Read the Screen

We are at the change of am epoch, moving from a time where we would mockingly tell someone to read the manual when they became stuck to now having to literally instruct people to read the screen.

 "READ THE SCREEN!"

If it is not an in your face, center of screen obscure everything until you dismiss it; or worse still a ping followed by a side of screen chat bubble; then users simply do not engage with it.

Time and time again issues arise where some user declares they are stick, some player derisively mocks a game as hard, or bad, because their little monkey brain did not tell them to read the screen.

Away from computer screens, apps and games, in the classroom their are standards to be met in fluency, fluent readers just see the text and can not but help to read the text.  One can forgive none fluent readers, or non-native speakers, when they struggle in this regard.

However the seeming trend one can observe is for native speakers of the language software is delivered in are unable, or unwilling, to engage and read the screen.

This trend seems doubly emphasized in gaming, where modern games design bread crumbs and way markers and all sorts of mechanisms to point the player to a conclusion or action.

Gone are the games of leaving the content and the player to mull over the opportunities, the sandboxing, in a game world.  There can be no more sandboxes, you can not leave a player washed up on a beach and expect them to work out all the mechanics and order to survive:

They are simply unwilling or unable to do so and instead opt for any game play sequence which achieves their aims and that internal self-satisfactory dopamine hit on achievement the quickest.

I believe the major driver to this change in play style is an absolute lack of willingness to engage with the screen and especially players avoiding reading.  The reading comprehension levels have dropped, I can make assumptions that some of this allowed drop in prerequisite levels can be draw between who is playing games along with the kind of games being played.

I do not believe anyone can deny video game players have taken this turn.  And in the market space it is understandable, if frustrating for those of us wishing for a more engaging and interesting game play loop.

Game makers have had to follow the trend to maintain the mass number of players and major titles, they can not and do not take the risk of making a game which is too hard, or has too high a cost of entry.  They want as many customers as possible directed to the short cut the masses to the feeding trough.

The recent vogue of playing World of Warcraft Classic in Hardcore mode is perhaps a phenomenon we can point to where players sought their own meta, to make the game harder and more engaging and I believe more fulfilling because it broke this trend.  If you played badly you died, you were not rewarded, if you did not engage with other players you died and you got them killed, you were ostracized not rewarded.

A literal case where if you were not up to spec you were actively nulled out of the pool, as perhaps Darwin Theory states nature should be.  It was refreshing, if nerve wracking, to see.

Beyond large new titles or established franchises indie makers are a little more able, and some of the most amazing experiences come out of that style of play, a style of play today considered niche, we must remember many of the game play tropes considered niche today were once mainstream.

MadseasonShow: Lifelong WoW Player Plays Old School Runescape

 

I remember fondly feeding coins into a machine to keep playing and death reset you to naught; without wishing to raise a tangential thought too eagerly, I would highlight that feeding coins into an arcade cabinet was the original micro-transaction driven game play loop and I'm surprised it isn't leveraged more widely today (it may very well be and I'm simply ignorant).

All this concern in the drop in seeming fabric of the game play experience all seems to me to stem from the audience attention spans having dropped, memory skills have dropped, social skills having dropped and crucially language skills have dropped.

We no longer interact like group oriented beings, even in team forming experiences, too many games proffer group finding, raid finding and instant way to find two, four or thirty players you hope to maybe mold an effective fighting force out of and it does not work.  I personally believe this is yet another tangential thought, but it is closely related to this degradation in attention and communication skills, as group finding actively assists such lone wolf selfish players to remain competitive, if not dominate, a play experience.

Gamer Clarity

I had a bad time getting off my addition... Addiction?... What am I talking about?  Drink?  Drugs?  Women?... No I'm talking about Azeroth.

Yeah, I was addicted to World of Warcraft, in a big way, it came after a time being a member of a top flight Day of Defeat teams - Yes, I was once a hardcore FPS player folks - Enemy Down ladder anyone?  Yeah, old school....

And myself and another couple of players on the team (waves to Chaplain) were looking for something else to play, and it was the weekend before I started a new job - the job I currently still have technically - and a friend came to stay (waves to Paul) and he'd just bought a new game "World of Warcraft".

Now I knew about Warcraft, I'd played the RTS games (I even still have my copy of Warcraft II on the shelf behind me) but I'd not ventured into any MMO ever before; yes EverQuest and even Ultima had passed me by.  And I went out that night and bought the game from the local Asda.

I rolled a human, a Warrior (flexes muscles) and I roped Chaplain into playing too and that was it, I was hooked... I played every hour I could, my day was get up, boot PC, walk dog whilst machine booted and kettle boiled, back in tepid tea, toast and check the auction house and may be pick up a few nodes of metal ore before work.

I'd work until lunch when I had an hours gap at that time, and I lived 10 minutes away from work, so it was drive home, see the dog, feed him, and check the auction house, check my mails, post messages to guild members (yes I ran a guild) planning the nights activities (usually an instance for either myself as the main tank or the main guild priest to get gear - so everyone else could get theirs that little bit more easily) and it was back to work.

I'd blaze through the afternoon and be setting off home as soon as I could, arriving home I would walk the dog again and either we'd stop at the local chip shop for a kebab or I'd call for a pizza on the return trip, that would arrive when we got home and the dog would curl up around my feet whilst I played and ground and quested all night long.

