A German commenting on German politics
2 weeks ago
Showing posts with label wow thanks blizzard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wow thanks blizzard. Show all posts
In the past couple of days, I kept trying to write a post, but couldn't bring myself to do it.
I had a case of the Blizzard Blues. I think Larisa was feeling similarly.
It came from a feeling of complete and utter betrayal and disenchantment. I felt stupid and ashamed for feeling so let down by a corporation. I've never been a fan of big businesses; how could I have been such a fool? How could I have let a corporate entity emotionally affect me to such a degree? How pathetic. Don't worry, I recognized it; And I felt the bigger fool due to it.
Now, don't get me wrong, I recognize that Blizzard is a business and that they not only need to keep making money, but that they have to continually try and find ways to make MORE money. That's capitalism baby.
But Real ID on the forums was one step too far. Over the past week the community came out in droves to protect themselves and maintain the fantasy in their fantasy game. And there were, I should note, a lot of people who thought Real ID on the forums was either a good idea, or at least okay and nothing to worry about. I don't begrudge you your opinion on the matter. I think the majority of the WoW community recognizes that something needs to be done about the forums.
However, the vast and most vocal of the community stepped up to the plate and told Blizz how they felt. From the forums themselves, to the blogger community, the the gaming community at large, all the way up to the Washington Post and major news channels, we made our opinion loud and clear.
And Blizzard listened.
Every time there's a nerf; Everytime people demand some change in the game, it is unlikely that Blizz will make the changes demanded just because the customers insist they should. But there's a big difference between the developers trying to make a game that will function well, and the corporate structure trying to push big changes that the customer does not want. Don't confuse the two.
Blizz is always listening, due mostly to the efforts of their Community Managers, who go out and stand, like a fly on the wall, and take note of what we are saying - of what we want, of what we hate. They do a hell of a lot more than click that lock button in the forums, and I think they should get credit for that. They don't just monitor the forums; they read the blogs, they are the lifeline to the community. If you bloggers check your stats often enough, you will catch them from time to time, stopping by to see what you have to say.
And they communicated our message loud and clear to the powers that be at Blizzard. And despite how much the original decision to implement Real ID on the forums sickened me, despite how much faith I lost in this company, and despite the fact that they may still try to do something similar in the future, I will always know that when it really counted, they were willing to listen to the community and reverse a massive business model decision. I'm sure there are lots of financial and PR reasons why the choice was made; But I don't care. By the time the announcement got to us, they had undoubtedly already invested a lot of time and resources into implementing it.
I'm proud of Blizzard. It's not always easy to admit when you're wrong. But I actually have a hell of a lot more respect for a company that is willing to reverse a mistake than a company that never even makes one.
(Also, to Nethaera... I hope you were pretty excited you got to be the one to post this letter!)
I had a case of the Blizzard Blues. I think Larisa was feeling similarly.
It came from a feeling of complete and utter betrayal and disenchantment. I felt stupid and ashamed for feeling so let down by a corporation. I've never been a fan of big businesses; how could I have been such a fool? How could I have let a corporate entity emotionally affect me to such a degree? How pathetic. Don't worry, I recognized it; And I felt the bigger fool due to it.
Now, don't get me wrong, I recognize that Blizzard is a business and that they not only need to keep making money, but that they have to continually try and find ways to make MORE money. That's capitalism baby.
But Real ID on the forums was one step too far. Over the past week the community came out in droves to protect themselves and maintain the fantasy in their fantasy game. And there were, I should note, a lot of people who thought Real ID on the forums was either a good idea, or at least okay and nothing to worry about. I don't begrudge you your opinion on the matter. I think the majority of the WoW community recognizes that something needs to be done about the forums.
However, the vast and most vocal of the community stepped up to the plate and told Blizz how they felt. From the forums themselves, to the blogger community, the the gaming community at large, all the way up to the Washington Post and major news channels, we made our opinion loud and clear.
And Blizzard listened.
Every time there's a nerf; Everytime people demand some change in the game, it is unlikely that Blizz will make the changes demanded just because the customers insist they should. But there's a big difference between the developers trying to make a game that will function well, and the corporate structure trying to push big changes that the customer does not want. Don't confuse the two.
