TI/AP as "The Raven"

Once upon a Warsong dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of skillcapped lore,

While I alt-tabbed, nearly dying, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some rogue gently stabbing, stabbing at my back some more.

'Tis some skill-less noob,' I muttered, 'stabbing at my back some more -

Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I recall it was in the early Fall,

And each separate dying horde had wrought its ghost upon the floor,

Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow

From my vids surcease of sorrow – sorrow for I play no more -

For the rare and radiant AP of whom I miss but play no more -

Nameless here for evermore.

And the imbalance itself of each skill-patched elf

Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

'Tis some AP toon entreating that I play some more -

Some old AP toon entreating that I play some more; -

This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my toon grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

'Bad,' said I, 'or Noobie, truly your submission I impore;

But the fact is I was alt-tabbed, and so gently you came tapping,

And so faintly you came stabbing, stabbing at my back some more,

That I scarce was sure I heard you' – here I pet freeze to my fore; -

Smeld there, and nothing more.

Deep into that login peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, knowing blizzard has nerfed my precious toons before;

But the nerf was indirect, and the login was correct

And the only phrase there spoken was the whispered phrase, “Play More!”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the phrase, “Play More!”

Merely this and nothing more.

Writing Outline

I have written many “articles,” but none of them are written well. What does it take to communicate clearly? Communication should be focused on getting a point across without unnecessary words. This article will serve as a resource for me when writing future articles, and it begins with an outline.

• Planning:
  • Topic: what is it?
  • Audience: who is it for?
  • Purpose: why is it?
  • Scope: how much detail?
• Knowledge:
  • Internal: what do I already know?
  • External: what research is available?
• Organization:
  • Brain Dump: get all the ideas down on paper.
  • Order Ideas: combine into an outline.
    • Thesis: The purpose, from planning stage (it evolves)
    • Body: Organized ideas from brain dump phase
    • Conclusion: Restates the thesis, no new information
• Writing: using the outline, write from point to point until the end.
• Editing:
  • Content: comparison to outline.
  • Paragraphs:
    • Topic Sentence
    • Main Idea
    • Conclusion/Interpretation
  • Sentences:
    • Length: average in teens, frequent changes
    • Structure: Simple, Compound, Complex
  • Words:
    • Order
    • Choice
    • Cohesion/Location
  • Key terms: keep a similar term for the idea throughout
  • Transitions
  • Condensing:
    • Emphasize important information
    • De-emphasize or omit less important information
    • Replace or omit pointless words and phrases.
  • Reduce intensifiers and hedges
  • Avoid writing in the negative

Whenever I have time to write, I will pick the topic that is most interesting. My audience is my future self. I will do everything I can to communicate clearly and remove assumptions. The articles stop as soon as my point is made, because I respect my readers time.

Reworked GW2 vs WoW

Reworked Guild Wars 2 vs World of Warcraft

-D (25-Jul-2012)

I was about to write a long dry article comparing Guild Wars 2 to World of Warcraft. The article provided an interesting way to apply the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework [1]. About half way through the general explanation of what MDA is and how it shows two perspectives—Designer perspective of games, and player perspective of games—I realized the article couldn't work. My desire to build games is strongly overriding my desire to explain games. A framework, such as MDA, can help developers talk to each other about games, but the power of games goes far beyond what language can communicate.

I am only aware of one 'public figure'—Jonathan Blow—who seems to see this the way I do. Fortunately a 'journalist' presented Blow's thoughts on games where he brings WoW into the picture [2]. This is a good place to start if you want to dig into my thoughts on the matter. Guild Wars 2 isn't innocent either, but its significantly more aligned with my development philosophy.

My development philosophy was brought to the forefront as I attempted to write the GW2 vs WoW article. The philosophy is based on a few rules:

• Respect the Player
• No exploitation: skinner box/reward schedules, societal harm, time wasting, etc
• Don't hold their hand: give them their “ah ha” moments
• Respect myself
• Game development is the only remaining area of sufficient challenge for me
• Games must have the depth to interest me as a philosopher, programmer, and designer
• Provide 'good' embodiment experiences

Respect the player is first. WoW, and their developers do not respect their players [3,4]. In their defense, it may not be intentional. Those developers are probably just trying to give their players an experience they themselves enjoy. I find it hard to believe that they could maintain ignorance for so long. Guild Wars 2, and their developers 'try' to respect their players [5]. GW2 isn't a saintly game either, but it's significantly more respectful than the tools employed in WoW. As a matter of principle, developers that seek to improve the player's life should be encouraged.

Even gamers that play for “submission”—games as a pastime—should still prefer GW2 over WoW [1]. The content in GW2 is never obsolete. It is designed to keep all content current, the entire game is end game content. Situations where WoW subscribers are forced to pay for development of rehashed content—SFK, Deadmines, Zul'Gurub, Zul'Aman, Naxx, etc, etc—cannot occur in GW2 because of their lack of subscription and dynamic content adjustment [6]. This is just one example area, I could go in depth into MDA or other features as well. The bottom line is, the developers for GW2—ArenaNet—care about their players and will respect their time; the developers for WoW—Blizzard—really enjoy stringing players along on random item reward schedules.