I found achievement beyond my normal day, I found organizing the team purposeful (at the time I had gone from running a team of folks at work, to being the most junior developer, a hard knock so I channeled my team building and drive into the guild - not always to great success, but I ran two different guilds in my time - one a family style small team the other a vast ramshackle affair of infighting and subterfuge).

After years, I mean years, the vanilla game, The Burning Crusade and through to Wrath I played all day everyday, in Wrath I became a top flight PVP terror (not on the arena circuit, but out in the world, world PVP baby!)  I digested every tip, watched hours of "WarcraftMovies.com", I lived and breathed that game.

I was still playing ten years ago when I had a revelation, at work I had the chance to start to lead product, to do that my focus, my drive, my energy had to be focused back on work, away from play.  I'd already diluted my Warcraft time anyway - as by then I also ran two accounts (carrier pilot) in EveOnline and a multi-billion ISK empire and a small corp of players.  But work needed my focus.

I had met my future wife as well and frankly grown up... "When one becomes a man, one has to put away such childish things"... So I quit, boom, overnight, my final two characters a 68 priest and 78 druid were to be the last I took to higher level, Wrath was the last expansion I played.

All my characters now sit in the pergatory of the unsubbed account, but I yearn to see them again.  I'm sure you've all seen my efforts to set up my own server (an on going affair I might add), and it's that yearning for the old days which drives me to want to do that, time is the only stopper.

Time, the one element missing when I quit before, the yearning was there, but time is short and you have to focus.

At the moment at work I'm focussed on a delivery of a new product to a new market, I need that time back to myself, but I also need a release.  The current gaming trend for high impact, high drama, like PUBG is not doing my relaxing any good, the stress of World PVP would not in Warcraft either, and Eve - forget it, nerve wracking - so maybe my original home World of Warcraft PVE, on EU Thunderhorn server?  Maybe my old characters are still there?

Xelous the 60 warrior.

Eylomae the 60 hunter - who must look completely out of place in 2018 with a full set of Beastmaster (tier 1 I called it, but I've recently learned it's considered tier 0.1 - if it's even called the Beastmaster armour set at all!).

And all the rest, Blackthorn my bad-ass 80 Mage... 

I thought I might resubscribe the other day, it hit me like a pang in the gut, to call Chaplain and say "3pm Stormwind Gates, EU Thunderhown, Xelous will march back into town".  But I couldn't make myself do it.

So much has changed in the game, some maybe for the better, but to my play experience, to my recapturing the past so much has changed for the negative.

The moment of clarity shone through, I can never go back, I am still a gamer, though of which game is yet to be seen.

Time Expectations in WoW Classic?

With the news today of EA reducing by 75% the time it will take in Star Wars Battlefront 2 to unlock a hero character, can we expect to see modern gamers head into WoW Classic and start complaining?

(c)2017 Electonic Arts

Lets just recap though, World of Warcraft, vanilla, people played a character to level 60 in about 4 days played, that's about 96 hours played.

EA's plight, and collapse into pandering, happened with a played time of around 40, that's less than half... Reducing it by 75% that now makes a hero in SW:BF2 in 10 hours.

10 hours for Vanilla WoW was not enough, and this is where my first concerns with WoW Classic come about, firstly, will Blizzard be forced to pander down to newer gamers whom most certainly want action & reaction, risk and reward.  They certainly don't deal in patience nor RNG.

My second concern comes that this is a big issue, and perhaps Blizzard will side step it, by simple nerfing the amount of time to level, or perhaps increasing the rate of XP gain, as arguably since Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Litch King, the business model for WOW has been to push players to level cap as fast as possible and explore repetitive tasks in that area.

The way of thinking Blizzard have entertained (no pun intended) since I stopped playing was daily's, and find a group, find a raid, tokens, faster reward for input, but with exponential damage, health and other stats making that power-wonder factor... Fast rewards, I said during my appearance on "Shut Up We're Talking" that this was where things would be going.

Rinse and repeat.  That is all I've seen delivered, it's certainly all I've heard explained.  Should I name drop "Garrisons"?

All this said however, we must remember, that there will be a huge influx of tourists to WoW Classic, toe dabblers, so what could the population of regulars; the hardcore; who settle there expect?  These are the things we don't know and as you can tell by this post, we can only speculate about.

World of Warcraft - Classic

Its happened, the announcement with not quite enough information, but it did happen and the WoW orientated internet has slightly melted over it, everyone and their dog on YouTube have posted opinion pieces on whether this "in development" service will fullfil their desires.  I have no opinion in that, instead I'm going to talk about my Warcraft Experience...

I first met the world that is Warcraft with "Warcraft II", which I remember my brother and I bought whilst on a trip into Nottingham, we bought it from GAME on Lister Gate, and talked about it incessantly as our parents made us trudge around Marks & Spencers, rather then rush home to play immediately.

We played this on our Intel 80486-SX2-50Mhz, with 4MB of RAM and a 128K S8 video card - VGA baby!

