grass-is-greener
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Breakfast Topic: The grass is greener
I had a really bad Battlegrounds run today. About three hours of various Battlegrounds without winning a single one. There are days like this, when I think to myself that the Alliance have it so much better. I mean, it's a miracle on our Battlegroup when the Horde wins Alterac Valley. On the other hand, I know that in some Battlegroups, the Horde probably lord it over. I have to admit there are days when we go on long winning streaks (except in Alterac...). That said, there's always that speck of envy. Well, in the case of myself and the Alliance, it's less envy than it is consternation.For the longest time, my wife envied the Alliance for the Sprite Darter Hatchling, but that's going to get straightened out soon enough. We also used to whine how the Alliance got the Winterspring Frostsabers, while the Horde never quite got the Venomhide Ravasaurs (we still might, though!). A lot of little things make us think that Blizzard favors one faction over the other. This seems to be true of other classes, as well. No matter what happens, for some reason, there's always something that other classes have that the class you play doesn't. I know I'll always whine about a Death Knight's 1 second GCD in PvP. Among other things, I mean. I know how some players cry foul at the bubble. There's always something. Of course, it's really silly to think that there's any sort of favoritism going on (for the record, I don't think there's any), but we'll always find that the grass is greener on the other side. So, in what aspects of the game do you think the other faction or classes have it easier?
The coming of mudflation
Keen (of Keen and Graev) has a great post up about what he calls "mudflation" (a combination of the words MUD and inflation). If you've been playing any MMO through the introduction of an expansion, you'll know exactly what he's talking about. That shiny bit of loot you worked for weeks to obtain doesn't look quite so hot when players are grabbing an even better piece from a quick five-minute quest.Truth be told, "mudflation" isn't actually a bad thing. Change is inherent to MMOs, and it's unavoidable that just as the bar will raise (there will be new heights for players to climb to), so will the minimum rise as well. Mudflation is actually a good thing for the majority of players by definition-- if you consider players as a normal distribution, with a small number of players at the top of the endgame, and a small number of players just entering the endgame, "mudflation" is actually that swell of players in the middle getting their hands on some really new items.There is a problem, however, with mudflation that I haven't really seen an MMO skillfully deal with yet-- what happens to the content made obsolete? Whenever an expansion comes through town, the old worlds and content get more or less abandoned. While the newest players may still find a little bit of joy in discovering "the old world," they too eventually learn to abandon it for the greener pastures brought with the new content. Mudflation is all well and good for the folks picking up the new shiny items, but it's too bad that MMO makers haven't come up with a better plan for making old content relevant to new players.