In the end it's the consumer that must decide. The problem is, as Blow put it: “what I see right now is that we're cultivating this style of gamer that just says 'I want more of that because it tastes delicious, and that's all I know” [2]. What he is hinting at here, beyond the direct meaning, is network externality [7]. As the landscape of players is changed, by various exploitation methods, they don't mind that they are being exploited. Many even seek it [8]. Within the coming months we will see what happens as Guild Wars 2 enters the market. Will respect triumph over exploitation? For the sake of MMO players everywhere I hope they can break the problem of network externality, and give us a new experience.

[1] Hunicke, R. & LeBlanc, M. & Zubek, R. 2004. “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research” Available online at:

https://sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/af43d59b-528f-42d0-b8e5-70af85c439dc/reading/hunicke_2004.pdf

[2] Brandon Boyer, Leigh Alexander, 2007, “MIGS 2007: Jonathan Blow On The 'WoW Drug', Meaningful Games”

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16392

[3] Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw 2011, “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm”

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2634-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm

[4] The Game Design Forum, “Acceleration Flow”

http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/acceleration_flow_1.html

[5] Ben Miller, July 3rd 2012, “The Golden Rules of Guild Wars”

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

[6] Guild Wars 2 wiki, “Dynamic Level Adjustment”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_level_adjustment

[7] S.J. Liebowtiz, Stephen E. Marholis, “Network Externalities (Effects)”

http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/palgrave/network.html

[8] Richard T. A. Wood, July 2007, “Problems with the Concept of Video Game 'Addition': Some Case Study Examples”

http://laurier.communicationstudies.ca/files/wood_problems_game_addiction.pdf

Actualization

--General Writing--
--------------------

Matter, form, and, potency are fixed. I can only control my actualization. I actualize by repetition; perfect growth requires every moment. Time is the only limit—every lost second is lost forever. But all time starts at this moment, now.

My goal is greater than all previous imagination. The goal is life. Life as perfect as I can. No challenge will ever be as great as the change from current actualization to perfect actualization. This task is the perfect challenge filled with the depth of all potential. I have simply to choose the potential.

Whenever things are important enough I cannot be stopped. No goal is more important than this. May all of the forces of my being focus me to this end. Help me to see the infinite importance of all my actions, preserve me in my hope to practice perfection. Strengthen me now, and for every now to come.

-D (27-Feb-2012)

Defining Skill

--- Disclaimer ---
This article is part of a much larger series designed to explain how to twink the DV way.  This is designed to show what skill is rather than go into details on how to improve each section--which is another article entirely.  However, the information is abstract enough to work as a resource for the game development side of this blog.  Finally, the 'rant' at the end will not be included in the final form of this article.
------------------

1. Intro

2. Mechanics

3. Knowledge

4. Decision Making

5. Experience

6. Conclusion

A.WoW Rant

1. Intro:

There are many examples of skilled players in games—such as Bobby Fisher, Lee Young Ho, and TimTebow—but how can you tell if someone is skilled? Skill means: the ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well. Doing something 'well' is not very specific. How well? Ordinal skill is what we are really interested in. Ordinal skill lets us know who is better—it ranks players. Ranking player skill in video games is possible, but it requires a specific vocabulary. The skilled player performs better—ranks higher—than opponents because the skilled player has a stronger combination of mechanics, knowledge, decision making, and experience.

2. Mechanics:

Mechanics is the physical interaction between player and game, and is a key component in overall player skill. For video games this interaction is done through components such as keyboards, mice, and monitors, but it also includes emotional events. With keyboards this means pressing exactly the button that represents your thought—without converting that thought from ability to key—it should be instantaneous. Control of the mouse needs to be exact. It should move immediately and exactly to where you intend, over shooting or under shooting the target means there is room for improvement. A player's view of the game world is bound within the monitor. The entire monitor needs to be swept for any important information. But those components are just the external components, emotional control is also important. The main problem with emotion is that it can and will affect a player's ability to perform. Emotional events are highly individual but the player should be aware of how they are being affected. At least a minimal skill level in mechanics is required in order to be skilled at video games. Skilled performance starts with mechanics, and most players would gain a great deal by practicing them.

3. Knowledge:

Knowledge represents the player's understanding of the game, without knowledge both decisions and experience are worthless. A skilled player should know all of the abilities and strategies an opponent can use against them, but must also thoroughly know themselves. Decisions cannot help a player advance if they don't know why an outcome happened, or worse—the player will attribute the wrong cause to the result. This area is almost entirely academic; either the player took the time to learn about all available tools in the game, or they simply resigned to ignorance. The level of knowledge a player has of the game is directly related to their desire to know, and to a lesser extent, their desire to be skilled at the game. Once the player has made the choice to know the game, they are free to focus on the last two components: decisions and experience.

4. Decision Making:

Decision making is the application of mechanics and knowledge to accomplish the player's goals. Decisions occur at three times: past, present, and future. While the time frames are important for improving, their use is beyond the scope of this definitional article. However, this is the first direct way that skill is observable, except for one particularly large caveat—the reason for the player's decision is unknown. People play games for a vast range of reasons and it would be presumptuous to believe that a particular player's reasons are known. However, most players will play the game according to the rules or objectives. Because of this, one can form an impression of their skill level. Decision making can provide the information for forming a judgment about a player's skill, but actually forming that judgment requires experience.

