Thursday, November 17, 2011

Travel Times

I's seen several statements out there in the blogosphere what WoW be gettin' too easy, too many caterings ta the lazy. One examplefication of this be the portals and dungeon finders what lets ya pop halfways round the world in an eyeblink, 'stead of takin' the flight path and gettin' immersified as the world goes by. Now me personalies, I been immersed plenty over the past five years, so I like ta use that flight time fer ta take the catheter out and go fix me a sammich, but ta each his own. WoW Insider asks "Has it gone too far? Is Azeroth as a whole nothing but a staging area from which we should expect to be instantly transported to wherever we wish to go, or are we still willing to enjoy the journey to our destinations?" Piercing Howl goes farthers: "Don’t have time to travel to a dungeon? Don’t play MMO’s."

Really? Really?

It don't really fit, but I's gonna quote Sting anyhows, 'cause it sounds badass. "I do know your reputation. So I choose my words very carefully. You tell Harry ... to go fuck himself."

Let's look at some travel times, shall we?

Get ta a dungeon with DF:a few seconds
Get ta a dungeon via summoning stonea few seconds
Get ta a dungeon usin' portalsmebbe ten minutes
Get ta a dungeon without portals or flyin' mountsmebbe 20-30 minutes
Walk from north Manhattan ta south Manhattan (smallest county in US)3-4 hours, if'n ya don't get mugged or arrested
Around the world in a stripped-down haulin'-arse 747 SP24 hours
Missouri ta Oregon with Lewis and Clark18 months (mebbe half that if'n ya don't stop ta cruise fer chicks)
Simply walk into Mordor (from the Shire)18 months
Sail around the world in 15203 years, if'n ya don't get killed fer not bein' a god

Now, if'n ya feels what gettin' teleported instantlies halfway 'round the world ta Grim Batol be lazy, that's yer call. Is a subjective thing. But if'n ya does, don't be tellin' me what bein' willin ta spend a whole ten ta thirty minutes fer ta get there proves yer some sorta manly-man what has earned more right fer ta play a video game than me and mine. Yer still gettin' one helluva huge speed boost from the game, no matter how ya gets there.

Is there legitimate complaints about some of the choices Blizz makes? Yeah, I'd say so, even if the complaints is about things what don't bother me personalies. But if yer gonna complain about a 99.9% boost while cheerfullies takin' advantage of a 99% boost, I ain't gonna be fuhggin' receptive.

11 comments:

scotth said...

If people feel that strongly about the dungeon finder they don't have to use it. They could even hoof it to the portal then jump in the cue if they want to feel old timey.

Kay said...

I'm wondering who it is that thinks this is a problem, myself.

From what I have seen (and it's definitely not what you'd call a thorough investigation), it's the folks looking for world PvP who complain the loudest about how the dungeon finder is ruining the game. Kind of hard to find people to gank if they never have to come out of their cities.

Darraxus said...

I feel the same way. Who cares if you can be instantly ported to an instance? I remember doing things the old way....it was not fun. How about running from Ironforge to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands in Vanilla? Or better yet, running from Ironforge to Scarlet Monastery....on foot. There goes an hour. That is not fun. People who want to run instances....WANT TO RUN INSTANCES. Not fly or walk around the world.

If they got rid of the instant teleport, they may as well get rid of the dungeon finder altogether.

Lui said...

Prefer to find my quests and dungeons by exploration with my group.

Am enjoying my current way of playing too much fun :D as my friend has a habit of running into each main town to go sightseeing - I know guards are normally helpful but running into Stormwind to do some sightseeing when your Horde........chances are they are going to give you lots of attention :P

As well falling off cliffs and landing on un-bears and squeezing through sides of walls and gates into areas that we shouldn't be in!

Lol I only just discovered that I could make use of the ships and the zepphelins - I though they were just there for atmosphere :P.

ZombiePirate said...

What makes me chuckle is would people rather have it the other way? When you finally get a group no-one wants to be the person that goes to the meeting stone to summon the others. Inevitably there are people who will continue questing and expecting others to make the trip and summon them.... I've often been the one to go summon even when I'm the one who was furthest away from the stone.

tkc said...

For someone with 1 of every class I don't really need to see the world an 11th time.

My latest project, a dwarf shammy, leveled to 16, took the tram to SW, and has only left town once since then. I'm okay with this.

Ratshag said...

@Scotth-
Buggers wants fer ta feel old timey, I say rock on. But don't tell me what I should have to also.

@Kay
Ya, could be pvp is part of it. I think there also be some "in me day we raided SSC uphill in the snow AND WE WAS GLAD OF IT" as well.

@Darraxus
I think gettin' rid of dungeon finder is exactlies what they want.

@Lui
I's a huge fan of explorin'. Ain't no coincidence what I got the titles "the Seeker", "the Explorer", and "Loremaster". So you keep on keepin' on, and ride the crap outta them zeppelins!

@ZombiePirate
I lost count of all me pugs what broke up before we even got five buggers ta the dungeon, back in the day.

@tkc
Yup, I's down with that too.

Axeminster said...

