Galumphing

Achievements have been a huge success in WoW, obviously. Some love them (two of my guildmates are engaged in a daily see-sawing battle to stay 5 achievement points ahead of each other), some not so much (though even an admitted anti-achiever admits so wanting some of them). But they’re a nice mixture of fun and serious, and players are free to follow the achievement paths that interest them most.

One Achievement that’s missing and I’d love to see is some kind of Ironman recognition. What’s Ironman? It’s not dying. Ever. For anything – Murlocs are no excuse, nor Rocket Boots or falling off the Thunder Bluff elevator. A friend and I have started playing this way a few times: roll up a toon, start playing, and survive. If you die, by any means, you have to delete the toon.

It’s obviously insane, and easier for some classes than others – I got a Hunter to about 28 no problems until relaxing too much cleaning up Quillboars in The Barrens. And a Druid to mid 30s before getting overconfident on, you guessed it, Murlocs.

There is at least one WoW player who has actually accomplished this, a Warrior (yes!), which is all the more impressive for having no self-heals to speak of. And with a name like Cautious, she obviously set out to do this.

The PC adaption of the DnD “Temple of Elemental Evil” implemented Ironman as the ultimate hard mode, a no save option meaning if you die, you die. I’m not sure that any MMO has done so yet, the psychological damage to the player might be too great.

But it would be great if there was an Achievement that tracked this, including the progress. Maybe every 10 levels without dying you ding an Achievement, something that can stay on your permanent record. And if you reach 80 – “Ironman Banehammer” has an impressive ring to it.

The reinvention of ye olde Azeroth in Cataclysm is a stroke of genius by Blizzard. It’s revitalised interest in the game, and created a “one last time” levelling community who want to experience the original content before it’s rent asunder. So unlike many expansion or patch announcements which end up reducing the player base while bored end game players tap their fingers and wait, Cataclysm has probably increased the active player numbers.

But there’s one problem with the plan: Outland is immune to the pending events.

Outland is…annoying. I’ve read any number of bloggers who reach Outland and really struggle to get motivated to move through it. My level 60 Hunter is in this exact position. For whatever reason, it seems like a hard slog and a bit of a grind, especially when compared to the 1-60 experience. Hellfire Peninsula comes under a fair amount of criticism – it’s a visually harsh, unfriendly environment and tends to be a brick wall of sorts. Similarly Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm seem to rub people the wrong way.

In fact the only Outland zone that people seem to actively enjoy is Nagrand. The common description is “relaxing”. I suspect that is largely due to it’s visual appeal – it’s a lush, living environment teeming with wildlife that doesn’t just attack on sight. One zone out of seven isn’t a winning formula, and probably goes a way to explaining the Outland hump.

So what could be done?

Blizz managed to make the earlier levels fly by far quicker, by a combination of earlier mounts, heirlooms, more powerful talents, and nerfing instances. Outland was also modified, but another refresh might be needed – increase the XP gains again, or drop the average mob health to make quest grinding quicker. The LFD system has obviously helped too – many are levelling through Outland via Dungeon runs alone.

For the Recruit-a-friend brigade, one simple thing would be to continue the triple XP to level 70. At the moment it stops at 60, just when you’re ready to take the deep Hellfire breath. Given the pending 85 cap, why not keep the XP bonus through to Northrend. RaF users are a minority group though, so this would only solve the problem for some.

The biggest improvement would be to make Cataclysm hit Outland. Change the environment, make it a new experience, give Hellfire a fertile rainforest heart, flood Dragonblight like Thousand Needles will be, bring Zangarmarsh some sunshine. Of course this would be a huge undertaking, similar to Azeroth in scope, but Outland totally escaping the coming of Deathwing is a bit of a cop out.

Blizzard have cried resources when explaining why Outland isn’t being impacted, despite it being the zone that most needs work to make it more appealing. No-one wants to spend time there any longer, Shattrath is a ghost town, and there’s nothing much to farm. So make it quicker, or make it more interesting.

Oh, and leave Nagrand alone 🙂

When discussing how to approach new bosses in WotLK, one of my Guildmates proposed that we run them unresearched. In other words, no pre knowledge of the instance, mobs, or bosses: “I like puzzle solving in games – so ultimately for me, our instance attempts would be true explorations without fore knowledge of the map/bosses/phases etc”.

Now this sounds great – in theory. I’ve had similar discussions with others – let’s go into Icecrown with just our skills and experience, and see how we go. After all that’s how we play every other computer game, right? You don’t research the bosses in HL2, Gears, Ico, or Advance Wars. In fact going to a resource like gamefaqs is somewhat frowned upon – it’s a last resort for when you are just plain stuck.

(Though having said that, these days I find it hard not to meta game everything. Warcraft has driven the “research first” mentality into me so hard, that I had to fight hard to resist the urge to min-max when first starting Dragon Age or even when revisiting KoTOR. Spinks has a great article about the MMO influence on solo gaming.)

WoW is a different kettle of fish. It’s expected that you will do your research before you zone in. You, or someone in the party, needs to know that Netherspite’s red beam is for agro and the green beam heals, or that Prince will enfeeble you. Or that dropping Herod will spawn 20 take-you-by-surprise revenge-seeking trash mobs.

But is this a good thing? I’m starting to think it’s a flaw, though obviously not a fatal one.

Due to the way the game is designed, it’s often unrealistic to spend the time trying to solve a boss puzzle. This is often due to respawns – if you haven’t downed the boss within 10-15 minutes, you’re faced with grinding your way all the way through it’s minions again. And for some instances, like Kara, it’s a 5 minute run back to the boss to even try a 2nd time.

This is a bit of a bummer really, because it really would be fun to try and unravel boss encounters on the fly. I am in awe of the guys who do world firsts. Working out a fight like Netherspite must have taken hours and hours and hours of wiping and mob clearing and wiping etc.

But that kind of research is beyond mere mortal players, even on small things like the Scarlet Monastery. Which is kind of a shame, and something that maybe future MMO’s could address through less punishment for wipes, and certainly no respawn timers to slow things down.

In game tools to analyse what just happened might be a good idea – something to let you replay the encounter as a group, and plan how to tackle it next time. Add-ons like BigWigs obviously help enormously, and could potentially allow you to give it a crack sight-unseen.

But maybe the game itself needs to start providing enough feedback to allow and encourage reaction based fights, rather than researched.