5. Experience:

Experience involves actually performing and making personal judgments. Even the worst decisions will still improve player performance if they take the time to learn from it. Learning requires a judgment on the outcome, and a theory on why it occurred. The judgment can be simple, such as answer to the following question: did the action improve the outcome of the game? The theory on any bad outcome should be focused on the player. The player can only controls their own actions, blaming outside sources will only lead to emotional problems at the mechanics level. The mind must structurally change through long term potentiation(LTP), which can only be done with time. In other words, hard work and dedication with bring about the changes necessary to make experience meaningful and to improve skill.

6. Conclusion:

Skilled players have a strong combination of mechanics, knowledge, decision making, and experience—they use this skill to express their will within any game. Mechanics are a foundation skill. Knowledge is a necessary input for making reasoned decisions. Decision making is necessary to developing experience, and experience is necessary for improvement. Experienced players can attempt to determine the skill level of other player by observing their decisions. But the experienced player must accept that they cannot know why the other player made a decision. Furthermore, ordinal ranking can only really be accomplished by experienced players. Rankings are only meaningful when its balanced as much as possible, but skilled players are noticeable even in imbalanced situations—skilled players are visible in all areas of life. The same individuals that have high performance in games also have high performance in life. The ability to acknowledge ones own failures and grow, and to diligently work towards a goal, should never be underestimated. Hard work and dedication beats natural ability. The abilities a person gains, by attempting to improve themselves, can carry to every aspect of their lives. Skilled players are problem solvers, but they had to start somewhere. Skilled players wanted to be skilled, and anyone who is willing to work hard will always achieve their goals.

A. WoW Rant:

There are few important points concerning WoW that stem from this vocabulary. Players who haven't spent time playing arenas are not even qualified to judge players that have arena experience. Players who cannot consistently carry a pathetically outmatched pug team to victory are not qualified to judge players that can. Furthermore, public judgments reduce the quality of communication and engenders resentment. Perhaps the newer players are difficult to work with, but chances are good that they have difficulty with the emotional component of mechanics—although that weakness often affects both experienced and inexperienced players. Additionally, skilled players put up with far more frustration in witnessing game play than less experienced players, because of the vast experience difference. What seems like only small errors to an inexperienced player is just one of many glaring mistakes an experienced player sees. Experienced players should respect their own roles as 'elders' in the community—a community which is really just an small subset of the real world anyways. Inexperienced players should recognize their own weakness and lose the presumptuous attitude—its a bad place to start and it only get worse once they are actually skilled.

Battleground Scoreboard

---disclaimer---

This article is part of a series that will later be combined into how to twink the DV way.  The main purpose of this article is to provide an application of is not a measure of skill.  Alternatively, it provides some insight on a popular trend in feedback systems that focus on gameplay as submission, rather than gameplay as obstacles.

----------------

I have the most "Killing Blows" I'm the greatest player in the world! But wait! Some other player has way more "Healing Done" than I've ever seen! She's the best healer in the world!

What is really happening here? What does the scoreboard mean?

The scoreboard is divided into the following categories:

Deaths: players health was reduced to zero or less.

Honorable Kills: player was within range of an opponents death.

Damage Done: amount of health a player reduced on other players.

Healing Done: amount of health a player replenished on teammates. This doesn't include absorbs.

Flag Captures: player held the opposing teams flag while their team controlled both flags, all while stepping on the cap location.

Flag Returns: player clicked on their team flag after an enemy flag carrier died, but before the flag despawned.

Honor Gained: the supposed amount of honor the player gained, its accuracy is diminished as the same opponents are killed repeatedly.

Killing Blows: This represents that the damage a player did reduced their opponent to zero or less health. This can mean 1 point of damage with a weak thrown weapon or 1000 points of damage with a templar's verdict. Generally these are easy to acquire if you either hit very hard or hit very frequently.

Did you notice a “skill” category? Was that category overlooked? This isn't the case. In fact, the skill category doesn't exist because it is too hard to measure with a simple battleground wide combat log. Is it odd that blizzard chose to use “Killing Blows” as the default category?

Lets look at each category a little more closely to find out why:

Do deaths measure skill? Having many deaths does not equal poor skills. A players death can be used to split an enemy team or distract them from your flag carrier. There have been frequent times where I'm able to kite and tow 3-5 people that are just focusing me. This buys the team extra time to get to the flag carriers. You can also use a death to quickly get back to the your teams base. This is the first of the two most useful stats to sort. It can be a great aid to help determine which path to take when leaving the enemy base with a flag.

Do honorable kills measure skill? This is the second of the most useful stats with which to sort the scoreboard. Honorable kills don't measure skill either, but what they do measure is who is playing with whom. If you join a game late, or are sitting back home protecting the flag carrier and wonder how the groups look, just sort the scoreboard by honorable kills. The players that are clustered next to each other are fighting with each other. With this information you can know who is on the enemy flag defense team. You can see which sets of players on both sides tend to fight together. This has more advanced uses, but I won't get into that until I flesh out the full guide more.

