Alcaras' Blog

I keep going back and forth on whether I want to level my warrior.

First, I think of how close I already am to 80 — my warrior’s level 78, with full rested. Once I hit 80, I can gear up and go forth and tank to my heart’s content, starting out with five-mans, then heroics, then Naxx, and perhaps even Ulduar some day.

Then, I think a bit more and realize — but wait, I want to tank. That means I need to pick my tanking set carefully. And there are tons of stats to choose from, all of which have their own importance. Further, certain bosses will require different sets of gear. And all the while I’ll need to juggle reaching the defense cap, as well as keeping in mind plus-hit so I don’t miss the boss…

Wait, I know how to solve this gear conundrum: with a spreadsheet.

Well gosh, that doesn’t sound fun, that sounds like work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love spreadsheets and linear optimization and all that — but it has its proper place. That place does not include alongside slaying dragons. I see it now:

The dragon swooped once more lower than ever, and as he turned and dived down his
belly glittered white with sparkling fires of gems in the moon — but not in one place.

The great bow at his ready, Bard held off on shooting his black arrow. “How should I shoot so as to maximize the velocity to strike the dragon’s belly with optimal force?” he mused. He looked at the arrow, and then, opening up his laptop, fired up Excel. “I’ll just run a couple of simulations here to see how far I’m supposed to draw back the bow, or whether I should use a lighter arrow, or whether…”

His meditations came to an ignominious end as Smaug breathed flame, enveloping Bard, the dock, and Bard’s laptop. A flap of wings of the great beast later and only dust and ashes remained, floating with an odd tranquility on the surface of the Lake.

(With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien).

In other words: I know that to play the best, I’m going to have sit down and hack out a spreadsheet to help me decide which pieces of gear to wear when. Or I can use a tanking spreadsheet over on EJ, or Rawr. Either way, before I can start having fun tanking, I need to sit down and have some fun in good ol’ Excel.

I’m not the only one who notices this. Writing from a mage’s perspective, Player v. Developer’s Green Armadillo notes that mages get to do their own bit of spreadsheeting to manage hit cap.

Contrast TF2 — now I’m a noob of the first degree in TF2, but from my noobish perspective, I don’t need a spreadsheet. Perhaps I’m wrong, blinded by the dazzling light of my noob aura. But maybe I’m not. Maybe TF2’s designed so as to be fun throughout, and the way to get better at it is not outside the game, spreadsheet in tow, but inside the game, playing.

Now, not all of WoW is like this — but gear selection largely is, and because WoW focuses so much on gear, that echoes everywhere else. Tanking is a unique beast — unlike DPS, which well, is all about damage-per-second — tanking’s answer is more nuanced: it depends.

Because I’m not a fan of doing something only half-right, I’d rather not bother leveling up my warrior all the way to 80, because I know I’ll have to spend some time with a spreadsheet min-maxing my gear. Add in the random drop factor and that higher level gear tends to have less defense on it than lower level gear… and you start to see why tanks need to juggle more than most. While I love spreadsheets, I don’t want to have bust one out every time a drop happens to decide whether I need or want it. At the same time, I don’t want to roll on everything because it “might be useful.”

In short: If the optimal gameplay of some aspect of a game effectively reduces to min-maxing a spreadsheet, you’re doing it wrong. Simplify away the spreadsheet and make it fun for players. Move the focus away from the numbers and to the actual game — remember that? — that part where we kill the dragon.

Comments Off Posted in: Design on April 24, 2009

Busy trying to get out of every industry I can — why? Because I’m likely going to let my subscription lapse again. Getting a six month subscription before WotLK’s launch was not a good idea, considering we still haven’t seen patch 3.1 (and didn’t they say its content was “ready” right around launch?).

But, because I don’t plan to come back to the game until the next expansion or at least the next awesome-sauce patch (3.1 doesn’t have me that excited), I’m liquidating all my inventory — pretty much everything I have is going to go down in value in the future (hi2u deflationary market). Glyphs will get cheaper with dual-specs reducing their churn rate; mats and crafted epics will also fall in price. The only thing I’m holding onto is my supply of uncut Northrend green gems, which I know will go up in value about midway through the next expansion, once no one mines Northend any longer but people still need to level Jewelcrafting (the same thing happened with Outland green gems). And gold. Gold should retain value; 40,000 gold or so should prove handy if I ever come back to the game (hopefully that much after I finish liquidating, we’ll see; at 32k right now).

Why I’m Letting My Subscription Lapse

I barely have time to play, and time I do have to play feels like a chore … “level to 80″ “gear up” “tank this, tank that” “heal this, heal that” “do arena (either enjoy my overpowered comp or bemoan counter-comps — perhaps 2s is not the best place to arena for this reason…)” “list 500 glyphs on the AH” “collect thousands of gold.”

I don’t remember the last time I honestly had fun in WoW; Ulduar doesn’t look like it’ll change things, as it’ll likely be quickly cleared and then devolve into hard-mode e-peenery and achievement whoring, two things that never appealed to me. I’ll leave my warrior at 78 and wait for the Emerald Dream or the Maelstrom.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the “if you’re not having fun, don’t play” philosophy, and right now I’m honestly not having fun in WoW. Leveling — even with rested — feels chore-like, likely because it’s a re-hash of content I’ve done before, and there’s nothing much to look forward to except for doing Heroics with doubtless terrible pugs to gear up for raids where I can stand in fire or watch other people stand in fire or collect loot that will quickly be outmoded with at least the next raid instance or for certain the next expansion.

Comments Off Posted in: Auction House on April 8, 2009