If it talks like a bully

If you're at all interested in the general news about MMOs rather than specific games, I'm sure you've heard about the EVE online blow up over a guy calling for other players to harrass one gamer into killing himself. No, that's not exaggerated or made up for effect.

Massively coverage: first report the apology CCP takes action

And now there is a statement from Massively themselves, about the way this whole thing was handled. This statement makes me livid. Everything about EVE seems to make me livid these days. So let's talk about EVE.

I've played EVE on and off for a few years. The UI is kind of shitty, the actual interactive gameplay is dead boring, but I liked the economics part, the ships, the skill system, even the missions and what little there is to learn about the lore. I absolutely loathe the PvP. Open world, free for all PvP has never been my thing, but in EVE there is literally no path where you do not have to worry about it. You have to be on your guard always, you have to read outside resources to even be able to stay alive. And you can't be alone, not ever. Get a high powered corporation or get out of the playground.

That's fine for people who like that sort of thing, but EVE needs its sheep. They keep vying for new players whose sole purpose is to provide meat for the wolves. A trader puts their stock on the line every time they undock from a station, but a pirate risks next to nothing. To mine successfully, it takes months of skill training and millions of ISK up front, and griefers can take it all with no risk to themselves. No investment other than a cheap frigate, a slightly more expensive battlecruiser. And they love to harrass. The purpose of flipping a jet can in high sec space is never the resources, it's always hoping the idiot in the mining boat tries to take back what is theirs and blowing them up for shits and giggles.

CCP, the developers, love this aspect of their game. They're into the metagame of harrassment and griefing, the emotional stress that puts their players through. They do nothing about the racist, homophobic, misogynist trash talk on their game because it makes the bullying more effective.

And everyone, even so-called journalists, are fine with this.

From Massively's latest article:

The general gaming media latched on to all the wrong parts of this story, painting EVE as a terrible game full of sociopaths. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with scamming and ganking players, and it's even OK to show tearful evemails to a crowd of Fanfest attendees. That's part of EVE; many players accept it when we log in, and some people get a laugh out of it. It doesn't matter whether the player in question talks about a divorce or appears to be depressed; it's still a normal part of the game. You might not agree with taunting a player and airing his dirty laundry or embarrassing moments, but it's a legitimate way to play EVE as long as it remains a series of in-game actions against in-game characters.

Players who enjoy the game as it is see nothing wrong with this.

Here's a newsflash. It's never just a fucking game. You can not divorce the player from the character and Mittani proves it. There is no magical wall that shuts off people's feelings as soon as they log on their MMO of choice. A person isn't suddenly magically un-depressed because he's using his in game persona to communicate. And a person isn't suddenly magically not an asshole because he has a real name.

I think people need to start really looking at EVE and how its thinly-veiled cover of virtuality is crumbling. Is it possible that the victim wasn't really suicidal and only said all that to get out of a tight spot? Sure it is. But CCP don't know for sure. Mittani didn't know for sure. They took the chance of harrassing someone not just for his original sin of playing EVE while trying to build something - they continued, even intensified the harrassment when they perceived him as weak.

Well, fuck you, too, Goons. You're all a bunch of sociopathic losers. And the EVE community who revel in the free-for-all PvP that is so fucking biased for pirates and griefers and all-around jerks aren't much better. You are all part of the problem because you aren't actively demanding solutions. CCP should be looking hard at their game and how it went wrong, instead they're kind of gleefully enjoying the free press.

But suicide isn't a joke. Depression doesn't come with a handy reality/virtuality filter. I myself stopped playing EVE when I realized that it may well kill me, for real, in the real world. Being depressed and suicidal in the bad phases, I have long ago understood that EVE is actively designed to make me feel like shit, to put me on edge at all times, everywhere. It's actively designed to channel the worst in people. CCP revel in it, their motto being "harden the fuck up", and the Goonswarm are not an isolated phenomenon. EVE cultivates its nature of bullying, griefing and lawlessness.

Everyone who plays EVE and thinks that this is okay, you are the problem. Everyone who keeps on insisting that EVE has an awesome community if only you try, you are the problem. You're lying to yourself. It doesn't matter that 99% of EVE players are freaking teddy bears, the game itself favors the 1% who are enormous, inhuman shitmuzzles.

Calling for hundreds, if not thousands of people to harrass a player into suicide, Massively, that's not a slip up. That's bullying. And if it had affected the guy into actually doing it, it would be a fucking crime, even in places where incitement to violence isn't. CCP is at least half responsible for everything that went down, but people keep giving everyone a pass because bullying in EVE is normal. It's expected. Well, fuck, maybe that's why people think you're all a bunch of psychos.