Does damage done measure skill? In some ways it can, but probably not in the way that most players think. It measures ability to read the situation and control your damage per second (dps). Lets say I have two players that each do 200 dps and we are fighting one player that has 1200 health. Assuming no cc or interrupts happen that 1200 health player will only live 3 seconds. Except... no one has a dps turn on button. That dps can be focused into burst or sustained for longer fights. Knowing how to control your dps is real time calculus. But there is a critical problem with looking to damage done. It's variable based on both the teammates that are with that player, and the locations and roles of the players.

Does healing done measure skill? In almost the same way as damage done, yes and no. It measures the players ability to read the situation and control their healing per second (hps). It has the same limitations that damage done has: even if healers are identically skilled, and there is a slight difference in latency, the healer with the faster connection will seem to be slightly better. And much like dps, the hps between different classes gives advantages and disadvantages in the 'skill' component here. I have not written about 'skill' yet but I mean my own definition. Not only that, but absorbs are not even listed.

Does capturing flags measure skill? This is extremely random. I've helped 800hp flag carriers cross the field. I could not have crossed on my own, but by supporting another player I can run ranged support so that no one gets anywhere near them. I've also run with extremely good flag carriers which make this considerably easier to do. But this player wasn't skilled “because” he had 3 flags captured by his name. He was skilled period. The specific feat of having 'flags captured' by a players name does not necessarily represent that players skill.

Does returning flags measure skill? This only means the player was the first one to click the flag after the enemy flag carrier died. There is almost nothing to say here except that rogues and classes with movement abilities should have a lot of these. The only skill it requires is clicking on a flag with a hitbox half the size of the screen.

Does honor gained measure skill? Honor gained measures both the honor the team has gained for objectives and what the player has gained through honorable kills. This measures how well the team performed against the opponents team. Generally, I would say that the team with the higher overall honor gained should have won. If that team doesn't win there is a serious issue with that teams strategy, or more likely they were farming mid/gy.

Do killing blows measure skill? No. And this is the primary reason blizzard chose this as the default category. Any random player can get one of these. It is possible that you can make a similar argument for skill here as is made for damage done. And in some ways reading the situation and controlling dps can get you more kbs. But that is not always the best move. In fact, very often a team loses a great deal of potential damage because too many people 'overkill' a low health opponent. It is extremely common to see several projectiles flood into a player that is already dead, or at least see casts in progress on players that were going to die before the cast could complete. This generally measures players that do either big or frequent damage.

There is certainly some measure of skill you can glean from the numbers on the scoreboard. But this will only give you an extremely broad estimation. The only particularly useful areas of the scoreboard are deaths and honorable kills. Although you could also assume that a player that has captured one flag will probably go for another capture.

So how can one tell if a player is good or not? The short answer is, skill level is not on the scoreboard. You can see it in their gameplay. But what skill means, is a post for another day.

Indie Developer

I feel as though I should not use such a sacred title as 'Indie Developer'. I'm not Notch. I have no huge successes in games. I have created games only slightly more complex than text based rpgs or basic arcade games. Recently I learned how to make OpenGL applications and combined it with SDL to allow cross-platform development. It feels like too bold a claim, and yet 'Indie Developer' is just under the title of my blog.

I've been a problem solver for ages. I love the way programming grows the toolset for problem solving. Specific languages can be great at certain tasks, and exploring the methods and design goals of various languages is a great way to tap into that knowledge of fellow problem solvers. Not just at a surface level, as in how a language performs a certain routine programming idea, but at the much deeper why the designer chose to implement the feature in that way. Give me pointers or give me death. Well, that is development, but being independent is something else entirely.

All that 'independent video game development' means is creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. I meet this description just fine. I'm aiming at computer platforms only, specifically looking at Linux, Max OS, and Windows.

The game I want to play doesn't exist yet. That game will never exist unless I make it. But I can't start making that game yet. After a few hours of iteration planning I have it down to five main components. Four of these components can be found in current games but I've only ever seen them done independently. It's the fifth component that would solidify the game as something that other developers would not be able to simply recreate. The fifth component is a very specific type of artificial intelligence that I have been personally researching for quite some time.

So what is this game? Well, I am a part of the first generation of gamers that grew up with games during the rise of commercial gaming. The key point being that generation is old enough to have their own gaming children. Who is bridging this gap? I played co-op Halo with my wife and we both loved it; she still bugs me to play it on occasion. But where are those games that both my kids and I are looking forward to playing together? I don't mean a simple concept here, I'm talking about nothing short of 'transgaming' aimed at an audience that is simply not being served yet.

None of the toy games I've made are games that I want to be known for making. But every developer knows that you “must” create small games before you start on the dream project. And personally I want far more experience creating games before I delve into my masterpiece. Therefore, the initial plan is to start by making a prototype based on one component of the five that make up the dream project. Each component should stand as a complete game experience by itself. This will serve two purposes: first, it gets me more experience developing games from start to finish; second, knowing the amount of time that it will take to implement each component will give me a better estimate of how long the rest of project will take. If I get into a situation where my budget cannot hold and I must look for monetary support, this will help give me an idea of how much I may need to finish the rest of the project. Or, how much I need to cut from the project.  Estimation is hard, but every little bit of recorded progress can help make it more accurate.