Blizz is always listening, due mostly to the efforts of their Community Managers, who go out and stand, like a fly on the wall, and take note of what we are saying - of what we want, of what we hate. They do a hell of a lot more than click that lock button in the forums, and I think they should get credit for that. They don't just monitor the forums; they read the blogs, they are the lifeline to the community. If you bloggers check your stats often enough, you will catch them from time to time, stopping by to see what you have to say.
And they communicated our message loud and clear to the powers that be at Blizzard. And despite how much the original decision to implement Real ID on the forums sickened me, despite how much faith I lost in this company, and despite the fact that they may still try to do something similar in the future, I will always know that when it really counted, they were willing to listen to the community and reverse a massive business model decision. I'm sure there are lots of financial and PR reasons why the choice was made; But I don't care. By the time the announcement got to us, they had undoubtedly already invested a lot of time and resources into implementing it.
I'm proud of Blizzard. It's not always easy to admit when you're wrong. But I actually have a hell of a lot more respect for a company that is willing to reverse a mistake than a company that never even makes one.
(Also, to Nethaera... I hope you were pretty excited you got to be the one to post this letter!)
Hello everyone,
I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.
It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.
I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.
In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/ ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.company/about/mission .html
Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment
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(Shorter post from PvD about this topic which is very good and spelled correctly - I am a Wall of Text writer. If you have a problem with that, you have been warned - comments complaining about it are rather silly. My follow-up posts on this topic can be found here, where I talk at even greater length about the 3D environment problem, and here where I tell you all to suck it up, I spelled it wrong AND YES I KNOW IT BY NOW ZOMG)
Occulus has obviously provided some serious development problems for Blizzard. Actually, that would be an understatement.
In order to fully understand why, we have to move further back – to the beginning of the WotLK xp.
When Wrath of the Lich King came out, we were all introduced to the concept of vehicle mechanic fights. I remember very distinctly when this was a major new feature coming in Wrath (along with those dance studios and hair salons…). It sounded so awesome in theory, didn't it? Let's list off a few things that utilized this vehicle mechanic:
- Multi-rider mounts
- Quests requiring you to mount
- The daily quest in Coldarra
- Single person mounts (Flying Carpet)
- Raids (Eye of Eternity, Ulduar)
- Dungeons (Occulus)
- Jousting
Despite the obvious amount of development and promotional effort poured into this vehicle mechanic, it may have been the largest overwhelming failure of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack. That isn't to say that everyone hates them, or that they weren't a cool idea, or even that they don't have some really positive effects on gameplay. Look, I love my multi-rider mount. I especially like drowning my allies in the Stratholme moat. This very evening, in fact, I was almost successful in making Fuubaar vomit all over herself while riding with me through Pit of Saron. If success were measured in liters of projectile, then maybe we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
Mechanical Malfunction
The fundamental problem with vehicle mechanic fights, aside from the initial glitchiness, is that in order to accomplish your objective, it requires you to quickly learn the abilities of something other than what you have spent so much time and effort researching – your own character abilities. It doesn't matter if you've put hours into RAWR-crafting, or reading "How To Heal" blog posts, or scoured through your spec to maximize your talented potential – none of this has any bearing on vehicle mechanics. You have a few moments, at most, to familiarize yourself with the abilities of your vehicle, and then you have to get down to business. At best, you gear item level will boost the health or armor or whatever of your vehicle, but otherwise, nothing that makes your character special, or had any bearing on why you chose to put so much effort into leveling, developing, and improving it and its role, has any bearing on your abilities or success in a vehicle fight.
The problems with these vehicle fights, aside from the largest reason explained above, can be fairly easily listed.
- Problems with add-ons. I should note that I do not think it is Blizzard's responsibility to be overly concerned about whether or not add-ons have difficulties with game mechanics. Allowing add-ons is a bonus that Blizzard has wisely implemented into World of Warcraft, but I don't think they should have to develop gameplay with an eye to making it easy for add-ons to work with everything.
