Accessibility

A few interesting things happened this past week that caused a lot of predictable outcry in the community.

For one, they're taking my keys. Count me among the people who went a little bit off-the-rails at the news, not that I would stoop low enough to write lengthy comments on WoW news sites or anything, but I was a little miffed. See, I'm a Keymaster. I loved collecting keys, I loved that stupid achievement they took away, and I really did think the keyring was a fantastic little helper. It bothers me that they're going to dump keys that may or may not still have some use into my already over-crowded inventory, making me have to make the decision between keeping them for sentimental value or throwing them out when they were, to my mind, just fine where they'd been. But I suppose Blizzard know their messed up database the best and if it helps them get those damn tabards out of my bank, bring on the key-pocalypse.

The other thing, of course, is the announcement of 4.2 nerfs for tier 11 raids. There's a lot of talk, but this one is a change I whole-heartedly embrace. Don't get me wrong, I have high hopes my guild, with new, enthusiastic members strengthening our ranks, will manage to get that Defender title before then, but this change is great not just for casual guilds but for people who may, despite their best efforts, have not been able to do it until now.

You see, accessibility is not just about "casuals" or "bads". I've seen those two words thrown around a lot by people who should know better. Hardcore progression raiding guilds can and do choose their players for min-max reasons and will bench someone if they can't perform to highest standards and that's fine for them. If you want to be World First you have to be ruthless and performance must come before personality, unless the personality affects the performance of that player or the whole raid detrimentally.

But most raiders are not in it for hardcore progression. They want to experience the content, even face and defeat a tough challenge, but they want to do so with a set group of people they happen to like. For most players, personality and guild atmosphere comes first, and that's fine, too. In that case, however, a raid encounter needs to be more forgiving of individual situations.

My personal reaction time in a go/no-go situation (basic psychological reaction time to a stimulus being present or not present and pushing a button accordingly) is pretty good. With little distraction and a bit of tunnel vision I can get to around 300ms on a good day and barely miss. Older people, people more easily distracted, people with a lot of unavoidable distractions in their environment, or people who simply have worse brain function in that regard can have reaction times up to 700ms and more and miss more often. Having a construction site under your window isn't something you can just train yourself out of either. There is a lot of variability just in the base ability to see a thing happening and telling your fingers to move you out of the way, half a second between your best player and your worst, if they're both concentrating as hard as they can.

Then there comes the variability of gaming machines and internet connections. Not everyone can afford dedicated broadband or a personalized high-end gaming rig. Some people have to steal their time for WoW after a hard day of work on an off-the shelf all-round system that plays the game only sluggishly with most of the effects turned off, but they play anyway because WoW provides them with some enjoyment and they like to spend some time with their friends. Don't be the raid-leader who sits out a raider for being working class, that's just crass. There are people playing on shoddy connections that can't change it if they wanted to, maybe because they're in countries or regions that are still mostly dial-up dependent, maybe because their service provider is the only one around and can afford to mess them around with little to no repercussions. Seriously, who wants to be the raid-leader sitting out a guy or gal serving in the military abroad?

Making the current content more accessible and less punishing for random disconnects, slower reaction times, high lag spikes or lower levels of concentration is, in my mind, an entirely necessary step to make WoW enjoyable for everyone. Raiding shouldn't be just for the elite, there's too much effort and content creation involved that otherwise most people would never see. It's only fair to give everyone a shot. The encounters still won't be free loot, but at least now a high latency day for one of our raiders isn't going to make for three hours of frustration.