Warlords of Draenor - The Project Manager's Addiction

Every WoW expansion pack that has been released over the past few years was shipped with its own personality.  Over the classic “vanilla” build of the game, Burning Crusade was markedly more difficult but had a lot of good content on your way to level 70 (not to mention replacing your epics on the first quest reward).  Wrath of the Lich Kingcame about and it was a far less challenging than its predecessor, but had what I consider to be some of the best endgame content raids in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel.  It also brought the story full circle for those of us that nerded out on Warcraft III before Blizzard’s MMO days.  Cataclysm brought back the pure grind-it-out progression and the fall of Deathwing.  Mists of Pandaria?  Well, they had pandas and an eastern flair but I never got into it too deeply.

Now we’re a few weeks into Warlords of Draenor, the most recent expansion pack to the wildly popular World of Warcraft MMO.  And I’ll say it briefly before I get into the meat of this – I like it.  And it’s not wholly because of the content or of the throwbacks that will let you nerd out on character origins (like seeing Akama as a full on badass Exarch instead of an ubroken roaming Outland). This expansion answered the call for player housing from a lot of the fanbase, and they did it with style by implementing the garrison system.  I probably spend more time tending to my garrison and doing garrison-related quests than I do much else.  My main toon has been a level 100 for a week or so and I think I’ve only run 2 dungeons.  And there’s a reason…

My garrison is a giant project.  And one of my real life off-specs is project management.

The whole campaign starts with bringing people in from the Capital and creating a central outpost under your command to run operations in Draenor for whichever faction you represent – be it the Alliance or the Horde – when you have to sign off on the plans from the first buildings.  And from that point of initial construction, 100% of the mechanics involve running things (albeit in a much more toned down way but you know) in any sort of project.  As you level up more things open up to you in terms of crafting, garrison resource generation, heroes from around the land that follow your lead and run missions for you, and how much time and money it’s going to take to get it all done and customize it to exactly what you want.

(In other words, I just listed timelines, stakeholders, project resources, personnel, production/manufacturing, and change controls).

The player picks what buildings they want to be constructed to produce items or unlock certain rewards.  And other buildings are there to provide resources to get there.  My tannery lets my leatherworking department make stuff for me as well as higher grade materials for crafting and selling high end moneymakers.  My inn is a recruiting place where I can interview potential followers.  Hell there’s even a shack for fishing.  Everything can be laid out (almost) exactly like you want it.  And there’s a panel to track all of it.

And then… there’s the garrison missions.

Every mission that’s run has a reward, but they all have a set resource cost and personnel cost.  When you see a slate of available missions it’s up to you to figure out which skillset goes where, how long it will take and whether the cost and time is worth the reward.  Because nobody wants to wait 8 hours for just a tiny handful of coin.  I mean it’s insulting really.

Take the mission “The Infernals’ Fury,” for instance.  To guarantee a win in 4 hours I need level 100 followers with skills to counter the following: Wild Aggression, Massive Strike and Deadly Minions.  As you can see my girl Qiana Moonshadow has wild aggression covered handily, but I’m short on the other two.  My Dwarven associates Delvar and Bruma are my go-to aces to deal with massive strike and deadly minions.  But here’s the problem – they’re on another mission that is taking forever.  And even while they’re spreading the word of badassery in my name, that doesn’t give me something as good as that armor enhancement token.  So I can’t do this one right now – and that’s called opportunity cost, kids.  When they get back they’ll be assigned here because it’s a more important reward.

I can always put in my junior team in though.  They have the same skills, but since they’re not maxed out, my chance of getting that token would drop.  I mean you don’t take Peyton Manning out of the game unless he physically can’t play, know what I’m sayin?

So if Burning Crusade brought the gear, Lich King brought the break, Cataclysm brought the grind, and Pandaria brought the… well, the furries – Warlords brings the project.  And I am loving every second of it.

Gear and the Value of Time in World of Warcraft [tf charts]

I've got part III of my Windows 8 series pretty much buttoned up, but figured I'd get this in before I get to my final thoughts on the OS.