So you decided to roll a smuggler

I'm sure this would surprise exactly no one who knows me, but I've been playing SWTOR and loving every minute of it. Bioware games always engage me on a visceral, emotional level. So I truck along happily, get to 50 on my Consular and try to get a few groups for high-end content. Unfortunately, circumstances have brought me to a server that runs about six hours behind me and I've had some trouble getting into organized play. Fine, I said, I will roll my gay smuggler.

Look, I enjoy gay romances. Playing a gay smuggler is like catnip to me.

And then I realize that I have just bought myself a ticket to unhappiness. Too late to change a thing, now I'm invested, but the game keeps on pushing me into sexual situations I do not want. It gives me a companion who will be my bro but not my man, who keeps telling me he'll do anything I want in a voice that belongs in the Captain's bunk but who won't kiss me. Of course I knew same-gender romance wouldn't be in at launch, but I had never once considered that the game would push some classes to be so aggressively straight.

I love my smuggler, but holy hell am I miserable when I play him. When I log in I feel the weight of every lost opportunity, the shadow of every option that should have been there for me and the sheer difficulty of avoiding straight sex while not being an enormous cock. It's hard work playing even so much as a completely celibate and closeted gay smuggler now and that's just not *fun*.

I play a blind, fat, straight Jedi Knight dude who flirts with everything that moves just to relax. At least that one gets laid every once in a while and doesn't sit in his ship's engine room to mope. He looks like a panda and he's happy.

Honestly, the misery I feel when I play my smuggler is beginning to translate into a general feeling of hopelessness when it comes to media representation and a very specific hopelessness when it comes to this game. SWTOR may lose me yet, not because I don't love the game (I do, so much) but because playing it is bringing me down. I have to take care of myself.

SWTOR, you are on notice.

Now gimme the gay in gay smuggler. We need some happy up in here.

WoW loses subscribes, I rejoice

Contrary to what it may appear because I have been so very quiet all throughout the monumental changes that have come the past few months (I did buy the damn mount, btw, and it is every bit as gorgeous and as soul-eating as I thought it would be) I am still playing WoW. I read forum threads and news sites and am seriously excited about 4.3 and MoP... and not just because MoP is the best acronym ever. I raid and my casual guild of noobs and old, old people finally managed to down Ragnaros two weeks ago.

I signed up for the Annual Pass and recently paid to move three of my characters off that miserable hole of a server I was on before. Things in game are better than ever and I'm happy enough.

Still, when I heard that Blizz is losing subscribers by the bucket load? I laughed. I want this game to stay around for a long time, I want to play with my friends and progress my characters, but I also want Blizzard to stop being so conservative and boring. MoP looks like they may try something daring in terms of game mechanics, but for years their actual stories have been fairly dull and worse, outsourced. I want Blizzard to feel some pressure to do better, and frankly I want games with new approaches and other philosophies to do near as well as Blizzard.

I want people to buy SWTOR not because I hate WoW, but because I think SWTOR has something to teach Blizzard. So does GW2. In fact, I do believe we're finally at the Guild Wars: Factions expansion for WoW. Yeah, no, don't judge me, but it was funny when Wrath looked like Eye of the North, too.

WoW is full of bloat and old ideas that need to be shoved off a cliff so they may learn to fly. Part of that is happening with transmogrification, but we need more, especially in Blizzard's traditionally weak spot, which is compelling, well-developed characters. They did alright in Wrath for a while there, but it's simply not that impressive to tell a story and make me wait a year for a lackluster and spineless conclusion or tell all the good bits in books and comics.

They be takin' mah points

All week long I had been looking for a good topic to write about. I'd seen the phrase “welfare epic” a time or two and was ready to unload on all and sundry how wrong I thought everyone was about that. Using welfare as if it's an insult makes me want to hit people over the head with a bound copy of Das Kapital, just so you know. But thankfully, Blizzard released some patch notes for 4.2 that caused a bit of a stir and I rejoiced!

As things stand right now, Blizzard intends to lower the weekly cap of valor points from 1250 to 980, while leaving points gained from Zandalari dungeons and regular heroics at their previous caps. Previous heroic raids will give only half the current valor points and the new Baradin Hold boss will also drop a mere 35 points in a 10-man raid. This means that a player may cap their valor points in a week through Zandalari dungeons alone, but will find it difficult doing so by raiding. Cue the rage.

Mind you, I find the cap to be a nuisance at best, as I am a burst player. I spend weeks doing very little in game and then find myself in a fortnight of frantic activity. WoW and many other MMOs, especially those with a subscription model, do not support that kind of play-style. They live on sustained interest and need me to log on, if not every day then at least every week to not fall behind the curve too much, to facilitate uninterrupted subscriptions.