I don't remember finishing the game, I have to be honest, I don't remember it that much... However, I still have the game, the exact box we bought is proudly on the shelf, and has been visible behind me in most of my YouTube videos.  And in 2000 I returned to play the game in full, as I had played AOE2 to death, was vastly disappointed with C&C3 Tiberium Sun and so wanted to return to Azeroth.

Fast forward to the release of WoW, and a friend (Hi Paul) came to stay for the weekend, and he brought this game with him... And I walked under the trees of Elwynn Forest for the first time, killing pigs with his level 6 Dwarf Paladin... And I loved it.

The moment he went home on that Sunday evening, I went to the Asda superstore in Long Eaton and I bought the game, the original game, with the first edition of the manual... Many years later I threw this away, when I moved house, I still kick myself for that, and remember distinctly looking at it all in the bottom of the empty dustbin...

But at that moment this was brand new, and I set up my account and went to it... I didn't understand my friend would be on a completely different server to me, so I just allowed the game to pick any server it liked.  I wanted to play and adventure in the game, so I picked the what I thought of as the "single player" option... PVE.  I did not understand what an MMORPG was.

Into PVE I stepped, Allience, Human, Warrior... And there I was, I remember I played three evenings around Northshire Abbey alone... Just three evenings, about 2-3 hours, maybe 6 hours played total, just to finish the Northshire Abbey quests and then I was sent by this NPC to "Goldshire"...

There were no loading screens, I thought I had moved from one zone to another when I left Northshire, I saw the section of map discover, and I thought this is huge - whilst only looking at Elwynn on the map.... And then I right clicked..... And the map stepped out... These slabs of undiscovered map... Darkshire to the south, Westwall to the West, Lakeshire... OMG this is a continent.

And then I right clicked again.... Two continents, two whole continents... I was a very small cog in a very large world.

The the server crashed, this was a three-four days after release.

When everything came back up, I set about questing, and I overwhelmingly remember it taking so long, like a week into my experience I was wearing all white gear from quests, and was eyeing up an Axe - purchased from an NPC - for 10 silver.  Which was a hell of a lot of money.

I remember playing with a friend who had rolled a Paladin, when he sat down to drink, I sat down to drink, I didn't understand what drinking did, I didn't read the tool tips, I was so naive.

A week further on, and my hours sunk into the game expanded and expanded, I was sleeping less and playing more, I used to drive home from work at 12noon, play 30 minutes, not eat, then drive back to work... Where I would leave the second it ticked past time, to get home and play again.

I soon had more friends in the game with me, and I helped form a guild... "Arx"... Named for the Latin word for fortification or castle.  I designed the natty guild tabbard in dark royal blue, a white tower on the chest and suitably lush borders... And we started to level.

I hit 40, and thanks to my side-line of mining - selling stacks of copper bars for 10 silver in general or by mail - as I didn't know where the auction house was - I'd not been to Ironforge (the only place there was an Auction house at launch!), but I hit 40 dirty poor...

I set about that evening going further afield, I travelled to Stormwind and then through to Ironforge, and I found more and more quests, I found the auction house, and saw I could sell the copper stacks I had for 35 silver each, 50 silver as bars... So I did, and made money for my mount so much more quickly.  Back to Eastvale I went to train and buy, a brown mare whom I always referred to as "Nelly".

And I travelled the world, meeting new people... It happened in the swamps outside Theramore, I met a night-elf.  The first I'd ever seen, she was a hunter, level 32 ish, and running... I was mounted, I didn't know any different, this was a female character... I spoke to her, and she spoke to me, we quested together... She joined my guild... THANK GOD she actually was a women... (Hi Sue).

I fancied the pants off of this woman, and rightly so, I saw a picture a while later (grrr baby, grr), I made the mistake of that same assumption before... Not so much fancying, but wondering... "Is that actually a dude?".... (Hi Nick, aka Eve - lol - yes we wondered for a long time mate, before you joined vent!).

The trouble then started really, you see I was a warrior, and the guild main tank, and I was struggling and pushing myself to level and gear up... The first little niggle was my co-guild leader (Hi Chaplain) was also a warrior, so there was a little trouble there that what I had, he had, what he needed, I needed.  This was solved later as he rerolled to a rogue, but we're talking very early vanilla, and having two warriors was a pain.

We also vastly lacked casters, we had a lovely priest (Hi NW), but he would never come into vent, or certainly never spoke, making it hard to dungeon - however, he was a world class top notch priest.  We had the lovely Sue as her Hunter, a Paladin (aka Nick), Chaplain in his Warrior or Rogue.  And then a rotation of different team members, we had a Druid (Hi Hlaalu), we had a warlock (whos name I forget) and that was about it... For a long time.

A friend from work rolled a Dwarf paladin I think, and he got very very drunk and that caused a fraction between WoW in my down time and my work life, so he left the server to play elsewhere.  We then had a few other paladins come and go, and then another female warrior - but she often wondered off to play Horde... True Blue represent, we ain't dealing with no half-Hordies here.

Mage and Warlock were always missing from our group, and it showed.

But we did get Strat and Scholo on farm, meager progress, but we had it on farm, we could go there over and over.  The next chapter of drama was about to burst all over me, a few of the folks in the team were not really grasping the idea of progress, about gearing up, some folks would go spend two or three hours skinning or picking herbs then go sell them, or skill up, and wonder why they were still taking a load of damage - inspect, because you're still wearing level 40 gear, you're level 58.