Today I logged into World of Warcraft after a long while, and had to download all of the updated tools and the pre-patch for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion set to drop in just a couple weeks.  Having played since WoW original recipe, I've spent a sick number of hours in the realms of Azeroth - enough that I'm a little frightened to see the "/played" stat that the game provides for all of its players.  Through that time there was one very real statistic that all players would agree to - and that's the gear grind.  It takes countless hours to level up a character to max and at that point go through the motions to get the gear to allow seeing end-game content.  Cataclysm made that a little easier in one of its later patches with the Raid Finder feature, but the main idea stays the same:

With all the time it takes to equip those delicious epic items, which may add up to days, at least a couple of them can be replaced after 5-10 quests in the next expansion's starting zone.  And the trend looks like it's going to hold - straight through level 100 when the time comes.

Welcome to Pandaria, kids.

83. World of Warcraft and Add-ons: the Fall of a Purist

[Article first published as World of Warcraft Add-Ons - the Fall of a Purist on Blogcritics.]

Now if any of you read this with any sort of regularity, you’ll know that I play World of Warcraft. Until recently, I may have been one of the few that played it without add-ons or UI modifiers. I’m counting Recount as an exception here, because that just shows how much damage we’re doing and who I can blame for breaking my traps.

I was, in short, almost a purist, and classified add-ons as sanctioned cheating since they take a lot of the challenge out of the game. In fact I said I wouldn’t allow myself to use any add-ons (again, except Recount) until I had leveled a character to 80 “clean,” which was the cap at the time. I’m the same way with most games I play on the PC and consoles. Game Genie style devices or mechanics haven’t touched my consoles via my hands since I was 10, when I doubled my party’s initial health in the first Final Fantasy for the NES. After I beat the game, the victory seemed so tainted end empty that--at 10 mind you--I felt I had to start over and beat it clean before claiming victory. It’s just how I roll. I can probably credit my father with this – he wouldn’t let me use a calculator in elementary school until I could do my multiplication tables up to 15 in my head.

I started playing WoW right before the Burning Crusade expansion came out so I didn’t play much of the game “vanilla,” but I still got through heroics and Karazhan’s ghostly denizens, and even plowed through Arthas’ frosty minions in Icecrown Citadel in Wrath of the Lich King without too much issue. Evading boss attacks and knowing when to do what was relatively easy: for example an enrage is obvious as a boss turns bright red, and most of the other attacks coming my way were clearly telegraphed with an animation (like something showing up on the ground or some sort of charge-up). On my end, I would have to just pay attention to when my abilities were active so I knew when to use them. I knew for example that when it said “Lock and Load” above my head, I had two free explosive shots at my disposal. I didn’t need fancy glowing screen filling notifications.

In every WoW iteration though, Blizzard incorporated the functions of the most popular add-ons into its stock user interface, making the need for additional add-ons even less necessary in my mind, and giving me even less of a reason to download them. My “Lock and Load” example from above now makes explosive shot glow with a gold border so I know it’s active. I’ve got no problem using that now, as it’s in a player’s stock toolkit. Eventually however, after years of countless reactions to my playing with an unedited stock interface that went from the bewildered to the surprised to the downright strange, I stepped into the Blackwing Descent raid encounter a couple months ago and it finally happened: after the slew of wipes we experienced I downloaded Deadly Boss Mods. DBM and other certain other add-ons have almost become a requirement for even being invited to raid groups, since it flat out increases the chances of success by giving you warnings and timers for absolutely everything that’s going on. Don’t have DBM installed? You might find yourself back in Stormwind or Orgrimmar spamming the Looking for Group channel, because you just got kicked from your (former) raid group.

I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t downloading it for me, but for the guild, and that my having this installed would contribute to less wipes and save us a lot of time and repair bills. After running raids in the Cataclysm expansion a few times, I found with the add-on I was required to think less and able to act more, with the jury still out on whether or not that really was a good thing. I mean I perform much better, but did DBM make me a better player or bring me down to a new lower standard of gameplay?

All of us became worse players in Wrath of the Lich King, which was incredibly easy compared to Burning Crusade and Cataclysm. A lot of people blame that lack of difficulty in Wrath for the frustration-fueled departure of players after level 80, but I think they’re only half right. It was Wrath combined with DBM and other third party add-ons that created a class of players characterized by (a) an ability to collect epic gear damn near blindfolded, (b) an expectation that all things be that easy for them, (c) an inability to cut it when things became a little bit difficult, and finally (d) a level of being spoiled that precludes them from even trying.