But let's examine the valor point system. One of the main reasons why we have valor and justice points at all (previously tokens) is to off-set the ridiculous RNG-heavy loot distribution in raids and dungeons. Intelligent loot, it is not. Downing a raid boss is its own reward, but more often than not it is also its only reward, because it drops a spell-sword and heal-plate in a raid without mages, warlocks or paladins. No matter how lucky you get, there is a very real limit to the items that a raid group can gain from a boss, the loot table is not an endless fount of beautiful sparkling epics.

Valor points offer supplemental items. There are the three set pieces and there may be a best-in-slot item for a particular spec or class, but the items on the valor gear vendor are hardly the be all, end all of progression raiding. They are supposed to be a personal back-up for when the RNG gods hate you personally, or as a way to catch up for people who've just gotten back into raiding or are doing so for the first time. Hardcore progression raiders don't need valor gear. In fact, the highest ranking ones are so far ahead of the curve that by the time they've collected enough points to buy their second item, they're already retiring until the next patch.

The point system is a way to reward and progress the unlucky. Currently a group may be getting more than 2 useable items per person per week, if the loot fits the group make-up and gear status. That same group may also get a whole lot of nothing, especially in 10-man when they may not have all classes or even all armor and weapon proficiencies present. To alleviate an individual's or group's bad luck, valor points are a constant, but much slower source of new gear. Equalizing prices and needs, right now it takes a bit less than two weeks for a player to get one valor item.

Of course, if there were no cap at all and we had an unlimited supply of points (perhaps as reset-able raids or valor points for all random heroics instead of just the first 7) serious raiders might feel they had to chain-run raids and/or heroics to the detriment of their own health and/or sanity. More casual players might then feel they were being punished for not being insane enough.

The valor cap was always an arbitrary number. It paced the gear progression of a single player – not a raid group. Any group tended to have some visible progress over the course of several weeks and across all their members, but a single player may outpace or fall behind that progress by being exceptionally lucky or unlucky (not just on loot rolls, but also simply by which loot becomes available that week). Valor helped with that by offering a base-line of sorts for each raider to gain new powerful gear.

Lowering the cap in the next patch to 980 points is essentially lowering that base-line, but there is also a lot more viable potential gear. The difference between old heroic and new normal gear is negligible and that ups the number of items a group may want and get in a given week, while still maintaining a reward floor for those few of us who still haven't even seen the one item they truly wanted.

As for the heroic dungeon caps – the reason these remain the same is extremely simple and has nothing to do with veteran raiders. Valor also provides new or newly returned players the ability to get ready for any given tier of content without having to raid through older content. Let's face it, if my new guild is raiding Firelands, they're not going to take time out of their schedule to pull me through Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent first. It's an accessibility feature. Valor gear won't make me a better raider, but it will give me the chance to prove myself. It's also turnover protection for a guild or raid group, so perhaps it's better not to scoff at it too hard.

In conclusion, the new cap is hardly the end of the world for raiders – if it were any higher they would have to supplement their points with heroic runs and nobody seems to want that. It doesn't affect non-raiders at all, as they will still get the same amount of points. It's a tempest in a tea-cup filled with delicious troll tears.

Winged Guardian of my heart

Sometime yesterday Blizzard released the Winged Guardian in its online store. Cue the conversation over micro transactions, digital ego boosters, business practice and more people being wrong on the internet than you can shake a stick at. Personally, I'm beyond upset. Let me tell you why.

I think the mount is absolutely gorgeous. I love the way it moves, I adore the detail and texturing and the glowy bits. Simply put, it's the WoW mount I always wanted. Some of the newer dragons and the proto-drakes are close, but this one, this is it. Someone said elsewhere that it reminded them of The Lionking. There's a reason why that was my favorite movie growing up - something about the stylized, beefy-looking lions hits my aesthetic buttons, and this mount has it all.

Okay, now we have established that I want it like burning.

So, really, what's the problem, you say?

I don't have anything against micro transactions, actually. I think they're a prefect solution for giving everyone access to most features and still support development in a free-to-play game. I'm not a fan of restricting something categorically, so I prefer those systems that allow for a way to unlock that content in game through some kind of challenge or grind - I support selling in-game currency or unlocks that would otherwise take a long time above selling elite or exclusive items needed for progression. I also do not mind cosmetic items.

My favorite business model is what Arenanet is doing for Guild Wars - you buy the game, giving them a serious infusion of money on release and then you are free to play it forever, while adding only cosmetic or convenience items to the store. I tend to buy these without remorse because I like supporting the game developers and they always give me the choice.

There's a psychological factor here, beyond the economical. Micro transaction in a free-to-play or hybrid model give me the feeling of control. Guild Wars vanity items (costumes in particular) usually come in pairs that are cheaper as a package deal upon release, but the package deal has an expiration date. It gives the whole thing a sense of both saving money and urgency, no matter what actual value you attach to digital vanity items. It certainly makes me feel good upon buying an item in their store and that's something.