- Problems with Macros. In my opinion, macros are a bit different. This is an in-game user interface issue that Blizzard has developed. I am developmentally challenged when it comes to flying – the reason I have an issue in EoE and Occulus is more related to the fact that I can't fly worth a damn. I have to set myself to follow someone. There is a significant delay in how soon the /follow function will work properly when players are mounted, and it irritates the hell out of me.
- Interface familiarity. If you use the default interface, you may notice that in certain fights, when you mount up on your vehicle, your bars change. This has presented countless difficulties for people who put macro buttons on their bars.
For all three of those problems, you could easily argue that people are just stupid, and there are easy fixes to all those issues if the player is just somewhat able to comprehend how to troubleshoot interface issues. Okay, fair enough. But, as an interface-moron, let me ask you this – would you rather see a fight dumbed down and nerfed to the ground, with gratuitous rewards given out in a desperate plea to bribe players into sticking around long enough to wipe through it, or would you rather see changes to the mechanic interface itself in order to make it easier for the average non-troubleshooting player?
Since I presented that question in such an obviously unbiased way, I'm sure you know what I think. I don't begrudge you if you think there is nothing wrong with the interface. I can't say this with complete certainty, since many of my issues may have been related to add-ons I've swapped in and out, but I do think Blizzard made some improvements to the interface in an effort to improve the vehicle mechanic and other issues. Unfortunately, once an impression has been left on us Luddites, we're hesitant to go look like an interface-induced moron all over again to see if Blizzard's changes really improved usability. It wouldn't really matter anyway, because the overwhelming problem of utilizing vehicle abilities within moments of gaining them is still the largest underlying issue.
The Vehicle Raids
When the only raiding content available consisted of Naxxramas and Eye of Eternity, many may not have noticed that there was a problem with these types of fights. EoE was the highest end content available, and so if you wanted the best gear possible, your only choice was to struggle through the mechanic fight. And, to be fair, Blizzard also had the foresight to recognize the inherent problem with this mechanic, and they offered a daily quest that awarded Wyrmest Accord rep that introduced you and familiarized you with the abilities you would have in Eye of Eternity. This was a brilliant idea.
Unfortunately, people hating that daily just as much as, if not more than, the EoE raid itself. Blizzard picked up on this, and when they implemented the next set of dailies intended to introduce us to vehicle abilities, they took it to a much grander scale. And thus we were presented with the Argent Tournament dailies. The benefits of taking the time to learn how to joust (which was exceedingly frustrating for a vast majority of people due in no small part to the clunkiness of the mechanic) were much larger. No longer were you simply given a small sack of gold and a pittance of rep with one faction. You had choices, and tokens, and pets and mounts and achievements.
Yet, in terms of progression in an instance or a raid, you were NOT required to do these dailies. If you boil it all down, their primary function was to teach you the jousting vehicle abilities. It seems so obvious that I'm left wondering… was there originally intended to be a jousting sequence in the ToC raid? Was this idea scrapped when Blizzard recognized that despite their efforts, players still hated jousting? Was EoE such an abysmal failure that developers read between the chat logs and accepted the fact that players wanted to play their actual characters and not a fancy mount?
In the original plan for the ToC Raid, were we expected to joust the faction champions before the famous PvPesque fight?
I realize I'm backtracking a bit, but let's touch upon Ulduar. Once Ulduar became available, players stopped running EoE en masse. Instead, they jumped into the Flame Leviathan fight.
I hate this fight. It just seems like a massive cluster of pointless button clicking – at least up until you get to Flame Levi. I like to heal in a raid. I didn't level to 80 to play a siege engine. I struggle through the fight just to get it over and done with so that we can move on to a more interesting fights that actually present an individual challenge for me that I enjoy – healing. In fact, part of the reason why I don't run Ulduar anymore if I can get away with it is simply because in order to get to the fun stuff, you have to waste time on Flame Levi.
On the opposing side, many people would form 25 man raids whose entire purpose was to finish off Flame Leviathan, loot, and then disperse. If you know the abilities of your chosen vehicle, the FL fight is a piece of cake. Even I myself don't find the fight hard per se, I just find it boring and a waste of my abilities.