Hiatus 2012

I took a break. It may have been considered long by some, but it was a needed break nonetheless.

1. Recap
2. What happened
3. Now What
4. Only WoW
5. Agenda

1. Recap.

• I had plans for:
  • Writing 'How to Twink' the deadvulcano way
  • Posting GW2 information and videos

• I was writing periodically on my gaming experience

I will probably still make the 'How to Twink' guide, but it will be slowly built as a side project. The gw2 information is unnecessary with all the coverage already available. (That and I don't want my favorite classes gimped.) The gaming experience will be mainly information about what I'm planning and producing as I work on developing games.

2. What happening?

I have been programming after several years of military work. During these past months I have created a few prototypes of games I've been thinking of making. This most recent prototype, which I built in about 4 weeks, is the most complete game I've ever made. Once it was finally finished I played a few games of wsg again.

I have played 2-5 wsg games periodically. The f2p bracket has changed considerably.

3. Now what?

Programming mostly. I'm not sure if I'll post game ideas and work load here to possibly help other aspiring indie developers. Or if I should just keep a clean split between the various parts of my e-life by producing elsewhere.

I can understand why many people prefer to keep that distinction. But in reality these game developers are also players. Maybe they served in the military for several years as well? Who knows? But I know that watching the journey is much more enjoyable if its easier to understand where the person is coming from.

4. Only WoW?

WoW is why you know about me so far. I still have several hours of f2p footage that I want to put together once my movie making skills have improved. We have known, loved, and played to same game together for years. But playing gw2 really did kill WoW for me. Its not that WoW is unenjoyable, its just that its less enjoyable than gw2 by a substantial margin. I will likely continue to login to WoW because mages have been a large part of my life for years. But the flavor of this blog may change drastically as I open up more information.

5. Agenda:

• Learn about developing indie games, and develop indie games
• Build the twink guide, I will probably start with something basic like what the scoreboard means
• Programming wise I'm working on shaders next, specifically GLSL
• Adjust the site to reflect elements I'm bringing together now. (does webgl work?)

GW2 Beta April 2012

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend April 2012

Purpose:

I played the first public beta for Guild Wars 2. I went into this as an avid WoW player. Specifically I went in as blind as I could. No attempt was made to learn about the abilities, and the only thing that I knew about the classes came from the official Guild Wars 2 site. The only thing I knew about combat was that you can dodge and that abilities changed based on the equipped weapons. I knew there was a downed state, but didn't know anything about the abilities in that state.

I could only really do this once. Since after I have some experience in the game I cannot ever go back. I tried to avoid looking into what the abilities specifically did and avoided any analysis of what I should be doing with the abilities. The purpose was two-fold.

First – To get an idea of how a new player with primarily WoW experience will view the game.

Second – To have a poor starting point to assist in writing my “How to improve” article.

Events of the Beta Weekend:

I recorded everything that I did in the game. There are some poor recorded frame rates in the beginning (PvE experience levels 1-12) which I didn't fix until over halfway through my PvP experience. I understand that the game is not optimized for graphics cards yet, but my last few videos recorded fine at max settings with some slight downgrade by recording at ½ frame. I took notes on paper when various experiences came up that would not be obvious in video form.

Projects:

1. Show the experience of playing Guild Wars 2

• This will play out a bit like a diary of things that occurred during the game play
• I'll indicate various problems with the game flow for the public portion of my feedback
• The videos and notes will guide this process chronologically

2. Do a detailed comparison between WoW and GW2

• So much to go over here, several things have already been covered by other players
• This will be relatively detailed and cover topics from subscription to core design scheme

3. Show mistakes in PvP and the initial plan on how to fix some of these

• This is how I intend to leverage a fresh game experience to go over improvement stages

4. Give some analysis on what I expect to occur as GW2 enters the market.

However:

I'm still working on other projects and this hasn't been at the top of the list for awhile. This article is intended to show what I collected and give a view of future projects in this category.

GW2 Ruined WoW

Guild Wars 2 ruined WoW for me.

I played SWTOR and came back no problem. The animations and terrible expertise mechanic was enough to make WoW look good.

I tried Rift for a bit, and while the graphics were nice the animations and some of the combat felt a little bit off. It was essentially a wow clone with a few new ideas.

I tried Tera's open beta weekend and had a great time for the most part. I'll go into more detail on that later, but realistically it has way too many grindy elements.

I played Guild Wars 2's first public beta weekend. Best gaming experience I'd had in a long time. I've heard enough from the developer blogs to know they are moving in the right direction. They are working on bringing the next generation of MMO's.

My joy with this is primarily from a game designers perspective. But I nearly completely lost that perspective as I played the game. Its only when I would stop between recordings to view and compress that I had a chance to regain that perspective again. This game gave me hope in the industry. So many problems were solved. The PvE was amazing, the PvP was amazing, the entire experience was nearly exactly what I hoped to see.

I realize that its still an uphill battle against established WoW players. Many may not even take a look. But they would be missing out on what could be. GW2 not only solves MMO game mechanics, it solves some gamer interaction mechanics. There is plenty more to say about this, but I'm working on compressing the rest of my videos from the beta to go into more detail.

