DPS hybrids in this (this doesn’t mean that druids couldn’t be improved, but merely that other hybrids have a lot of room for improvement).

If rearranging runes is somewhere between a shape shift and a talent reset as currently described, the DK will indeed be provided, from the get-go, with a better role fluidity than the other tanks. Considering the expected vast amount of DKs we should find at least to level 70 during the first three months after Wraths’ release, this is actually going to be more or less a necessity in order to keep the class group viable.

At the same time, I’m definitely curious to see what Blizzard has in store for prot warriors and tankadins in particular, the other hybrids in general. Failing to address the lack of flexibility (and lack of solo viability) will probably quite inevitably lead to the more pessimistic scenarios where you will find plenty of DKs competing for raid slots (DK becomes the new hunter rather than the new druid), and not enough bears / warriors and paladins to look after all the fights where they would be the immensely superior choice tank.

Regarding rogues in your melee groups, sorry Stop, but that’s not my place to comment on. As you know, my TBC raiding experience is extremely limited as is, and I’m definitely not competent to discuss the finer points of min / maxing for bleeding edge raiding.

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Reader Question: Best Moments in WoW?

One of our regular readers would like to continue verifying how deep the often stark contrast between my favourite hardcore blogging antagonist Stop and me is running, and wrote us both asking to define our best moment in WoW (but would rather not be cited by name, so we’ll keep that under wraps).

The thing is, in three years of playing, defining the one single best moment in the game is something I’m hard pressed to do, so instead, I’ll recall a couple of highlights:

Group Quest

My first quest group was on one of my first toons in his 20ies, joining up with two other guildmates to complete several quests in Darkshore and Ashenvale. There was nothing really remarkable about the whole thing, except that the three of us would soon end up top brass in that guild, and later on transition over in one of the few successful guild mergers I’ve seen for level 60 activities. Over time, all three of us also ended up on the officer roll in that guild.

We all still play today, we are all still in the same guild (OK, me not too often since I have a dozen of horde toons wanting some playtime too).

Battlegrounds

My very first venture into WSG, at level 30 (don’t gasp, back in these days the brackets were 21-30, 31-40 and so on) on a rogue. One of the people, a pallie, queuing up at Silverwing with me (back in the day, you had to be in Ashenvale on alliance or the Barrens on horde to queue up, no fancy battle masters in the capital cities), gave me the pep talk and ran me through the basics. When the gates opened, I remember having an adrenaline rush, heart pounding, nervous like hell. I don’t remember whether we won or lost that first game, but it was definitely fun.

In late Summer and up until September 2005, I played in what I like to call the golden age of WSG – the brackets had been retooled to what we know now, and the game was still too fresh in Europe to have many level 60 toons with spare money to spend. In this relatively short timeframe, twinking was almost non-existent. I spent a lot of time on an orc shaman perfecting the twin shaman cap runs: basically ghost wolf and then rush along the Eastern edge of the map, up the ramp to the ally base, both jump down together. Two earthbind totems, two frostshocks, healing – it was a massively unfair advantage for horde, and the only time this could be stopped was when we faced three smart hunters who understood that owning the midfield was the key to victory. With Improved Concussive shot, they simply stopped anyone from passing (their team mates moping out in close quarters), and edged out a very impressive 3-0 victory in times where the best alliance could hope for was usually losing 2-3.

But then I got involved in a chat with the alliance guildmates, and we came up with a two-hunter counter to the twin shaman runs – one trap upstairs, a shadowmelt nelf hunter there, the pet hidden out of sight, and the twin shamans were separated and killed cleanly without being able to support each other. And suddenly the almost impregnable horde domination of WSG faltered, at least in that one single bracket.
The fun eventually stopped around the end of September, when suddenly every single game had at least three or four undead rogues with Fiery Weapon enchants and more HP than a blue-decked warrior (soon followed by an equally impressive army of gnome rogues). It basically removed most of the competition and fun in that WSG bracket.

Much much later, when leveling my belfadin, I stopped by in the 30-39 brackets, mainly in AB, and realizing that even without respeccing or regearing for the task, my healing definitely made a difference in the outcome of the game was definitely another highlight. It culminated with AV at level 70, where my personal pride was to sit both at the top of the healing done and HK meter, not only knowing that healing helped the team, but also certain that I had won most honour from these games.

Arenas

I joined up with my buddy Steptoe during season 2 for a lock / pallie duo. When I joined the team, it was at 1440, and we promptly proceeded to tank down to 1323. But then, the steady progress we made, week after week, while our duo started to act as a functioning, well-oiled team, was definitely one of the other highlights in the game for me. We ended up just shy of 1700 rating. That’s of course still massively in the scrub range by all standards, but for us it still meant steady progress and an improvement week after week. I still miss arenas with good old Steptoe, bless his black rotten forsaken heart.

Raiding

The first time Stoney dragged me through ZG was an amazing moment. It was just a short two-boss run and my lock was level 53 at that time. I felt utterly useless but still, the scale up from 5-men to 20-men play was definitely an impressive experience, along with the unique jungle atmosphere of good ole’ Trollville.