The ease of these fights if you DO know the abilities is directly related to the balancing effort that Blizzard had to use in order to make this mechanic functional. The vehicle mechanic quests you did while leveling were usually actually very easy – if you knew the vehicle abilities. Their difficulty was reduced in order to offset the challenge of new abilities. So, if you learn new spells and how to use them properly very quickly, these fights are quick and easy. If you do not learn new abilities that easily, they may be a nightmare.
If you are leveling your fifth alt through Northrend, the vehicle fights may even be ideal – you know the abilities from having done them so many times, and they are, therefore, especially easy for you.
The Great Occulus/LFG Debacle
Where am I going with all this? Aside from the fact that even Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn voted Eye of Eternity as least successful raid instance of 2009 with multitudes of people agreeing with her choice, let's take a look at an incredibly sad (in my mind anyway) Blue Post from this evening.
To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Occulus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake.
My first reaction to this was sheer horror. Really? Are they so desperate that they have to go beyond the limits of traditional bribery in order to get people to run this instance? And then it occurred to me… yes they do. And I don't know if there is any better way to handle it without completely removing the vehicle mechanic fight from Occulus and redeveloping the instance – which is not realistic at all at this point in time.
The problem was there before the LFG tool. People hated Occulus. Of course there were people who loved it, but overall, it was easily the most dreaded and detested instance. Back when we had daily heroics, the groans were heard 'round the trade chat if that was the choice of the day. Most people would simply skip it. Before the LFG change, it was not an overbearing negative consequence to the average player if most people didn't like Occulus.
But now, with the LFG tool, it's an even bigger mess. I have only had Occulus once as my random heroic, but my fiancé, who has been running heroics much more than myself, has been so unlucky as to get it multitudes of times. And 95% of the time, as soon as all five strangers land on the first walk in Occulus, at least one person drops group, and the remaining members are forced to re-queue in an effort to find a replacement and not walk away with a debuff that will prohibit them from queuing for their random heroic for another 15 minutes. If the person who drops is a tank, or perhaps even a healer, you may just spend the entirety of that 15 minute debuff searching for a replacement.
In Blizzard's defense, they are a lot more aware of problems in the game than we often them credit for. They knew Occulus had been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned before they released 3.3. They nerfed it in what I can only imagine was preparation for what they perceived as an inevitable Occulus/LFG debacle. Unfortunately, it still wasn't enough. Some players get it into their head that they hate an instance, and no amount of nerfing or free gifts will change their minds. First impressions and overall attitude towards a game mechanic are very influential.
The one time I did get Occulus as my random heroic, I really did try. I did. I died 6 times trying (most of those in an attempt to get back to where my party stood impatiently waiting for my return), but I gave it my all. I looked like a complete fool. I made an ass out of myself in front of, not only strangers, but several guildmates. I felt pretty humiliated, to be honest, and vowed that the 15 minutes of LFG debuff were completely worth the 2 hours of agonizing mortification I had just endured. The pugged members of my group dropped out as soon as the boss went down and they got their badges. That's right, they were so eager to escape my fail aura that they left without even waiting to see how the loot rolls came out.
What, doesn't everyone fall off the side of the entry walkway twice when running back in? Am I really the only person left in Azeroth who gets lost flying around a giant pillar, and dismounts 1 foot from the edge of a platform, only to fall into oblivion and death? I could do an entire series on humiliating ways to die in Occulus. Those of us who are incapable of doing Occulus well are too embarrassed to stick around in a group with those of you who have no problem. You should be thanking us. BUT AT LEAST I KNEW MY DRAKE ABILITIES.
Keep the Vehicle a Vehicle
Despite all the vehicle mechanic complaints, let's talk about one of its uses that has actually been successful. The vehicle mount… mount.
My flying carpet brings all the boys to the yard. When I first crafted it, actually, it was very glitchy, and there were a lot of serious problems. However, it only took one patch for Blizzard to correct the most egregious of these issues, so I had no further complaints. I was too busy soaring through Northrend in my magicy magicness. I refused to even close my eyes.
