ol-grumpy
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Ol' Grumpy and the dumbing down debate
Hey, boys and girls, it's your old pal Ol' Grumpy. I haven't been around that often lately, partially because I haven't really found all that much to complain about lately. Luckily (or unluckily) there are always other people, who will do that kind of thing for you. Recently, I've seen the dread beast rear its ugly head again. What am I talking about? Well, I'm talking about the old canard "Why did you dumb the game down" that pops up on the forums from time to time. It is almost always incredibly subjective and drags out 'examples' that are, at best, arguable. It usually shows more about the person making it than the game itself, and it always makes all the hair (and I have a lot of hair) stand up in irritation. I really dislike this argument. Every single time I've seen or heard it, it's been used not to actually protest a decline in game complexity but to argue 'the game was better/harder/more fun when we had to do X" in some kind of demented paean to nostalgia and obstructionism. Frankly, I don't understand this mindset. "Back when I started the game, we had weapon skill, but then you dumbed it down" seems insane to me. How did weapon skill require any thought, exactly?
Ol' Grumpy and the Mists of Pandaria
First off, howdy. You may remember me from such posts as this Firelands one, or this post decrying pointless elitism, or this one calling for the return of class based quests. As the loveable old codger that I am, I'm here to hike up my waist (note the kicky plate skirt I have on for the purpose) and gripe about things in World of Warcraft that I think could be improved. In some cases these things really bother me. Some of this stuff is on Blizzard, but some of it is based on player behavior, which means we have to fix it. Before I do, though, I wanted to mention a couple of places where they did improve things. Cooking and archaeology, two of my least favorite things to do in the game are much less painful, and so kudos to that. I'm told fishing is better as well, but since I'll never ever fish, I'll just have to take your word for that. And now, onto the firestorm of complaints! 1 - Daily Quest Randomization As much as I personally hate daily quests (it rhymes with 'Pike Ire') I will admit that the implementation on most of the new daily questing for factions in Mists of Pandaria is probably about as well implemented as it could possibly be, and as such I've chosen to focus on an aspect of the implementation that I think is more hit or miss than the rest. That is to say, the way it's determined which dailies you get in a specific day. This is something I notice with every faction but I'm going to pick on the August Celestials because they're the worst about this. I have two level 90 characters working on rep. I have now defended the Temple of the Jade Serpent for four days. I don't want to defend them anymore. Please, for the love of Zod, put in something that checks to see what quests you've done over the past five days and doesn't give the exact same ones to you again, I'm begging you here. How about Niuzao Temple? I'd happily go defend that for a change of pace.
Ol' Grumpy and the crushing disappointment of roles
There are no pure DPS classes in World of Warcraft that use two-handed melee weapons to deal damage and only one pure DPS class that can even equip them. There are literally hundreds of two-handed melee weapons in this game. This has always annoyed me, because I love big weapons. I know you know this about me. One of the reasons I hate the argument that pure DPS classes should have dibs on top DPS weapons is that in order for me to play a character that uses a two-hander, I have no choice but to play a hybrid. In fact, in order to play as melee DPSer at all, I either have to play a rogue (all three rogue trees dual wield small, fast weapons) or a hybrid. Those are my options. If I wanted to play ranged DPS, I could pick from one of three possible pure classes, but if I want to melee, I'm forced to either give up the weapons I enjoy and take up a playstyle I don't like or accept that I will be forced to DPS at a penalty and be expected and/or pressured to tank. This to me is asking me to pay twice, and it's unacceptable. Last week, Ghostcrawler posted an excellent discussion on class and role that I highly recommend everyone check out, and it seriously has me pondering what design I'd prefer for World of Warcraft and indeed how I feel about classes and roles entirely.
Ol' Grumpy and the specter of pointless elitism
Ol' Grumpy (that's me) has a bit of a problem. He's started tanking for pickup groups lately. I guess technically that means I have two problems, but doctors probably can prescribe some medication or something for white-hot eruptions of seething rage. I'm starting to think Neltharion was the tank for the dragon aspects' regular 5-man group. However, my molten cauldron of hate masquerading as a soul isn't what I came to talk to you about today. No, I'm actually here to explain what pointless elitism is and why it's actually bad. I'll use an example from a recent 5-man. I had signed up to tank because I wanted the goody bag of potent bribery. I admit it, I'm weak. I zoned into End Time, said hello to the mostly uncommunicative group, and started charging things, as I am wont to do. Things died, we progressed, no one pulled aggro by DoTing a mob while I was mounted and on the other side of the map -- it was pretty much ideal for a pickup. Then we got to Sylvanas, killed her, and as someone looted, two of the DPSers begin savaging the third for doing less than they. I look at Skada and saw that all three of them were floating between 11k and 14k DPS overall, with this one player sinking to 7k on Sylv. They were all geared about the same -- a couple of HoT pieces -- so clearly, they were all there because they needed the gear.