My self-assessment that I am a half-decent player comes from what I’m able to do with the tools I have been given – which I’ve handily been able to do through level 85. And the way some of these Cataclysm boss fights go, add-ons are pretty much needed to get through them. So I shouldn’t feel so dirty using DBM right? I guess it’s for the team. Either that or I've just gotten good at rationalizing.

Now playing a rogue on the other hand… that’s a feeling of dirtiness that’s unforgivable.

78. chinese prisoners tortured in the name of gold farming

[Article first published as Chinese Prisoners Tortured for Gold Farming Operation on Blogcritics.]

Gold farming is a practice that has been going on forever. If you play any MMO you know what I’m talking about. Whether it’s in World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online or any other online game you happen to frequent that requires virtual currency to obtain in-game privileges, there’s always going to be someone shilling virtual currency for real world dollars. To most players that means one of two things: (1) buying gold with little afterthought or regard to end-user license agreements or (2) someone spamming trade chat with gold offers that are easily blocked with a couple of clicks – no more than a slight annoyance to deal with and a minor inconvenience to report. That’s where it ends for most. Not many players really consider the other side of the coin (no pun intended) and see the dark side of what otherwise seems like a harmless practice providing an innocent service. A little while ago I wrote an article about how international gold farming shops could potentially be tied to criminal enterprise to try and shed a little light on the topic. What that article didn’t address was the gross human rights issues that go with it.

Recently, stories about abuse and physical torture for the sake of gold farming were reported in The Guardian. The report revolves around a former prison guard, Liu Dali (whose name has been changed for security), who spent some time in 2004 imprisoned at the Jixi labor camp in northeast China. His crime was “illegally petitioning” the government about corruption that had run rampant in his home town. After spending entire days digging trenches and breaking rocks in coal mines, he would put down the shovel and pickaxe and pick up a keyboard and mouse for his next labor shift: gold farming for hours on end. While to some that may seem like something light compared to manual labor in the mines, it’s actually worse. For this task, already being physically exhausted was accompanied by living in fear of abuse and beatings. "If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically," Liu explained. "They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things.” This was after manufacturing seat covers for cars. And after carving chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood until his hands were raw and torn. And barely being afforded the time to sleep before the next shift started.

China put restrictions on gold farming in 2009 because the trading of virtual currencies for real-world money was running out of control, and even made a case against one gamer who stole 3000rmb (about $462) worth of in-game currency. Still, it seems that China is having some trouble curtailing the activity. According to the China Internet Center, almost $2 billion worth of virtual cash was traded in 2008 just in China. This makes sense, as it’s estimated that almost 80% of the world’s gold farmers are located there. Liu’s estimates on money prisons made off of this abuse support this: "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu said. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [about $770 to $924] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

China doesn’t just supply low-cost labor for goods manufacturing anymore, but also acts as an offshore factory for virtual goods. This in particular should give gamers some idea of where their bought gold comes from. The stereotypical idea of a Chinese sweatshop supplying you with products is bad enough on its own, but knowing that someone could have been imprisoned and tortured just so you could buy fast flying is absolutely unconscionable. Unfortunately, the practice will still go on. American gamers will keep buying the gold and gold farming will continue. The concept in general doesn’t just apply to this topic, but for everything — as long as we can buy things cheaply, no one is really going to want to know or care what made it possible. It is a clear case of “not wanting to see how the sausage is made” combined with the need for instant gratification. As this need has steadily been increasing, so must the horrible conditions increased to match them.

So hopefully players will think twice before they buy their gold with the money in their pockets, and take into consideration the potential consequences. You really need to make some cash quick in World of Warcraft? I’ve sold stacks of heavy savage leather for up to 600g on the auction house. 350g is a guaranteed sale. It won’t take you that long.

75. US navy develops crowdsourced MMO to sink piracy

[Article first published as US Navy Develops MMO to Fight Pirates on Blogcritics.]