The three-person mount is even more successful. Aside from just being blatantly fun and allowing players to interact with one another in ways previously unavailable (no matter how I tried, I just was not capable of inducing Fuubaar vomit pre-Mammoth), it also had lots of practical uses. Go back to the old world and drive your low level guild-mates through the Wetlands!
And how about that Chopper? Aside from being a very effective gold sink, it also revitalized Engineering. Gold sinks are necessary, and fun crafted items are also necessary. Choppers are NOT necessary, but they sure are a fun addition to the game.
So I can't call the vehicle mechanic a complete and utter failure. It has certainly been an interesting device, and has added a certain… something to the game. But, by far, its most successful and loved manifestation has been when it was simply for fun – when it isn't a game-breaker. When it isn't necessary for further progression in a raid or any other instance, it is adored by players.
The bag of "thanks for not dropping group and screwing over the other Puggers" goodies is nothing more than a last ditch, desperate effort on behalf of Blizzard in an attempt to salvage a miserable failure of an instance. There, I said it. I feel bad saying it, and therefore tried to justify it with 3 pages of explanation.
I salute Blizzard for their undying effort in trying so hard to make this much anticipated mechanic work. You can't say they didn't try. I can't even imagine the amount of development manpower they invested in this integrally flawed mechanic. Hey, I tried to major in Latin for 4 years guys. I know all about pursuing lost causes. To soften the blow, look at it this way. The reason so many of us dislike the vehicle?
We love our characters a hell of a lot more.
Couple of random tidbits floating around in my head.
So many bloggers getting involved in NaNo! You are much more courageous than I. I'll try to hold down the fort so you can write your novels this month, and therefore I'll probably be posting a bit more frequently. My usual schedule is about once a day, but I'll probably be making shorter posts a couple of times a day for a few weeks.
Tier 10 preview is out. Rogues continue to leave me gasping for breath as I guffaw rudely. I think Blizz is trying to make Druids happy that their armor can't be seen while they are in form so that they will stop whining. Do you *really* want people to see your gear, Antler Head? Pallies in skirts just make my day. What about the Priest t10? Yawn. Completely and utterly booooooring.
Mongrr made a fabulous post at Save the Lightwell yesterday with all kinds of information refuting common complaints about the love-it-or-hate-it Holy Priest spell Lightwell. I added a link to it on my page discussing the merits of speccing into Lightwell, but the StL post is far superior to my own.
I had a very delightful surprise last night when a healer of the non-squishy variety (!) sent me a tell last night from a level 1 character, offering to help out with the Healer Survey data entry. I might actually take him up on this... I'm going to see how far I can get this weekend, and if progress is still painfully slow, then I may take him up on his offer. If anyone else is interested in helping out with this project, please leave me a comment - I haven't decided if I'm ready to relinquish control of mah baby yet, but I also do want to get it all taken care of.
The Christmas spirit is upon us! Between BBB's Raid for the Cure (which is an awesome event because BBB is not telling everyone they should donate to one organization - you are eligible for the drawing even if you choose a different organization to handle your donation), or blame Syrana for Twitter being so annoyingly popular. Or even better, split your donation to Make a Wish Foundation by giving half of it to Blizzard, and you get a free pet! Wait... did I say that backwards? Ah, well, Freud is a bitch.
More later on endangered talents. The title of this post is a reference to a statement Gordin made regarding the recently ousted mayor of Fifth-Third, Ohi... oops, sorry, Dayton, Ohio. Damn, there's that Freud again.
So many bloggers getting involved in NaNo! You are much more courageous than I. I'll try to hold down the fort so you can write your novels this month, and therefore I'll probably be posting a bit more frequently. My usual schedule is about once a day, but I'll probably be making shorter posts a couple of times a day for a few weeks.
Tier 10 preview is out. Rogues continue to leave me gasping for breath as I guffaw rudely. I think Blizz is trying to make Druids happy that their armor can't be seen while they are in form so that they will stop whining. Do you *really* want people to see your gear, Antler Head? Pallies in skirts just make my day. What about the Priest t10? Yawn. Completely and utterly booooooring.