Another person took an aeon to get from level 57 to 60, and when they finally did break the level cap, they were too busy farming gold for an epic tiger mount... To be frank it all got slightly derailed, but I had pretty nice gear, and kept increasing it by going PVP Battleground farming... Knight Captain, thank you very much, gave me boots and leggings and some other bits to augment my gear, sadly though I lost the plot here, I fell out with Sue... I fell out with a bunch of other folks, and basically kicked them out of the guild.

Chaplain and I re-rolled new characters, I think Nick did too, and we later swapped to a PVP server.

I never enjoyed another Warrior like that first one ever again, I never met as good a healer as I had in NW the priest again, and PVP started to take over.... I rolled my own Hunter, and outdid Sue's progress - basically as she'd moaned she couldn't gear up, I got a full tier 1 (as it was then) including the cap and bow of bones form dark-master gandling, and the chest piece form General Drakkish, I had the full set... Just to point out - spend your time and you get what you want... And I did this before she'd progressed further.

I'll be honest, it was petty, but I fancied her, it was all I had to brag about - look at my gear - eyebrows waggle - I look back on that boy and laugh now, but that doesn't mean I don't miss that kind of playing, and as you can see from this text, I still know so much about the game at that time.

I miss being the sort of thotbott for the guild, literally, anything vanilla and Alliance, and I could pretty much answer on the spot.  I had learned the game.

As BC dawned I ventured as my hunter into the new lands, and I enjoyed them, but I also started my favourite of all my characters, a female human mage... Yeah rocking the female toon now... and I went full fire, never frost, I levelled for 1 to 70 in about four weeks full fire, in every dungeon I could get to, and I got into the level 70 PVP world, especially in AV and WSG.

I also re-rolled a new Hunter, a female one, which I also levelled quickly to 70, and I played DPS classes, no more tanking from me, though I did have a level 70 warrior for the good-old times.

I was mid-way through the vast and complex attunements in BC when Wrath was announced, yes I was not a progress attainer in BC, I just enjoyed it, thoroughly.

I never high-end raid in BC, I tried sun-well a little before Wrath came out, but I said to myself I would try to Raid in Wrath.

It never happened, I took my mage, blasted through the PVE to get to 80 and went dungeons and collecting my marks, and just went full on PVP.  I had a lovely full set of Gladiator gear, when it was very hard to get that.

However, I hated arena, I hated the starting of the crossing of realms, I hated that everything felt the same.  I loved the game, and still progressed my hunter to 80, and then started a druid - who strangely got a full set of tier gear raiding Black-temple as a level 70, but I never level capped everything.

I did Gruuls lair with a guild I had joined, fell out of love with the game, and stopped playing long before Wrath's era was over.

Since then, I have played on Nostalrius, but I missed my team, I missed the feel of my original server.

I fear that many of us have rosy tinted glasses when it comes to Vanilla, what I miss is the server, the knowing everyone, the need to know everything and travel, the RPG aspects.  And I can't help but think today players want instant gratification, they are not going to await for travelling to get somewhere, they are NOT going to want to plan their hearthstone and flight routes for optimum action in a quest hub, they want to point, click and win.

Will Classic servers work?  Perhaps, will they be Vanilla servers?  No.  That time has passed into legend.

That Moment...

You know that moment when you see this...

And the mage rolls need....

Yeah, that's the kind of day I've had.

More World of Warcraft topics to follow...

C++ Multiboxing : World of Warcraft

I'm a huge fan of the early World of Warcraft games, I make no secret of this, and spent far far too long playing the game when it came out.  I enjoyed the game into Burning Crusade and enjoyed PVP during Wrath of the Litchking, but I think somewhere along the way there Blizzard lost their mind.

And way back in 2010, on the then in vogue talk show "Shut Up We're Talking", I predicted where I thought things would go, and that looks pretty much to be where the game has gone, it's been dumbed down, and the MMORPG inflation on damage and stats has become insipid throughout.

As such, I crave a Vanilla experience, and wish Blizzard would allow the free usage of the Vanilla assets (mainly extracted client data) for all the server emulations out there - Nostalrius and Felmyst come to mind.

Until that happens however, I'm stuck exploring the old game myself, alone... Yes, I still have the original client DVD's I purchased in my battlechest and armed with CMangos, I have been building up my old multiboxer from 2014.

The result tonight is my first Boss kill, Scarlet Monestary Graveyard run... Not perfect, the summoning by "Haunting Phantasms" really screwed me up, my mages won't decurse on command, and the priest keeps pulling aggro as her fade is slow... but other than that, we got somewhere, and I really enjoyed myself...

Click to enlarge.

You can see on the detail screen the top left client is the one I'm playing the warrior, I am tanking... Bottom right is the priest, the only healer, and the group is a warlock (top right) and two mages in the smaller windows center bottom.

The command prompt window is the multiboxer, it simply takes key presses of one key, say "numpad 5" and delivers them to the other four clients running as windows key down messages but of another key code.  So, 5... Hence making the fifth item in the action bar cast.

Shift and 1, will select action bar 1... etc etc... I have a myriad of little command helpers.