Seven Days

I only have 7 days. As I mentioned recently, I used a scroll of resurrection on my main account. Now I have access to any of several max level characters. Multiple copies of all heirlooms with all applicable enchants. An completionist enchanter with stacks of scrolls of vanilla enchants ranging from the simple +15 spell power to bracers to +20 shadow power to gloves and everything in between. Vanilla tier sets that I could use to mog heirlooms.

Somehow I completely do not care. I played a few max leveled toons for a bit and was seriously bored out of my mind.

The only thing that got me interested was planning various solos. I could run a solo raid as a 85 dk, solo MC on an old 80 lock. Maybe even use a lowbie pally and try to solo every dungeon in the game at the lowest level available.

The last p2p wow project I was working on was a twink warrior. I was locking exp gearing for bis at each level. It was tedious. It was overpowered. It was boring.

Why? Its like instantly having access to everything in the game. But I don't care... interestingly I found that I have a few lowbie sergeants (level 26 mage, level 27 lock) and a several other "retired" twinks with old school titles. Back then I twinked at odd levels to give some kind of challenge. I suppose I do the same thing now.

I'm also downloading Tera while I type this. I've been giving rift a chance, and I've been working on rescheduling the latest iteration of my own game projects. This is all while my 7 days tick away.

Slash Played

So... how long have you been playing this game? I worked out a simple algorithm to determine how to convert /played into semester hours. But first! I started playing Rift. Its an interesting game. The combat already has much more depth at level 10 than anything wow has sub level 40.

Graphics are interesting and its been awhile since I've had the chance to enjoy blissful ignorance. But its also frustrating playing something where I don't already know exactly where to gear or level. Its fun and free for the first 20 levels so I'd recommend trying it out.

So about WoW and slash played. Could you really have completed a degree with all the time you've spent playing?

Some simple steps to convert to semester hours:

1. Multiple your days played by 24 to get a number of hours

2. Add in your hours played to get a total number of hours

3. Divide this number by 40 to get the equivalent number of semester hours

Now check this number against these values:

64+ Associates ( approx. 107 days /played)

124+ Bachelors ( approx. 207 days /played)

170+ Masters ( approx. 283 days /played)

200+ PhD (approx. 333 days /played)

My f2p wow account has approximately 34.5 days played across all characters. Half of this is mage played time. In order to find my paid account stats I finally accepted a scroll of resurrection. Yes, I used the one time only scroll for research. Altoholic made this extremely easy. I simply logged into each toon and altoholic recorded all the /played data.

My main wow account has approximately 269 days played across all characters. There is a character or two I deleted here that probably add up to approximately 10 days (original deleted vulcano is at least that much /played). But wait, there is more. I also had a twink account that mostly contained 29s and 39s. Realistically, most of that /played time is already accounted for on my main account by taking myself through nearly infinite Uldaman runs. I played mage warrior and lock the most. I imagine at least 10 days each. So there is at least 30 days played on my twink account.

My grand total is over 343.5 days. Also known as a PhD in WoW. The vast majority of that time is spent on mages, shamans, and finally rogues. Its a little sad to know that PhD in WoW doesn't pay very well. The market is probably oversaturated anyways.

The Word Twink

I began the perilous journey of the first step. The task was simple, research the history of twinking. Twinking means different things to different people. The history of "twinking" goes back to pen and paper games. I know what it means to me, and know what it means to most people. I began the search on google. I mean... who wouldn't just google it?

And thus the problem comes out again. The real reason that I twink. But I'll get to that in a moment, for now lets look at the two resources I selected:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Twink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinking

Seems straight forward enough. Except this has nothing to do with why I twink. I briefly mentioned my start in twinking in the verbose post There and Back again. I am not a twink. I'm an anti-twink. Realistically, patch 3.2 put an end to anti-twinking. Twinks were all just facing each other at that point right? Well almost. Eventually I heard about F2P twinking and came back. I made a toon on the underdog side and jumped in. The f2p matchs were one-sided as far as gear goes. But I believe I still fullfilled a role of anti-twink, at least for awhile.

I'm going to drop this section from the "How to Twink" guide. I want to focus on the good characteristics only. Such as diligence in performing the best that you can. In fact, I'll probably reorder this as a How to Improve guide instead.

1. How to Improve – leads into what skill is

2. Defining Skill – which leads into

      2.1 Controlling your Character – doing what you want to do

      2.2 Managing Cooldowns – knowing your opponents

      2.3 Decision Making – choosing what you want to do

Roadmap: How to Twink

I've selected my first major project about twinking information. I'll be writing and making videos on "How to Twink." I have not setteled on a name yet, but once the project is complete it can act as a way to demystify twinking.

The general roadmap so far:

1. History of twinking – the name and meaning with ridiculous generalizations

2. Defining Skill – which leads into

      2.1 Controlling your Character – doing what you want to do

      2.2 Managing Cooldowns – knowing your opponents

      2.3 Decision Making – choosing what you want to do

3. How to Improve – could be its own project, but it fits with what I intend to do here

This project is the "focus". But I will also be adding updates on my twinks activities. I want to put the core information of twinking in this project so future projects can focus on class mechanics and strategy.

Máni's first Heirloom

Finally got a Dignified Headmaster's Charge for Máni. The difference is AMAZING! I really missed playing a high level elemental shaman and a somewhat geared druid can have a similiar playstyle. Great offensive power and reasonable offhealing.