Mongrr made a fabulous post at Save the Lightwell yesterday with all kinds of information refuting common complaints about the love-it-or-hate-it Holy Priest spell Lightwell. I added a link to it on my page discussing the merits of speccing into Lightwell, but the StL post is far superior to my own.
I had a very delightful surprise last night when a healer of the non-squishy variety (!) sent me a tell last night from a level 1 character, offering to help out with the Healer Survey data entry. I might actually take him up on this... I'm going to see how far I can get this weekend, and if progress is still painfully slow, then I may take him up on his offer. If anyone else is interested in helping out with this project, please leave me a comment - I haven't decided if I'm ready to relinquish control of mah baby yet, but I also do want to get it all taken care of.
The Christmas spirit is upon us! Between BBB's Raid for the Cure (which is an awesome event because BBB is not telling everyone they should donate to one organization - you are eligible for the drawing even if you choose a different organization to handle your donation), or blame Syrana for Twitter being so annoyingly popular. Or even better, split your donation to Make a Wish Foundation by giving half of it to Blizzard, and you get a free pet! Wait... did I say that backwards? Ah, well, Freud is a bitch.
More later on endangered talents. The title of this post is a reference to a statement Gordin made regarding the recently ousted mayor of Fifth-Third, Ohi... oops, sorry, Dayton, Ohio. Damn, there's that Freud again.
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One of the things we were concerned about when we chose our official "raid nights" was the unreliability of Maintenance Day. In the end, we decided just to risk it, and stick with Tuesday/Thursday raid nights, since the majority of people were available on those nights, but every week we have to cross our fingers and hope that the server will be up by 8pm EST on Tuesday nights.
Last night was one of those nights where all the finger crossing in the world did not change the fact that our server was down, as well we many others.
I'm not complaining about it. Truth be told, I was in no mood to raid last night anyway, but I sometimes enjoy reading all the QQ on the forums about it when maintenance is extended into evening. I wonder how often people even notice when Blizzard puts a credit on their account? Blizz rarely mentions it themselves, which I find somewhat strange - you'd think they would be all about telling people to lay off, at least they gave them a partial refund, i.e. credit.
So, just for kicks, I checked my account, and looked at my payment history. Sure enough, I received a one day credit on July 9th, and I have no idea why. I checked my blog history, and that's while I was in Texas. >shrug< I also got a 1 day credit on May 6th. Again, I have no idea why. I'm assuming both were for server downtime that did not fall on a Tuesday. Remember the great Wintergrasp Crash of '08? November 27th ish it must have been, because i received 4 days worth of credits.
Also, seeing as how I'm coming up on my 3 year anniversary of WoW, I think it would be cool if Blizzard gave pets or recognition to their customer's WoW anniversaries. I have friends who have been playing for at least 4 years, if not more - it would be really neat if Blizz had even some automated way to honor long standing customers.
Last night was one of those nights where all the finger crossing in the world did not change the fact that our server was down, as well we many others.
I'm not complaining about it. Truth be told, I was in no mood to raid last night anyway, but I sometimes enjoy reading all the QQ on the forums about it when maintenance is extended into evening. I wonder how often people even notice when Blizzard puts a credit on their account? Blizz rarely mentions it themselves, which I find somewhat strange - you'd think they would be all about telling people to lay off, at least they gave them a partial refund, i.e. credit.
So, just for kicks, I checked my account, and looked at my payment history. Sure enough, I received a one day credit on July 9th, and I have no idea why. I checked my blog history, and that's while I was in Texas. >shrug< I also got a 1 day credit on May 6th. Again, I have no idea why. I'm assuming both were for server downtime that did not fall on a Tuesday. Remember the great Wintergrasp Crash of '08? November 27th ish it must have been, because i received 4 days worth of credits.
Also, seeing as how I'm coming up on my 3 year anniversary of WoW, I think it would be cool if Blizzard gave pets or recognition to their customer's WoW anniversaries. I have friends who have been playing for at least 4 years, if not more - it would be really neat if Blizz had even some automated way to honor long standing customers.