However, the boxers are totally dumb, they are only being controlled by myself, at my keyboard, alone.  No hacks, no injection, no memory scanning, just me and my eyeball mark 1.

My ultimate aim is to run Scholo - I love Scholomance!

Three Games I Can't Face (Again)

Three games I often think about, but which I could never return are raising their heads with me lately, the first being Eve-Online.

I was invited back by a friend, whom wanted me and my three decently trained (for 2012) accounts to go back in to the game, and run mining operations for him.  If you're not aware, mining in Eve is pretty much staring at rocks, you have to be in a special place, and busy with other stuff to let your game time turn into this monotony.

He assured me there's loads of new stuff, "since you like mined Xel, there's loads"... But my heart just wasn't in it.  I did install the game, and try a free account for like 25 minutes, until I got utterly bored with it and had to stop.

My main problem is probably the style of game play, I loved Eve, I played way back before the new engine.  It was a clicky menu fest then, and it seems twice as much so now.

Though I still love the Armageddon!

The next is World Of Warcraft, I don't often get invited back to WoW nowadays, but when I initially quit I was asked perhaps every other day.  With the release of the movie however, my interested was peaked, and so I took a look... 

What have they done to my beloved Stormwind?

I just can't, I can't face it.  But I look back on my appearance on "Shut Up We're Talking" (which incidentally spawned this very blog) and I remember saying that damage & level inflation would devalue and dumb down the game... Boy, was I right, or was I right?

The third, and final one, is CubeWorld.  I was big into this when it came out, I begged a friend to lend me his account before I bought it (which he wouldn't - *cough* tight wad) but buying into it, was great.  It mixed Zelda with Minecraft with a proper olde tyme Adventure feel.

I had high hopes it would become part of my regular rotation, unfortunately, development seems to have utterly stopped, and it blows in the wind like dust from my gaming bones.

Do you miss an old game?  Do you insist you have quit a game, or stopped subscribing to it?... Let us know what it is in the comments below!

Gaming: Vanilla WoW: My Thoughts

I have been away, but you my readers have not been forgotten, oh no, for I have many gaming stories to shower upon thee from the previous couple of weeks...

I didn't necessarily plan to not write a blog post for nearing a fortnight, but in doing so I felt the need to write something interesting, and so here we go...

World of Warcraft, I don't play World of Warcraft any more, I pretty publically derided the whole approach Blizzard had taken around the time Wrath of the Litch King was released, and yes I played that expansion, but my guild of friends fell apart, my main honcho and I (Hi Chaplain) re-rolled on a new PVP Server and well, it never really took off.

With the casual ease one could get heroics, compared to the skill and time dedication needed to get gear in vanilla, it became far more pew-pew than an RPG, and indeed the player skill base around me started to reflect that, PVP videos stopped being things like level 60 hunters roaming wild, or even the annoying rogue naked evisceration videos... No they all became just inside battlegrounds, where everyone is doing the same thing, on the same ground, in the same patterns, over and over... Dailies the same.

So, Looking at the power of my then level 80, and the planned level 90 and eventual 100 I just didn't feel the need to pay £15 a month to play.  Instead I went and got married, which, so far, has been a more fulfilling adventure.

And this is the shambled Blizzard have brought on themselves, I saw it coming, those who didn't include I supposed the millions of subscribers they are shedding, the title retains 10 million subscribers, probably more than enough to keep it alive (well definitely) but I hope their now having still 10 million does not tell some suited executive that the game is a success, one current player described the current Warlords of Dreynor (I can' even spell it, I'm so uninterested) expansion as a menu fest, clicking through menu after menu.  From what I gather, the idea being you have your own garrison now... and you need followers, so you alone you gather your NPC followers?... Through daily, or weekly, or regular, repetitive, time sucking tasks...

Yeah, that's pretty much where I got off Wrath, with the monotony, and it just seems that monotony has carried on...

If we look back at WoW, about the original game, what can be say... Well, it took time to gain levels, it really did... Level 1 to 2, was 400 XP, the nightsabers (for example) in the starting zone were 100 XP, so kill 4 and you had your level... It took a few minutes.. and the other half of that first quest got you half the next level and so handing in the first quest you had been introduced to the "ding" of level 2, gathering XP and then getting a large XP boost for the hand in...

Spin forward again to the last time I played (you can find it in this very blog) I went to a now ruined Human starting zone, killing the wolves and kobolds, just the first three quests, I never needed to do the rest... level 9...

In the same amount of time it took to get between level 2 and 3 originally, I was level 9 in the current retail release.

I'm pretty sure I could download the game now, today, and level a DPS character even more quickly.

And that's so sad, the original release of the game, the starting areas, okay were not perfect, but they were pretty damn good.  Good fun, and they engaged you.  For starters, as a real early player, you had to read the quest text and travel around and you didn't just make XP you made experiences that I simply don't see the game offering today.

Okay, new lands are new lands, but should a new land have been +20 levels higher than the original release?...

I think perhaps it shouldn't have been, or more rightly the value of the early experiences should not have been devalued, why should a quest I did in 2005 reward 1200 XP, suddenly reward 3000 XP in 2015?... Simply to speed up the levelling, to cut players from that early experience...