I had the fortune of facing an AP ally premade for my first pug after I got this beauty :)

So yes, I pug a lot and I haven't gone into much detail yet on why. Matches like this are part of it though.

And because this is my first post about Máni I think a few general screens shots are in order. The transmog is mostly green and leafy for that traditional druid look. Right now he still needs leather heirlooms for chest and shoulders so he has cloth mogs right now.

Greetings!

Greets everyone, I am Deadvulcano. I want to maintain something of a public log on various activities and thoughts concerning gaming in general, and specificially WoW.

Not sure if I'm going to put game development stuff in here or log it another way. But the flavor of these posts will be obvious soon.

If you are familiar with my F2P MageReview on twinkinfo you will see similar reviews here in the future. It certainly won't be that detailed but it will be similar to an extended summary section.

Other things I'm looking forward to writing here include things like "Why I twink", "Why I pug", and "How I fix my mistakes in gameplay." I intend to be active with videos again, but they will likely include some commentary rather than just gameplay.

See you in the Gulch!

GLHF

-DV

There and Back Again

(I originally posted this on twinkinfo.com some time ago, but can no longer find the link.  This post has been recreated here.)

I could see the stress of war on the faces of old friends around me at stark contrast to the nervous shifting of the young ones. Yet they all act with honor, courage, and commitment. But that whole world fades away even as the earth tones of a hostile desert give way to the warm colors of home once again. Many of us switched from the fast paced life to more family oriented “jobs.” Life slowed to what seemed like a standstill.

1. Enter Warcraft

1.1 Battlegrounds Introduced

1.2 Dabbled Twinking

2. There: Vulcano

2.1 Our Falling Away

2.2 My Falling Away

3. Back Again: Deadvulcano

3.1 Twinkinfo

3.2 Videos

3.3 PvE, PvP

4. Toons, Gaming

5. Summary

1. Enter Warcraft

A particular individual kept talking about a game that was coming out called World of Warcraft. Many of us had played previous Blizzard games and decided to give this one a shot. We made a guild “DoD” but it was painfully obvious progress that WoW and varied schedules just don't go together.

1.1 Battlegrounds Introduced

When battlegrounds were introduced it gave a whole new way to play. But the most shocking thing of all was how “good” some of these players seemed to be. I don't remember which server I was on when I was introduced to twinking, but it was probably Spirestone. There was an Undead rogue named “String” that used just about every engineering item possible. But I believe it was a Horde warrior that first made a toon on another account to congratulate us on a win. Completely different community then I know :p. That was really the first time I learned about how what twinking meant, as far as gearing is concerned.

1.2 Dabbled Twinking

This gave us a new way to play together without the problem of scheduling large blocks of time. Level 30 twinks ran rampant with gear and a signature talent point all over random people. It was never anything “serious”, just playing around and having fun. It is likely that most of the people there were honestly in the dark about twinking had no clue about why they were losing. This is another vast change in community. “Twink” is part of the vocabulary of just about every player in WoW today. Unfortunately not with a favorable light in most cases.

2. There: Vulcano

My first “serious” twink was a level 19 blood elf mage named Vulcano on the server Lethon. I had certainly made other twinks before, but no twink was ever as complete as Vulcano. Different gear sets for fire, frost, arcane, fc, etc. I played a 19 lock there called Majhacker. Level 29 Shaman Element with +81 healing on weapon :). Level 38 Mage for lawls, 39 Warrior. Tidal Charm is great fun. Level 49 Lock.

2.1 Our Falling Away

Lots of people I know stopped playing sometime before Wrath. People were getting back to their pre-WoW lives again. It was a great distraction in the mean time. Both my wife and I quit, but not until after duo'ing SFK on low level priest/rogue. My mage /played was immense over all brackets. Its things like seeing that /played time and thinking in terms of development time (programmer since before GNOME was a foot) that drove me to the next step. Vulcano, my most played toon the character that represented the bulk of my mage game play, was deleted. Twinking was a nice distraction between raiding events, but once we quit raiding there wasn't really a point anymore.

2.2 My Falling Away

Like most players, I never got involved in forums. I never really used any guides for twink gear either, I generally just did the math and worked pvp/pve models to determine the best setup for me. I still looked at sites like pwndepot or twinkinfo on occasion to see some twink vids or see changes about once a month. Didn't really like listening to most people vent in general. Though I still talk with a few ppl I met from raiding guilds to discuss things like leadership, management, etc. I didn't leave “completely” really. I just spent time soloing raid content while down gearing until it was sufficiently challenging. Very easy to find an hour or two for a solo raid/dungeon session.

3. Back again: Deadvulcano

Eventually I saw the news on twinkinfo about F2P. This was intriguing for a number of reasons. But ultimately Vulcano was “resurrected” as Deadvulcano. I enjoyed helping ppl in pugs again and still pulled off a strong win percentage. I played a few pug games with Çer (I don't believe he was on AP at the time? I don't remember really.) Eventually he would invite me out of the blue and we'd do a game or two. Maybe invite another player from AP. He mentioned something about twinkinfo, but I wasn't really familiar with it at the time. Once I saw that he was an MVP there I figured that twinkinfo must be a pretty good place. Maybe I'll finally join a game a forum.