LYL Peeps - please see ETA below!If you’ve raided at all within the past few weeks, you have no doubt noticed a very significant change Blizzard made in how BoP items are handled. Within two hours of a person looting that item, it can be traded to anyone else who was eligible for it. This is due quite a bit to how when Loot Masters made a mistake in the past, several people would actually have to make a GM ticket in order to get the problem fixed, when an item was accidentally given to the wrong person. Loot Mastering for a 25 man raid is a nightmare. Mistakes happen, and this change to BoP items was instended to help with that. I mean, isn’t it great? So much more flexibility! No more worries about accidental Loot Master errors! Loot Masters can now sit back and relax!
WRONG.
What a nightmare. This has caused so many new loot problems that have absolutely no enforceable or controllable solution, that our raiding team is practially in uproar. I suppose for people who raid with DKP, this isn’t a problem at all.
What is really sad, is that most of the problems are caused by people trying to be generous and help one another out.
We run on a tier system. An item drops, people roll on it, and whoever wins it moves down a tier. There are exceptions and open rolls for various things, like Runed Orbs, etc. People are given a certain amount of time to roll for loot, and then rolls are taken and closed down. There is no perfect amount of time to give people for rolling. Some people feel rushed, some feel like it’s taking too long.
What is happening is that people are rolling for an item and winning, and then experiencing what I call “roller’s remorse” afterwards. They now have the item, and they realize that it would have been a better upgrade to someone else who rolled, so they are kind and give the item to the person who would better benefit from it.
It sounds great. It sounds like exactly the sort of attitude we like to foster and encourage amongst our raiders. It is a complete nightmarish headache however.
At first we were giving people back their tiers and adjusting tiers when this happened. That adds even more time, confusion, and complication to looting. The second problem is that if this is the equivalent of withdrawing one’s roll, shouldn’t the item go to the person who would have won the item had the winner not rolled? Sometimes people were not giving it to the person next in line. Sometimes it can be hard to tell, because due to it being a tier system, one person might technically roll higher than another, but lose due to being on a different tier.
And the worst of all is that this system allows a conspiratorial maliciousness I never would have expected amongst our raiders – and is very difficult to prove has even happened.
Multiple people can get together and decide that tonight they are going to essentially “donate” all their tiers to one player. So they all roll together on items, and then whoever wins the item gives it to the designated player. It’s shady, and it’s unfair to those who don’t have multiple people rolling on items for them.
It brings up all kinds of loot debates. On one side, you can argue, you won the item – you can do whatever you want with it, including give it to whomever you choose. If you want to use your tier for a friend, is that your right? And then… how can we even prevent this? We have no way to control how items are handed about after it has been given to a player. There are different ways we can police it, but all these methods require a measure of time and effort on behalf of our officers that is not really reasonable for a casual raiding alliance.
Ideally you should be able to trust the people with whom you raid. Ideally everyone is working for the benefit of the whole raid. Ideally everyone likes one another, and wouldn’t go out of their way to simply screw another player over.
Ideally I could pull hundred dollar bills and flowers out of my butt.
I spent all day yesterday dealing with these loot issues and trying to find resolutions, and I suspect I will spend most of today trying to figure out if others have had these problems, and if there is any hope, EVER, that Blizzard will change this system, though I’m not feeling too hopeful.
What about you? Have you had any problems with this? Share with me your loot drama stories via comment so I don’t feel so bad about my own!
ETA (9/30/09) - There is a LOT of traffic coming to this page from the Lose Your Life forums - hai guyz welcome - I can't read the forum post that directs to this page. Are ya'll having a similar problem or did everyone just like the Loot Whore picture I found? ;) I'd love to know what ya'll's forum post said, if anyone would be kind enough to put it in the comments section here.
ETA - I have been scouring the forums, and have found very little on this subject - maybe it's just still too new of a change? I'm not sure, however BobTurkey made a really interesting post about it and the Black Market - you should check it out.