And why?... Well, the answer for Blizzard to their customers, and to be fair amongst the customers ourselves, was that no-one was any longer interested in the starting zones, they had had their day, no-one was there any longer to help with Hogger... or to complete the quests, so first it was dumbed down, and then it was changed completely in Cataclysm.

But that didn't invigorate the players, it made some go abck to look, new players had an even easier ride, but they had a different experience to those of us whom had been there before.

And the difference was the experience we'd had, the original game was not completely finished, we know this, and I don't think the vanilla game was ever completely finished as an RPG, instead because of it's success from launch it got corrupted by the numbers of people, so we never saw the real first game design be realised.

You can see this in the match of the original art to the world... Look at Thandol span, a dual span bridge, to a tiny thin paved road each side of the span?

What traffic jams would have been there for the amount of traffic between Lorderon and Stormwind?... What traffic did the Dwarves of Ironforge have to pass North or bring South warranting that span?... Even with one span fallen and one partly blocked by rubble there's no way that span would ever be needed... But it was in there...

The fortresses of both factions, I don't think ever reached their potential for PVP use, Theramore never tempted many... Menethil simply ended up a ganking spot...

The best open world PVP was around Southshore, and I remember groups of 20+ fighters all rallying to the cry in Ironforge "SS under attack" and we flew off to defend...

That stopped happening, as soon as battlegrounds came in, not because southshore or Tarren Mill were less fun, arguably they were more fun... But because players like ease of use, and it was easier to get more honour in a battleground than actually in the world.

And again, Blizzard, this devalued the fabulous job you had done with the world, those open world kills should have been worth more than farmed kills...

Just like that original starting experience should be worth more than just being skipped over...

Just like the game today should be more than just rising and repeating tasks...

As I said in 2008, the game did not need to climb up, it needed, with it's very rich lore and appeal to expand out, it needed the level cap to change slightly, and I think Burning Crusade was a very good expansion after vanilla, but some of the things which happened later... have lead the world of warcraft off it's own track.

For ease, for the numbers, for the majority...

But I find myself in a minority, I crave the old experience, the old feel... One can still find it, and find communities enjoying that, but they're not official, they are private servers... Something I'm at pains to point people at due to their legal frailty.

I would however, say to Blizzard, time lock servers... And for the love of god, time lock and free to play model them, the game is close to ancient, I'd personally love to work for Blizzard, to time lock a server to say level 70, TBD era, but then expand the game outwards from there, to add story and content to the fringes and see where it would go.

How might the Iron Horde make an appearance in such an expanded world?... Would the Dark Portal cut off the worlds, leaving only Mages able to portal between cities and the Iron Horde spill out of the actual Dark Portal...

It's an interesting question, and might have fitted the lore better than what feels like the battering it's taking in WOD... I dunno, I day dream about it... The nearest I might ever get is emulating a server for myself and facing the wrath of Blizzard's legal department; something I don't really want to do.

So I stay not a paying customer, not a free to play customer to Blizzard, I stand aloof, with none of their products engaging me... But I wish they did.

I'll never pay to play an MMO again...

That is a bold statement, as a player with a major elitist streak in my past, many years in vanilla WoW and later versions, running guilds, running corporations in Eve and having some damn fun whilst doing it, how can I sit here in 2015 with tall that in my past and say I'm not going to pay to play an MMO again?

Well, Russia is one source, with games of the quality (damn high) and quantity of WarThunder, World of Tanks and other titles it's hard to say why to buy into the idea of paying subscriptions.

More traditional MMO's like Lord of the Rings, you can access that game free, but pay for content, and if you've paid for content you then still get access to it when you stop paying...

World of Warcraft has the opposite model to this the moment you stop paying they cut you off, your dealer cuts you off, and you loose that world, and to some extent you loose yourself, because in these MMO's we, as players, invest a little of ourselves in those character, they are us as we walk and live those virtual lands after all.

So, to be cut off from them leaves us wondering, leaves us missing them... But that pull, in the current economy is not enough to make me want to pay.

It's not essentially Sophies Choice is it... Sub to play a game, or eat better food... I know as a bit of a fattie, I'm picking the food, and so that leaves me playing free to play games.

Dungeons and Dragons Online has graced these pages 5 years ago, though not as good as Wow it was there, LOTRO also, there are others I've tried.

So, if Blizzard come out with a new game "Titan", whatever that maybe, what would I do?... Well, the first thing is read all about it, but all that time I'd not be thinking "yes yes yes"... I'd be thinking "how much how much"... and if it's more than a dollar, I'm out of there, I'm not paying £29.99 for a title then £10 a month any more, ever.

Is this a sign of the times?... I suppose it's a sign of my maturing, and choosing to spend my time more carefully, as I've gotten older the amount of time I have to play has lessened.  So, if I get an hour a night, that's 7 hours a week, that's then what 28 hours a month... so just over a day... If I'm paying a £10 monthly subscription, those companies have to run their servers 24/7 I get that, but I'm paying £10 for 1 day... That's expensive.

The counter argument is "play more", playing every day that's 33p ish a day... That's cheap, but who as an adult, as a real person, with a real life who has time to play every day?... Every hour of every day even for some titles to achieve what you need to as a top notch achiever?... Not me...

Students maybe, people with that ability to run on 2 hours of sleep... But not me, not a middle aged man.