3.1 Twinkinfo

It started well enough. I was certainly interested in helping other twinks in much the same way that I help guilds through content or 3 letter organizations through regional inspections :p. I'm actually reviewing my topic history as I write this to try to pin point where the problem that many old gamers feared, I'm talking D&D players here, first appeared. That didn't take long, third topic. I won't go into detail in this now but its a serious concern that is largely the fault of developers, and partially the fault of users.

3.2 Videos

Some people liked the basic videos, others still asked me to make them. I have enough video content that includes whispers from ppl that decided to join AP because of my videos, or conversations from ppl that found me outside of orgrimmar, to make a movie on that alone. The majority of hits currently are from random twinks searching for videos of what to make or just looking for something different. Ultimately random twinks are who I spent most of my time with in F2P. Its interesting to note that when the videos are early and the traffic is only from twinkinfo links that the videos get thumbs downed. This is interesting because I do these to help the community. Even when supporting twinking we have “trolls” that shoot positive twink publicity in the foot.

3.3 PvE, PvP

I don't solo raids anymore, but can get a similar experience down gearing to solo dungeons. This is fun and easy to set up. WC on lock was a good experience, but SFK on shaman was my best F2P experience. As far as PvP goes, I prefer the gameplay of zerg and the mechanics of SC2 in general. PvP in WoW has always been about the people to me. If even one person was still going to try, I'll do what I can to help them. Mostly I'm interested in proper reads and knowing what the opponent will do before he does it (I've worked on intelligence systems, so its fairly “nature” way for me to think this way.) I've played great games with Çer and pug games with ppl like Scripts, Cloudbreak, Spooch, Tashalah, etc. But I also remember several games where I pugged and got in with 2-3 other AP members. They afk after the first ally cap, we get a few good f2ps to replace them, and we win. Its part of the attitude that just shouldn't be there, but it exists none the less. Credit to those that stay throughout and fight when all looks lost. Never give up, never surrender.

4. Toons, Gaming

I tend to play a different “personality” depending on which toon I'm on. My rogue is definitely my rudest. Each one emphasizes something specific but the details are really unnecessary. Just a throwback from better times (D&D.) Its interesting to see how the incentives of gaming have really pushed ppl into behavior that otherwise didn't exist. Some of these incentives are not even really connected to the game. The vocal minority, not even sure its a minority anymore, speaks a different language. It is true that we're playing a game and/or posting on a forum, but that is no reason to treat people like anything other than people. Labeling it doesn't give you freedom either, simply saying its the internet doesn't solve the issue of what is happening. Its an unfortunate fact of modern gaming and will continue to plague human interaction until developers can solve it. There are plenty of TED talks about the subject of gaming or interaction if this seems interesting.

Its about people and their interactions to me. While winning is “important” due to incentives, its the interaction and the character of players that drives me in game. I'm not interested in the optimal “use” of my time as far as the game mechanics are concerned. The people that seem to adhere to these rules will /afk when things turn bad, or be upset about prolonging the game. These individuals do not even seem to like the game unless their incentive standard is reached. This is the beginning of a difference in the language. The game within the confines of the mechanics was boring many years ago. But the wealth of information/fun from behavior and interactions is amazing. I may make vocal an observation about player population. The view from my side is a question about the quality of the population as a whole, and which incentives are operating on the individual over their time with WoW that lead to the current situation. Is there a way to fix this problem within the mechanics currently available? What behavior might people take to correct this? A real example of this interaction will come soon enough :p

5. Summary

Everyone has their own story. My WoW story is summarized above. But “random” players are simply not known at all. The last toon you killed/yelled at/encouraged/belittled/etc is driven by someone with an entire life story up to that point, and a story that will continue after that point. All these interactions will vary in their impact, but the impact is made regardless. Its our niche style of gameplay that is on the line. Degrading each other does nothing productive to promote what has been a great journey for many of us. Where is the fresh blood? Where are the people sustaining the new players in their respective brackets? The forums are a very small part of it, but we often exclude people that may just be starting out. “Randoms” from other servers, people that have never heard of twinkinfo, etc.

I'm reminded of a discussion with another DM about building players. Its been awhile, but in general: If you beat a new player to within a inch of their life at the start of the game they will carry that with them for a very long time. They will be cautious and may completely miss activities altogether because of their first big encounter. BUT: if you let them explore and reward the risks you can build a stronger relationship where the player can help drive the game. Its not just the player though. That interaction paints their discussions with other potential players. What will they say to the fresh blood you haven't even seen yet? Those people that are now impacted by a lack of vision and may never come to enjoy the same things that we enjoy.

My time is practically done here. I had a good time and learned a lot. I hope the GuildWars 2 model will catch on and everyone will zone into pvp with equal and balanced gear. Realistically however, many people seem to just want to use their advantage by spending time/money to exploit other PEOPLE. Some individuals don't want to share information because then other people may enjoy the same benefits and an advantage is lost. This is my primary concern with GuildWars 2, can it attract enough people that care about a game that will strive for PvP balance? Or will the allure of exploiting advantages keep PvPers in WoW?