Browsing the blog archives for November, 2008

Swâpped Letters in Namês

Nov 29, 2008
GoW
games, world of warcraft

In these wonderful online games, the longer one single namespace exists, the fewer the names available in that namespace. At some point, all the good names are going to be taken. What then?

Gúess.

Now, let me say this first: I’ve had enough experience with foreign language to appreciate that everyone doesn’t use the character set used by American English. I speak Spanish and a little German and Japanese. Many fine and wonderful languages use other characters. Mi hija es pequeña. I’m not talking about other languages at all, or the names that derive from the culture or history of other languages.

I’m talking about:

  • Örion
  • Vâlor
  • Stêve

I groan every time I see one of these names. Is it just me?

It’s like everyone’s forgotten that these MMOs are basically text-muds with a fantastic graphics engine. Text is the heart of the mutliplayer experience! Your communication with every other player happens over guild chat, party chat, general chat, whispers. All text.

In a world where people sitting at a full keyboard still type for maximum efficiency:

  • c u l8r
  • o i c
  • lol

… how does this extra typing work get in under radar?

Does everyone go out and memorize that ascii-code-136 is ê, that ascii-code-135 is ç, and so on? No! From the people I’ve talked to, they just don’t think that far ahead. They learn the codes for their name alone… to type when they’re making their character.

“Hey, I’ve got a friend who’d like to join us.”

“Cool, what’s the name?”

“Um… he’s gonna whisper you in a second.”

Because they can’t type the name.

“But how do you invite your husband to your group?”

“I never have to type it! He’s on my friends list.”

That sound is my brain popping.

I’ve talked to people who had to look up how to type the letters in their own name because they didn’t know how to type them.

Your character is a collection of experience you’ve had: stats, doodads, gear, whatever. Your character has a text name which people have to type in order to interact with you. Why are you going to increase the difficulty?

Request for Comments: I’m making a “global hierarchy of bad names” reference article, so please comment with some examples of bad names you’ve seen, and I’ll try to organize them. Not just swapped characters, but whatever gets under your skin in a name. Chucknorris, anyone?

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Return of the Mixed Blessing

Nov 25, 2008
GoW
world of warcraft

“Hey guys, I’M BACK”

What follows isn’t always a fanfare of trumpets for the officers of that guild.

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WQ: Grizzly Hills Stink

Nov 22, 2008
GoW
world of warcraft

I recently wrote some gushing praise on Wrath questing–about how Blizzard finally has it figured out, how it’s great fun, blah blah blah. All that was before my wife and I moved into the Grizzly Hills.

Now, I’m eating my words.

What a massive comedown this zone is after Dragonblight!

Let’s run down really quickly the change in tone and content from the previous zone to this one:

Dragonblight

  • ride siege machines
  • rescue villagers from an undead-ridden city on a snow gryphon
  • fight dragons from dragonback
  • subvert the lieutenants of Naxxramas
  • pal around with the leader of the Emerald Dream
  • invade a horde city alongside your faction leaders

Grizzly Hills

  • grind elk meats with a horrible drop rate
  • grind bear flanks with a horrible drop rate
  • grind wolves
  • grind troll mojo with a horrible drop rate, do it five times in a row, with only the location of the troll camp changing each time
  • grind some herbs because some random npc stubbed his foot and needs foot balm
  • grind the same wolves again for someone else
  • travel all over the zone by horseback because there are only two flight points (poorly located)
  • double back constantly because different quest hubs target the same areas

Basically, everything I said in my previous post on quest quality was undone in this zone.

Admittedly, I’m not interested at all in the pvp quests, so maybe I’m missing the point. Are those quests any good? More importantly, are they so good that they redeem the rest of the zone?

I’m so glad to be moving on to Zul’Drak. I’m going to skip the Grizzly Hills entirely on my alts.

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WQ: Better Questing!

Nov 19, 2008
GoW
world of warcraft

The bread-and-butter of leveling, questing, is better than ever in Wrath. Questing is more fun from both from a narrative and mechanical perspective.

The narratives are stronger. A scourge-ravaged village where many people have been lost, where you ultimately rally the people to flush the zombies out. Some animal activists work against overzealous animal hunters, you start off helping trapped animals, learning about the hunters, and eventually leading an attack to stop their operation. A gnome encampment trying to learn what happened to their lost people and how the missing are connected to the growing pollution. They’re like short stories that you play out in the WoW universe. In original and TBC, you’d have a mix of good story progression with ones that seemed tangential or designed to be filler. A much higher proportion of the quests are tied to these short stories. There’s setup, there’s a cycle of activity and continuation of story, and finally a conclusion with perhaps a leader to the next chapter. And this story usually ties into the overall theme of the zone, or the neighboring quests.

The mechanics of actually doing a quest are the same–there are collection quests, delivery quests, smack enemies quests, and some others. It’s the conditions surrounding these quests that has improved. Most quest hubs have neighboring regions where those quests are performed, and now a quest chain logically progresses within that region with little random leaps to other parts of the world. No more wondering if you’re going to be back in the same location for a different quest. My wife and I used to tour the entire zone upon entry, picking up absolutely every quest in the fear that two seemingly unrelated hubs were going to ask us to perform a task in the same location; it’s not fun when the Smelly Yeti Extinction Society ask you to kill ten smelly yeti and then two sessions later, the Aromatic Leather Craftymakers ask you to collect ten smelly yeti hides. No more of that, from what I’ve seen. Now we just come upon a quest hub and do what we like.

Both of these points are subtle, but clearly Blizzard has put a lot of effort into improving the quality of quests. I’m really enjoying them.

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Improving Inscription

Nov 17, 2008
GoW
world of warcraft

My main is a holy priest and has always been a straight gatherer. I liked the gold. When I learned that Scribes made books, my fate was sealed. Inscription Ho!

It’s early in the young life of Inscription, and like Jewelcrafting and every other crafting profession, it has a barebones feel at the outset. There’s one point in particular that’s giving me grief as I work my way up to the highest levels, and I feel like it’s easy to fix.

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