Some thoughts from grinding 150K in a weekend

Ok, a weak ding for 44. I played hard this weekend knowing that there are several papers coming up in the next several weeks, and then AERA, so weekend play could be a little limited (or should be) until the end of the quarter. It was fun, but also had its drawbacks. These are some random thoughts from all that time.

1. Just for the moment, let's assume there are 5.5 million players of WoW in the world, and maybe about 1.5 million in the U.S. (all of them playing on Khaz Modan, of course...). This is about 100,000 more than the population of Idaho. Idaho, through the grace of God and the Constitution, gets two U.S. senators and two U.S. Representatives. Granted, they're bozos, and Idaho only gets that much representations because of the machinations of some 18th century plantation owners, but the fact remains that Blizzard has managed to addict capture a population large enough to request funding from the federal budget if it chose. All joking aside, that's pretty amazing. Toss in all the players of SWG, DAoC, EQ/2, etc. and it begins to look like MMO players might have enough sway to be electorally relevant....
   
   
2. Blizzard's patch cycle has some interesting small side effects. For those of you not playing priests, this might not make much sense, but I'm in the position of knowing that with the impending 1.10 patch, not only am I going to get a free respec on my talent points, but the rules of the game are going to change. Where before every level brought a bit of hesitation - how to spend the point - now I'm in the position of "WTF, I'll get it back in a month or so, so why not split my point evenly among the three trees." As a result, Twink currently has 20 in the Shadow tree, 5 in the Holy, and 10 in the Discipline. Among those that write the strategies, this is strictly a no-no - you pick two trees and go with it. For Priests, this usually means Shadow/Disc until 55, then Holy/Disc to become a "Healbot" for the end game - Lvl 60 Shadow priests are not nearly as effective within the endgame. If I weren't expecting the respec shortly, the 5 points I've put into Improved Renew in Holy would be premature, but as it is, it's just a temporary thing, almost a self-indulgence at the cost of those I might party with.
   
   Watching the commentary around the coming patch and update to the Priest talents, though, has been fascinating. Nowhere else have I encountered a situation where the participants in the game have had as significant an impact on rewriting the rules of a game as in the class reassessment process of WoW. I remember when the 3-point shot was introduced into basketball, but I wasn't a member of that community enough to know whether that was a bottom-up driven change. I can't imagine Parker Brothers soliciting changes to Monopoly rules, or the International Chess Foundation deciding that the two-up, one-right pattern of the Knight was too disruptive. In this case, though, it's a bit like watching a peasant rebellion - "we Priests want to be more effective in fights!" Not only are we seeing an emergent community, we're seeing one that wants and expects to be involved with changing, tweaking and improving the rules by which they play and interact. And we're seeing the game developer shift their own perception of their role, too, from a "we wrote it, you play it" model to something more inclusive - "we wrote it, but it's bigger than we could fully expect to comprehend, so we need your feedback to understand what needs to happen next." I don't know whether to say this suggests that the modern MMO is a new type of game, or that it's creating a new type player that's less willing to accept rules as an immutable structure to be accepted carte blanche.
   
   
3. I had my first really bad PUG experience on Saturday in Uldaman, and I was surprised at how much it irritated me. So far, I've really only had pretty positive experiences in groups - some better than others, but still pleasureable. (I hear JBR saying, "Oh yeah, except you called me out about being a bad player...", but really, that was just for theatric effect.) But this group - ugh, it was just horrible.
   
   I'd run Uldaman for the first time on Friday with Hallgrima, Felison and Brudie, so I knew a little about the instance, knew that it was tough at the end and that it required people to really know how to roll in order to complete it. We wiped once, but took down the boss on the second try. Satisfying, and was a small confirmation of the skills of this set of players.
   
   Saturday, I got pinged by a guildie asking if I wanted to run it again, and instead of asking who was in the group, just agreed. Generally this is my practice - I assume people grouping know what they're up to. Big mistake. As it turned out, there were two guildies (one I'd run with, one I hadn't), and two from outside. I was the fifth member, added by one of the guildies when the LFG tells didn't turn up a healer.
   
   The trouble began just as we entered the instance and I began to run my pre-instance checklist: let everyone know I'm on dialup and the chance exists I'll drop and return, buff Fortitude on all the party members, mana up, buff the pets, mana up, drink my Intelligence and Defense potions, and then I'm ready. (high maintenance, priests are.) Most players have something similar - Brudie poisons his blades, Hallgrima creates soulstones, etc. In fact, in light of what followed, I'll know now that if I don't see party members running a checklist, they may be trouble - it's another mark of a player who knows how to play. These jokers, however - I typed "hey, I need to buff..." and two of them are already into the first mobs. Okay, I think, maybe the mobs were a little too close for comfort - we'll knock them off and then stop and regroup.
   
   Didn't happen, though. I did manage to get them stopped after a couple of mob groups, but it was like they'd never played with a healer before, or I'd been sheltered in my life up to then, because they were continually running off out of sight to pull new aggro, and then only returning into sight when there were overmatched. Dude, don't come crying to me when you're at 20% and pulling three Lvl 43s. Meanwhile I'm getting whacked and wasting mana on fighting mobs in self-defense. All the while I'm getting whispers from the leader (not in the guild) asking me why the tanks are running like headless chickens. I kept trying to politely slow us down, to force a regroup, but ultimately had to start typing in ALL CAPS. I explained that they were OUTRUNNING MY ABILITY TO HEAL THEM and if they didn't pull their heads out, we WERE GOING TO WIPE. I could almost hear the sound of the words bonking off their stone heads; it wasn't encouraging.
   
   And then the server crashed, and we all got booted, and I didn't log back in that evening, which nominally solved my problems...
   
   But it wasn't fun, and I was surprised that it set me back that much. I generally think I manage to communicate fairly well in party chat, and also generally expect that folks playing lvl 40+ toons have had enough chances to figure out how things work. This experience shook my faith in both beliefs, and that wasn't pleasant.
   
   
4. Finally, James tells me that he'll be rejoining us Friday with his spiffy new tank. He's been coy about who this character is - he told me Monday that he's near his goal - but he's also let on that maybe he's played with us anonymously. So, in the spirit of guessing games, here's my guess - That's you, isn't it, Aries?
   
   

Twinkleheal
179 XP into lvl 44, until next weekend