Sunday and Monday I spent most of my playtime running quests. I still have trouble getting used to the change in conning - where an even-level non-elite mob in Azeroth is about a 5 on the difficulty scale, it's about a 7 in Outlands. Screws up my reaction time with the panic buttons :) I've finally hit my groove in Hellfire, I think - the quests flow, they don't seem *too* hard, and the rewards are pretty nice. I still have probably a day and a half of questing before I've cleared it.
Finally got bored and dicked around with the auction house, then went fishing and got the last few points I needed to 300. Ended the weekend about three-quarters of the way to 62, with quite a bit of potential gold up on the AH for my shopping pleasure. I'd like to get my epic mount at some point before 70...
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
Back!
The wheel has turned, apparently, and I'm back playing WoW. Only my main, so far - don't have much desire to run with my nooblet pally at the moment.
Saturday I played all day long, trying to get a Scholo or Strat group together, and finishing all my Plaguelands quests while I waited. Got the Scholo key, finished every other non-group/raid quest I had (including the EP PvP quest, which was lucky - usually those towers are perma-Alliance, but it looked like a Hoardling was running around capping, so I just followed him. True cooperation :) ) and dinged 61. I had a good time with it, too - I like killing undead. Also did my Very First Raid - a pickup raid to Zul'Gurub. We only got through one boss, and I didn't get any loot to speak of, but it was interesting. I'd need some practice before that dynamic really makes sense to me - I understand my role in 5-mans, but am pretty fuzzy on the big ones.
I also did both halves of the Children's Week event, so I'm now the proud owner of a turtle and a... blob. They were not very hard, and really kinda fun.
After I'd gotten done with all of the Plaguelands stuff that I could do, I shipped out to Hellfire Peninsula. Finished some quests, picked up a Ramparts group, and ran that successfully (although with quite a few deaths.) It's an interesting, really quite short 5-man with some real challenge and a high boss-to-trash ratio. The last boss is quite a challenge, and we killed him on the second try with me literally dying with my dagger in its heart - we hit the ground at the same time. Very dramatic.
Saturday I played all day long, trying to get a Scholo or Strat group together, and finishing all my Plaguelands quests while I waited. Got the Scholo key, finished every other non-group/raid quest I had (including the EP PvP quest, which was lucky - usually those towers are perma-Alliance, but it looked like a Hoardling was running around capping, so I just followed him. True cooperation :) ) and dinged 61. I had a good time with it, too - I like killing undead. Also did my Very First Raid - a pickup raid to Zul'Gurub. We only got through one boss, and I didn't get any loot to speak of, but it was interesting. I'd need some practice before that dynamic really makes sense to me - I understand my role in 5-mans, but am pretty fuzzy on the big ones.
I also did both halves of the Children's Week event, so I'm now the proud owner of a turtle and a... blob. They were not very hard, and really kinda fun.
After I'd gotten done with all of the Plaguelands stuff that I could do, I shipped out to Hellfire Peninsula. Finished some quests, picked up a Ramparts group, and ran that successfully (although with quite a few deaths.) It's an interesting, really quite short 5-man with some real challenge and a high boss-to-trash ratio. The last boss is quite a challenge, and we killed him on the second try with me literally dying with my dagger in its heart - we hit the ground at the same time. Very dramatic.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Why Forums Don't Scale
It's a math problem.
The number of potential interactions between users goes up exponentially with the number of users. The interactions are what need moderation, of course. Therefore, the number of moderators needed to keep a constant level of oversight goes up exponentially too.
The income per user, of course, does NOT go up exponentially. (Although that would be a neat business model, if someone made it work.) There is definitely a level at which you can make forums work with a single mod per shift - or even one real mod and a bare minimum of oversight. A bit higher, you can do with 2-3 people during the bulk of your posting hours. That's still a pretty reasonable budget for a (pre-WoW) successful MMO. Beyond that level, though, it is either too expensive to do at all, or it just gets done badly - and badly moderated official forums are, in my experience, worse than none at all.
It's not that I don't think official forums are valuable, although, having tried both sides, there is a definite advantage for the community manager to being completely divorced from the moderation side of things (and, by extension, for the company - the players can't complain that we're censoring them when WE aren't even involved.) It's that I think that for games past a certain size, the expense of having official forums is not offset by the value. I can get many more valuable things done when I'm not moderating, and if someone offered to pay for a staff of moderators, I could honestly find other work for them that I think would benefit the game and the community much more.
The number of potential interactions between users goes up exponentially with the number of users. The interactions are what need moderation, of course. Therefore, the number of moderators needed to keep a constant level of oversight goes up exponentially too.
The income per user, of course, does NOT go up exponentially. (Although that would be a neat business model, if someone made it work.) There is definitely a level at which you can make forums work with a single mod per shift - or even one real mod and a bare minimum of oversight. A bit higher, you can do with 2-3 people during the bulk of your posting hours. That's still a pretty reasonable budget for a (pre-WoW) successful MMO. Beyond that level, though, it is either too expensive to do at all, or it just gets done badly - and badly moderated official forums are, in my experience, worse than none at all.
It's not that I don't think official forums are valuable, although, having tried both sides, there is a definite advantage for the community manager to being completely divorced from the moderation side of things (and, by extension, for the company - the players can't complain that we're censoring them when WE aren't even involved.) It's that I think that for games past a certain size, the expense of having official forums is not offset by the value. I can get many more valuable things done when I'm not moderating, and if someone offered to pay for a staff of moderators, I could honestly find other work for them that I think would benefit the game and the community much more.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Eating Bees
If you're interested in the sort of stuff we talk about but want to see it done better, check out http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org - Sanya Weathers, formerly known as the infamous Tweety, covers community management in her inimitable style.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
New Terminology
"Ninja" = left side of the group.
"Pirate" = right side of the group.
Got that from a soldier buddy who used it in a training class. I LOVE IT.
"Pirate" = right side of the group.
Got that from a soldier buddy who used it in a training class. I LOVE IT.
Friday, April 13, 2007
The Opposite of Alt-itis
I don't actually have all that many alts right now (not counting all the sub-10 chars I have running around on random servers.) I have my rogue, a 27-ish human pally, a 15 BE pally, a 20 dwarf hunter, and a 15-ish NE druid. The original reason for all the alliance alts was to cover the crafting professions, and to try out some different playstyles. But I'm discovering that I have little patience for retreading the same ground, and I only really enjoy rogues and pallys. I've also come to the conclusion that crafter alts just aren't feasible - the crafting system is not really set up so that a character can be strictly a crafter. While I don't intend to delete the alliance alts, I'm considering selling off all the mats they're holding and sending their gold to my main, where it will do some good. I was planning to level at least the pally, but I really like the BE better, cliched as he is, and would rather see new horde content than the same old alliance content again. I may end up keeping some of the leatherworking mats, as I may decide to go leatherworking with my rogue at some point, but otherwise I have tons of drops stored that are doing no one any good.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Still Liking the Blood Elves
Only played a bit this weekend, and only hit my BE Pally, but I'm still digging the quests and overall layout of the new BE areas. Nothing else to report, sadly.
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