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents would tell you that just being good at video games would never amount to anything and you should really be doing your homework? Maybe back then rescuing princesses from overgrown monster turtles had no impact on life or society outside of conditioned rage against little people in mushroom hats and a grand increase in thumb dexterity. We had no idea what was coming in the next 20+ years, where the world would see gaming becoming a mainstay of the mainstream, and even a tool used for training and simulation. So we’ll let your parents slide on giving you grief for now. When I say training tools I don’t mean your company running a little seminar on the dos and don’ts of HR policies on corporate dress code. I mean large-scale simulations like those used by the American government and the military. I wrote something a while back about the US military using crowdsourcing as a viable tool in project research. In that case it was a DARPA-driven simulator to track rogue submarines called ACTUV, as well as the XC2V vehicle.

There must be a lot of positive results from this method of research, as now the United States Navy is backing a simulation project called MMOWGLI (please, no Jungle Book jokes about Baloo or King Louie). MMOWGLI (Massively Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet) is a project that will involve over 1,000 civilian and military players to help the Navy better understand and come up with new strategies involving piracy. Don’t misunderstand – this isn’t about downloading movies from torrents, mind you, but far more serious subject matter, i.e. getting jacked on open water with automatic weapons. The game launches on May 16th this year, and is the first of its kind to test the effectiveness of combining an MMO like World of Warcraft with crowdsourcing in order to help to solve real-world problems. Larry Schutte, Director of Innovation at the Office of Naval Research says, “We hope MMOWGLI will help us to understand what happens when your insights are combined with the observations and actions of another player--will that fusion result in a game-changing idea or solution, or will the MMOWGLIplatform teach us something about our traditional thought processes?”

The original release will focus on the recent real-world issues of Somali pirates. Players will be able to choose between two sides: either members of an international anti-piracy task force or the actual pirates themselves. It’s a little deeper of a decision than “Alliance or Horde” to be sure, since this one clearly marks the “good guys” vs “the bad guys,” but you shouldn’t feel morally inferior to picking the pirates. There always needs to be at least two factions for PVP play. Task force players will have to come up with ways to safely pass commercial ships through the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden. This includes gauging the probability of a pirate attack, arming ships, and of course the political and financial strain associated with any sort of military action. Pirate players are tasked with circumventing the task force players’ plans and well, to put it simply, jacking their ships. Players are permitted to party up like in all MMO games to work together on humanitarian efforts, raids, and hostage rescues. Players are even allowed to get into the nitty-gritty details of hostage rescue and maximizing the efficiency of pirate attacks. This will all be tightly controlled by game masters to preserve as much realism as possible. They’ll be making sure that there aren’t any exploits that can be triggered, like the Orgrimmar secret room in WoW’sCataclysm expansion, or even someone pulling a Leeroy Jenkins and disrupting an encounter. You see, combat ships carry costs of hundreds of millions of dollars each, which I would venture is a bit more than a 70 gold virtual repair bill for your 359 epics.

The Navy has a presentation available here with a lot more information on the premise of the game, background and objectives. What they’re hoping for with MMOWGLI is “novel combinations and complex interactions of ideas” and to “encourage out of the box thinking about contemporary anti-piracy issues.” These types of insights, as is documented in their presentation, might not emerge from more traditional wargame approaches. Collective gamer intelligence, gotta love it. So do you feel like playing pirate? You can sign up for MMOWGLI here.

arrrrrrr!

42. living (and loving) in a fantasy world

andurus and branwen in final fantasy xi

so.  post number 42.  i actually hoped and hoped that when i went through my daily news sites this morning that i would find something that related to hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, the answer to life, the universe and everything, or even some sort of suggestion not to panic or recommendation that i keep a towel handy.  hell i would have even settled for something on mos def, but alas, i found none.  maybe once i DO find something like that i'll renumber all of my posts to make it line up.  we'll see.  in the meantime this story will have to do as my attempt to entertain you monkeys.  it's a story about technology bringing people together and tearing them apart.  love blooming where it may seem impossible.  a torrid tale about two star-crossed lovers finding each other... and their avatars.