What shocks me about this whole feeling I have is that, I'm actually at a time in my life where I could spend on games, but I don't want to, the price per play time does not stack up, free is much more liberating and I never have that niggling feeling that; if I put that title down for a week, I'm loosing out; for free, I can't loose out... And the title itself can't, though it has to run 24/7 server power and time is very cheap now, more so than 15 years ago when I became an online player.

And that server time and cost for the publisher can be offset by premium or shop offered items in the game.... This i believe is where AAA MMO titles now have to go.

Five years ago, I'd have had the opposite opinion, if I went back and asked myself, even in the pages of this very blog I've said that, but I have to say now the opposite is in my mind.  I want to play for free and spend maybe a little now-and-then on top-up items.

Where does this leave the next generation of MMO's for me...

It leaves me hoping, maybe in vein, that they are free to play.

World of Warcraft - Multiboxer

Update on the multiboxing software, I've had a week of feedback from my two testers, I definitely need to get a hold of a pair (or more) of high level Warlocks, as I've heard a few issues with the warlock pets... hunter pets are reported to be acceptable and following...

I don't like what Blizzard have done to hunters, I think they're now a broken class... No melee weapons and johnny come lately players calling those of us saying anything noobs... Argh.

The code itself has had a pair of re-factoring passes, the first pass added a set of key sequences to a single input, so you can make the client respond to a single key with "/follow <playername>"... This is useful, as I can use the shifting keys to switch up to a set of standard keys if need be.

One thing I've done with this is made each client have a "mount & follow" response set up, they mount from their action bar, then type /follow to the name of the previous party member (as configured with the XML files) so instead of following in a messy gaggle, when I mount and leave an area I leave in a line-a-stern formation.

I still need more support tho folks... See the prior posts if you want to donate, or volunteer to help.

Warcraft View - A Play Style

I've been taking a fair amount of time to look at how people play World of Warcraft, the multiboxer works for me perfectly, it suits me, but then I wrote it, what I'm looking at is a wider player demographic to see how others use the interface, how they interact in both PVE and PVP, whilst multiboxing with other software and playing solo.

The aim being to tune my interface and responses.

One thing I've noted a lot from hardcore PVE content players is this tendency to have their camera pulled all the way back... Here's an example from Preach

The camera is way back and angled way up high, I think more than the default controls let you, so this is customization of the UI in action.  But don't you think it looks more like another Blizzard game... Yeah it looks a lot like Diablo don't it....

Yet this is World of Warcraft... I might need to sub my main account and go try a few things out - bite the bullet as it were - because the multiboxer at present does feel like its working better down at character level where the main character you're leading around can help you keep tabs on the following boxes.

Multiboxing - Healers - World of Warcraft

No, I've not been idle, the Multiboxer has had a lot of work on the local multi-client version.  Its had auto log on ability, and selective delivery (so you can stop certain clients getting the key clicks by filter) plus there's also a new master over ride, so you can hold a key to send all following keys the same to all clients...

This last item is great, because it lets you react better in PVP situations, you can hold the button if jumped, and TAB - to pick the target - and voila, nail them with everything, no need for worrying about the mappings... This is particularly good when all your running clients are the same, e.g. all Warlocks, or all mages.

Of course you can run the whole program with no filters at all, so its all 1-to-1 mappings, this lets you run the multiboxer very easiler in 5 man PVP groups, for battlegrounds!

 

One other thing I've put a bit of time into over the last few days is leveling up a free to play (Starter) wow account with a healer for the other group you've seen running.  The plan being to go take on some higher level elites somewhere - since we're still free accounts we can't party to go down an instance - so elites is our only option to show off...

 

In other MMO news, Allods online has quit being supported & operated by gPotato, it has been passed back to the Russian developers... You can migrate your account from gPotato back to them...

Now, Allods was one of those games I was short listing to add to the free to play list, however, I've been trying to download the client for a few days and been failing, it is dismally slow.

Multiboxing in World of Warcraft

I am writing a multiboxer, if you are interested, read the posts from all this week.

Donate using the PayPal links for exclusive early access, and discounts on the final software!

The project has tonight reaches a new level of performance and stability, literally rolling my four level 1 mages around with the paladin they've been stable in movement in and out of Stormwind and through Goldshire, they've taken on (and won) at level 1 level 9 mobs (the highest available) and have even started to make levels - even without being in a group - I can let the mages pull and they seem to take it in turns being the one to either hit first or get the first key stroke.

If I had full accounts I could of course just group them and everyone would share the rained down XP, and believe me it does rain down on you... playing solo you get about 120XP a mob when you start, so share that between 5 and you're getting only about 20-30XP... BUT... You kill 5-6x more mobs!

So what has this all got to do with multiboxing in general?  Well, multboxing in WoW is nothing new to me, I did it originally with a C# written key sender, but it was very primitive in comparison with this sender, and it was during the good old Vanilla days, so there were fewer group combinations you could use it for.

Now, I first became aware of multiboxing in 2004 when Southshore/Tarenmill world PVP was the only PVP, and this was on Thunderhorn EU server, which is a PVE server... Some knuckle head actually attacked southshore... and in Ironforge the commons between the bank and AH suddenly became a wash of people screaming to head North and defend the borders.  So it was about 65 various level (and PVP disabled) Alliance rattled into Southshore to see what was going on.  What met us was a level 60 undead warlock with four identically geared level 60 undead mages, and they moved in one fluid motion and owned any lone alliance who went PVP enabled to take them on.