Another memory which stands out was when we quickly assembled 16 people to have a quick go at Kurinnaxx after an MC run – it was far from an optimal setup, it was getting late-ish, but we just went in there, cleared the trash methodically and downed the boss without any fuss. Oh, the kill itself was nice, but it was actually the pride in the guild chat that we were able to simply get job done despite not having the optimal setup (most of the guild was still in ZG kit at that time, it’s not like we were 16 full T1 or T2-clad warriors) which stands out most in my mind. Oh, and remember the two guys I mentioned in my first group quest memory? One of them was running on a dorf priest alt, and won the Vestments of the Shifting Sands. When his white-bearded and dignified elder dwarf character donned these, hilarity ensued.
I’ve always thought of him as the pink plush pocket healer since.

Tanking

Long time readers will remember I had issues with Shadow Labs early on, in particular finding groups which would be able to pass Vorpil. After Steptoe quit the game earlier this year, I respecced my belfadin to protection just so that I could go back to tanking and test out the various odd pieces of gear I had assembled in 7 months as a healbot. Well, going in there with your random PUG, I didn’t expect too much but that flawlessly executed run still stands out as one of the great moments I’ve had in the game.

Exploring

The first thing which really impressed me when I started playing WoW after two years in FFXI was when I noticed a wolf killing a squirrel in Dun Morogh. I watched this happen in awe and this simple bit of coding to improve the atmosphere of the world made a huge difference for me. Suddenly I felt like I was playing in a world which felt “real” in the sense that it conveyed the impression that it was existing for itself. FFXI always had a certain artificial quality to it, a bit like those horror rides you can find in theme parks where the various figures and effects only spring to life when a visitor (or his cart) passes by. WoW had that unique quality that it was a “living world” functioning regardless of whether a player was present or not, and other elements only reinforced that feeling. In FFXI for instance you could cross an entire zone chased by a train of monsters (back in the days you had to zone out in order to have a mob return to its spawn or patrol area, they simply never gave up), reach the gates of the city with a sliver of life and watch, with your final breath, your blood splatter the armor of the totally impassive guards who simply ignored what was happening at their feet (not that the goblins chasing you would be bothered by them witnessing your murder either). In WoW, at least at the lower levels and around factions you’re in good standing with, a guard means salvation instead of stony indifference.

In general, even years later, WoW never ceases to amaze me with little details I hadn’t noticed before. Rhoelyn’s little Azerothian picture quiz was really fun in that respect. Just a couple of days ago, while leveling my latest little belf mage in Eversong Woods, I noticed, for the first time, that behind some troll village where you are sent on one of those nice extermination quests, there was, just out of reach, a burning tower.

Well, there we go. Those are definitely among the highlights of my three years in WoW, and among the reasons why, pre-WotLK depression or not, I keep enjoying the game. Is this specific to a casual player? I doubt it. I am however quite curious to read what Stop will come up with, if he decides to answer our reader’s question as well.

And you? What are your own highlights in the game?

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Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: How did you come up with your Character Names?

I’ve left the first couple of Blog Azeroth shared topics slide by since I didn’t have anything worth sharing, but I’ll hop on this particular bandwagon :)

So character names. Going back to my teens when I was playing pen & paper RPGs (yes, my nerd roots are that deep), names which sounded more or less gaelic were all the rage with the couple of nerdy friends sharing that hobby, and that’s more or less a broad overtone I stuck with ever since.

Gwaendar, my current posting handle, has evolved from the simple Gwaen I used to pick for many female character names back in those days, not just P&P RPG but computer games as well – Ultima and Bard’s Tale series had Gwaen already.

Gwaendar I believe I first used in FFXI as there was a Gwaen character on my server already (although at that time it was neither my main handle nor first character created). The toon name then carried over to my generic net identity when I switched over to WoW, mainly because I was soon to create my first guild’s website and Gwaendar was my main at that time. I stuck to it because it was convenient.

Celerann is a name I picked for my pallies and I started using with WoW. For the inspiration I probably picked Tolkien’s Celeborn and transformed it to a female name.

Caythlin was / is my gnome lock (and the name passed on to a couple of other female casters since), simply a gaelic-sounding modification of Kathleen, a name I seem to like for some reason (it’s actually the second name of my first daughter, my wife likes it too).

Then we have Alastair, which used to be my main toon name for male characters for a long time, and my first main on FFXI for instance. I used this as a modified version of Allister (as in Crowley, go figure) for my male characters for a good dozen years, and was quite amused when I finally met an authentic (and very Scottish) Alastair at work a couple of years ago. The name eventually gave birth to the female form Alastaria, which I still use for mages mainly. On FFXI, when I made a taru-taru, the name more or less naturally gave Alasutaru, which coincidentally is pretty close of the Japanese rendering of Alastair.

I further use Grandak for orcs – I was looking for something with a more guttural sound than my usual choices, Farngath for some dwarves, some variations of Tramplegnome for certain Tauren toons (go figure).

When PCTing my shaman over to Doomhammer, I had to rename her so I decided to go for something a bit different than my usual routine. I wanted something to do with the shaman class, in line with certain first and last names you’ll find on NPCs. I rather unoriginally came up with Wolfdancer but I like the sound of that, so it’s OK, I guess.

And that’s more or less most of the names. For pets, it’s a lot simpler, my hunters’ best friends are usually either Nerf or Nerfbat, and that’s it.

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