yes, avatars.  as in the onlines.  and the interwebs.  this whole story takes place in the virtual realms of final fantasy XI online, an MMO (massively multiplayer online) game based in the final fantasy universe.  in it, as is the case in most MMO's, players can create their own characters and specify their attributes - including race, gender and class.  you can play as anything from a heavily armored berserking beast of a warrior that takes care of things up close and personal to a intellectual giant - a robe-clad magic caster who deals with their enemies from afar and many shades in between. this is the backdrop for the story of paul turner and vicky teather of the UK, or as they're known in avatar form, andurus the hume and branwen the tarutaru.  after playing together for while, they became friends and grew close, until andurus (paul) had a job change and had to cut his daily 4-5 hour final fantasy intake from his schedule.  branwen (vicky) always had a crush on him, but didn't realize to what extent until he left. living with her boyfriend at the time, her conscience was wracked with guilt and she couldn't suppress how she felt about her hume friend. according to an interview with the london daily mail - "... i couldn’t help but feel guilty as i was living with my partner. at first i tried to forget my feelings." she went on to say "but i couldn't. fortunately, i had paul’s MSN address and nervously sent a message to him telling him how much i missed him and confessing my feelings."  paul, who also had a serious girlfriend at the time, suggested that they meet up in southampton on christmas eve.  so they did.  and the rest is history.  she broke up with her boyfriend, he dumped his girlfriend, and by new years day they were an item, visiting each other on weekends and continuing their "date nights" in virtual space, until the power vested in someone by something somewhere pronounced them mr. and mrs. turner.

so how did this attraction even begin?  according to mrs. turner, "one day, when as andurus he endangered his own character in the game to save me, i felt an incredible bond between us. it might sound strange to people who have never played an online game, but the fact he was a traditional man with values to match and was protecting me was what first drew me to him."  and i guess i can understand that on some level.  but lets face it, according to this logic, anyone playing the MMO role of a "tank" (a character that absorbs and takes damage to defend their party) should be able to instantly attract the affections of anyone else they happen to be tanking for.  and if they can't defend a clothie, then they're really not doing their job, are they?  they better be picking up those mobs and keeping them healers alive.  could this just have been a player fulfilling their class role?  and if they endanger their own character and "die," they are resurrected within minutes.  unless this was in the old diablo II hardcore ladders, in which case that kind of action would be far more moving.  back when a dead character was a dead character.

...but i digress.

the turners' nuptials

anyway, as i said i do understand it on some level.  i do have a few friends that i know only through playing world of warcraft.  a friend of a friend of a friend of mine had as his best man someone he's only met once in real life, but had been playing halo with for 6 years.  and in that sense, MMO's, as well as other online gaming, have brought about what i would call serious sociological shifts in the way people interact.    it can already be seen that people will interact in these virtual worlds more or less the same way they would in real life, with slight situational modifiers (one of my friends wrote a masters thesis on identity and communication in virtual worlds - an excellent read, let me know if you want me to hook you up).  it's an interesting evolution from just chatting online to actually doing something while talking and having fun.  some quests and objectives in these games force you to interact with others.  for example a couple of nights ago i was playing with 24 complete strangers in one of warcraft's raid encounters.  anyone has spent significant time with a geek in their life can attest that social interaction is a subject foreign and feared by most of us, and for some people, this forced social bonding over a common goal might be all the social interaction they have.  romantic couplings between people who may or may not be socially well adjusted are the next logical step.  i can understand how it can be almost be like an e-harmony or something similar, but for geeks, to get to know someone and figure out whether or not you really want to meet in real life.  the turners weren't the first couple to meet and marry this way.  a couple of years ago, again in the UK, a chance meeting in second life led to the marriage of kristen birkin and steve sweet.  and we can expect this trend to continue.  according to social psychologist dr. arthur cassidy, "cyber-dating" is becoming more common and actually a preferred method for young professionals these days.  as many professionals put in increasingly long hours at their jobs, they have less time for socializing.  so in addition to online dating, some people are logging into fantasy worlds just to meet people (on this subject, for a real social adventure log onto a "role playing" server on warcraft to see some... interesting stuff).  "intelligent people like the control they have over their character. you are not revealing your whole self straight away and if you don't want to talk to someone any more, it is easy just to click out of the fantasy world."  true words, doc.  true.