They moved together, right with one another, they were the first Multibox I ever saw, and they started the first ever World PVP I saw, as more and more alliances then whole allliance level 60 groups came up and went PVP active and the war flowed.  The multiboxer disappeared soon, but I'd seen him and saw the power.

WSG was the first major location I saw PVP multiboxing take off, but vanilla PVP queues were hugely long on Thunderhorn, and the realm was PVE.  And I had a good guild around me working tier 0/1 gear, so just enjoyed the game.

Later when the guild had gone, when the groups became shit and when Burning Crusade gave us new instances, then my mind cast back to Multiboxing, and I wanted to do it to cover all the PVE content I'd no longer get to play because BC had totally devalued it.  I never ever got to play Nax properly... So I set about writing a key sending program in C# to run my own small group of level 70's through the content, I figured I could... Sure enough I could use my hunter, and a second account with a priest to run most of the content.

But I lost interest in the game and as wrath came along I just PVP'd more and more so lapsed the account and multiboxer.

It was only this year I realised I'd missed out on a big band wagon, I realised people were selling their Multiboxing set up, and that new rigs (PC's) could run multiple copies of the WoW client, so I could run group raids on my own single machine?... And then multiple groups of clients over the LAN!... WOW for WoW!

This project was then born, it soon was up to the old level, but its now oh so much more.  So much smoother, and with so much potential.  I've looked at, but not bought other multiboxers out there, because... Well I don't trust them, a multiboxer suite basically monitors your key strokes and transmits them around, what's to stop that strange multiboxer from transmitting my username and password as I type it in?.. NOTHING... Plus I'm a software engineer, why buy when I can write.

Features complete:

• Launch multiple local clients
• Use/save window positions for clients
• Automatic login to accounts
• Launch different games (WOW & RoM so far)
• Configure source (input) keys to map to different receiving (output) key
• Network (WAN & LAN) transmit of key strokes on a 1-to-1 pattern (1-to-many to come)
• IPv4 & IPv6 suppport
• Monitor mode to help configure the system

Development Items:

• Transmit strings of commands/keys on a single key press
• Manual select of target window preference (so you can set a specific client you opened to pull for instance - "CTRL+1" the next pull shot (action bar #1) will go to client 1 so that client gets the aggro)
• ALT transmit - stops mapping keys and just sends the raw key strokes
• Mouse click on screen location, you click on main client or one subclient and all the other clients do the same - allows you to talk to a quest giver and then accept the quest, or on your main get a quest and "share" it with your group and they can all accept it from your single mouse click
• Select a certain character after logon - based on profile settings, e.g. Client 1 opens 3rd character down, Client 2 opens 1st... etc.  But this is an optional item, I think its too close to a bot feature, so the player may have to just select each too
• DPS client switch - You can set in the profile which clients are DPS clients and so you use one set of key mappings for them
• Healing Client Switch - You can set in the profile which clients are healers and so you use a different set of key mappings for them
• Dynamic switch between key mapping sets as you use toggling keys - e.g. Hold CTRL - to switch between them

 Game Macro's

In Wow the key to getting the multiboxer to work is to use the macro command to call a single key on the receiving end, but that one key do multiple things, step up the Macro.

A feature built into the game, the two main macro's I'm using at the moment are:

/target <main toon name>

/follow

/target <main tool name>

/assist

With these to simple macros my gang can follow me, and then target my target, this is fine for nukers.... If one of my followers were a healer, I could make them /target <main toon> /heal...

And for a round robing "top up" I could have a macro to target each player in the group in turn and cast a top up heal... The Wow forums explain Macro's better than I can, but you get the idea I hope.

Planned Beta Release

The closed alpha is well advanced, the closed beta is therefore slated (very roughly) for the 21st March 2014.  If you want to get into the Beta now's the time to send a donation!

Send your donation, with a valid e-mail address and I'll be able to send you details of how to sign up.

MMORPG Multiboxer (Multiple WoW Clients) #4

Welcome to my dev diary number 4, for the Multiboxer project, I've had a lot of people viewing the posts, far more than the videos (there's like 190 of you viewing the posts, but only like 6 views on the videos; which tells me my tagging either sucks or the videos are so crap you're not watching them).

Well, today's video is interesting in that you will see the code base (its files) and you'll see me using it from Visual Studio, and showing you some of the ease-of use features I'm adding in.  The fact I'm adding ease of use items, and showcasing them is really just a demonstration that I'm thinking about how I, and hopefully you would want to use this software, it really is going to be driven by your guys... So donate now to spur me on!

The demonstration today will focus on the window positions settings, how they're automatically saved for you and how they're used when you start up.  We're handling 4 clients at the same time, but if we opened more the known positions for these 4 would be used and then the rest would default, all being handled seamlessly for you, as you'll see in the video.

You will also see some of the included features of the software, how we switch into "monitor mode" easily to map key codes for the "Key Mappings" configuration, which you'll also see for the first time!

You can donate directly to this project and help fund development today, any donators will receive goodies!