Now, Blizzard unfortunately presents the most costly alternative. They are already holding my characters hostage. I do pay the same amount of money for a WoW expansion as I would for a Guild Wars one, but that still leaves me with €12,99 a month for nothing but the privilege to access my characters and enjoy the social interaction the game provides. Upkeep and support costs are high indeed, but not that high. So here I am, already thinking that Blizzard is too expensive compared to other similar services.

Enter the pet store. I would love to buy some - or all - of these. I'm not morally opposed to micro transactions or fluff material added for extra money, I'm really not. Just recently I bought the first Dragon Age 2 DLC item pack because it was pretty (and provided some interesting lore, but mostly the stuff is nice to look at). But Blizzard is killing me. €20 is too much for me. Not economically, but psychologically. I can't really justify it to myself. That's two months worth of playing time or half an expansion.

Here is the core of it: I would love this mount. If I had a significant other, I would drop anvil-sized hints until they bought it for me (let's be honest here, I'd prefer this to a bouquet of flowers or some cheap yet affectionate jewelry any day of the week); if something like a birthday or any other gift-giving holiday was coming up, I'd make noises about this to any of my lovely gifting-inclined family members. But none of that is an option. I have to make this decision for myself and my principles are warring with my desire and this dissonance is making me very unhappy.

If I bought it myself, I would be marginally less unhappy - the underlying issues would still be there and I might hate myself in the morning but at least I'd have a OMFG FLYING LION THAT GLOWS. The only other way to reduce that dissonance is to convince myself that the lion isn't all that good, possibly loudly and in public, so that I can feel others agree with me.

Or I could camp that Time-Lost Proto Drake until my head turns blue, whichever.

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.

You want me to pay for WHAT now?

Every once in a while Blizzard, the minds behind the MMO behemoth World of Warcraft, make a public announcement that turns my insides into a tight ball of do not want. This is one of them. (Cross-realm grouping for dungeons is coming, but for a price.)

Don't get me wrong, I think the functionality, as limited as it appears to be, is long overdue. In fact, Blizzard's desperate clinging to the server and region models in the past has been a source of frustration for me. I played Guild Wars before I played World of Warcraft and the ability to hop between servers and later between regions at no extra charge was one of the things that still makes it my favorite online game. In World of Warcraft, I often feel boxed in and limited. I can't play with most of my online friends because they're all on US servers. I can't play with some of my old friends because they've long since changed servers.

True, I could pay a rather ridiculous amount of money for a server transfer and also maintain a second account on US realms, doubling my monthly costs and also adding a good chunk of one-time fees. I'd consider doing it for a fraction of the cost, but Blizzard's idea of premium service has always been over the top for me. 20€ for a vanity mount or 10€ for a vanity pet are one thing, but the transfer cost for characters that doesn't even include a race change is prohibitive, especially since there will never be a bulk option that allows me to take all my beloved alts with me without bankrupting me in the process.

This new development might actually make things a little bit easier for people like me. I'll still be stuck on the 4:1 outnumbered faction side of a PvP server that gives me an ulcer every time I try to just play the game where other players might be around (like quest hubs after the release of a patch or expansion or Tol Barad Peninsula), there's still the lifeless economy, but it is fairly quiet and getting the raw materials for my professions is only a matter of time, not competition. Re-Connecting with my old friends from other servers without the giant hurdle of a server transfer would be fantastic.

Unfortunately, the feature as it is suggested seems a lackluster effort and my experience with Blizzard pricing schemes doesn't give me much hope. There won't be any cross-faction grouping, so that already cuts down half of its utility for me. I also still won't have access to friends from other regions and that's another big drawback that makes the features less attractive. If those things were included, I'd seriously consider paying an additional fee - not a full monthly subscription on top but maybe as much as 3-5€ if it also included the current premium features like mobile auction house and guild chat.

I have long since wondered why Blizzard is so adamant about sticking to the realm system. Sure, with their high pricing there's money to be made in unbalanced realms because people will at some point feel like abandoning the sinking ship is the only way not to drown. They talk about realm community, sense of community, a homey feel to the world, but that holds true for only a small percentage of servers and players. Most will find that community starts with friends they already have and ends in guilds and out-of-game communities. And they've begun to enable that with the dungeon finder tool, RealID, and the intention to make heirloom items, for example, capable of being mailed cross-server. They've responded to the clear need of the community for a more fluid system, they know that's what the future holds, but they're dragging it out and claiming developmental or procedural difficulties.

Let's get real here, is the code for WoW that much of a hot mess? I honestly doubt it. They are a business that wants to make a lot of money, and I suppose that's fine. More power to them. But as a customer I have the right to be disgruntled, too, and this is just one more thing that rankles.