I absolutely agree that the whiny few shouldn't be able to dicate to the many.

It does make me sad on some level though, that new players will never experience the "crap crap crap it's a level 50 undead rogue come to eat my dead face!" of going to the SM for the first time as Alliance. Granted, you can still walk up there if you want, but knowing that you don't HAVE to kinda takes the mystery out of it.

What if Blizz made it so that you could only insta port to dungeons you had already done? Not on that toon necessarily, but one of your alts. That way the experience would be preserved.

Zellviren said...

Personally, I love how the self-entitled throw childish insults around while making the bland implication that those who disagree are, somehow, immature. Irony’s a funny thing.

Yet, when you ask these individuals what the LFD tool actually IS, you get little more than gibberish word-salad that demonstrates that they haven’t the slightest clue.

The dungeon finder is a mini-game, with no risk and high reward. The fact you get a loot bag at the end relegates drops even further by guaranteeing everyone who sticks around in utterly unchallenging content for 20 minutes gets a prize.

Those levelling up in the dungeon finder don’t like instances – they like free loot and easy experience. In an alarmingly high percentage of cases, they have no clue what running instances is actually like because they’ve never ran any.

Blackrock Depths.
The Scholomance.
Stratholme.
The Shadow Labyrinth.
The Arcatraz.
The Shattered Halls.

Those were instances; grouped dungeons where an interdependent party of people would work TOGETHER to overcome obstacles. That’s instance running. Instance running is NOT popping a 3 second queue to a dungeon you are utterly disassociated with, have no clue the whereabouts of, and run no risk of dying in unless you’re unspeakably bad.

Saying those who don’t support portals and queues everywhere “are entitled to their manliness” is as bad a straw man argument as you could possibly make, Shag-rat.

They are a symptom of a bigger problem with WoW, a problem that begins and ends with a simple truism:

Nothing worth getting is easy. When everything’s easy, nothing is worth getting.

Ratshag said...

@Zellviren
"Nothing worth getting is easy. When everything’s easy, nothing is worth getting."

As me sainted mother would say, 'horsefeathers." Yer sittin' in a comfy chair, drinking Red Bull (or whatevers), full stomach, warm bed nearby, killing dragons. No swamp fer ta get stuck in, no blood-sucking flies, no sleepin' on cold hard ground, no havin' the flesh seared off yer face when ya fail. Not even any camping non-instanced bosses fer days (or weeks) so's yer group can kill'em before someone else do and ya gots ta start camping again. Objectivelies, WoW always done made it easy fer you. Which be why you play it, same as the rest of us.

What you want is not the absence of easy. Rather, you wants fer the levels of effort required ta be slightly less easy so's a lot of buggers decide it ain't worth it and go away, but NOT so less easy what you decide it ain't worth it and go away. Because, apparentlies, you think yer special and entitled fer ta have the game tuned specific fer you.

You ain't.

Zellviren said...

If your sainted mother truly didn’t think that hard work made you appreciate things more (which I doubt), she obviously never tried it.

And frankly, arguing that WoW is a success because players don’t have to worry about physically going bog-trotting in order to kill a dragon is just about the most mind-numbing thing you could possibly have said. It’s utterly irrelevant to the discussion and I’d much prefer it if you continued conversing in appropriate terms, rather than desperately trying your best to disassociate. Like I’ve said to quite a few people, it doesn’t wash.

Games are fun when the reward correlates to the risk involved; just the same as it is in real life, depending on how much of it you’ve lived. I started playing WoW because I thoroughly enjoyed the Warcraft RTS games (rare, because I usually hate them) and wanted to see how the story panned out. The immersion, enjoyment and sheer scope of The Burning Crusade was the best time I’ve ever had gaming. Since then, certain people realized gaming was big business and have started to try and make money from it.

Trying to earn more subscriptions is not the same as making a better game. Anyone arguing otherwise is almost alarmingly stupid. An immersive and fulfilling gaming experience that tends to engender commitment and loyalty has been replaced with an entirely disposable series of minigames that are designed to entertain more people, but for a shorter period of time. Rather than a smaller subscriber base that will play for years, Blizzard are chasing a higher subscriber base that will play for months.

Good for business; bad for the game.

It’s amazing how many people make the same straw-man arguments you do. This is not about finding a game that’s tailored to exactly what I want, likely to the exclusion of a great many people. If that’s what you think, you either didn’t read or didn’t understand any of my previous commentary. I make it abundantly clear that the only people I want rid of are the serial malcontents that “don’t have time to learn to play a class”, but do have time to level every class to 85 and poison dungeon runs with their unspeakably bad play.

I want an immersive experience that gives me a reason to go and clean out Grim Batol, or an understanding as to why Sinestra was in the Bastion of Twilight. I want risk to equal reward. I want rewards beyond achievement points for exploration. I want customization options that are fun and unique.

I don’t want a disposable experience that has me killing bosses purely for loot. I don’t want rewards handed to me with no time or effort invested. I don’t want my rewards to purely help me pump out more damage or healing. I don’t want customization that’s watered down to appease those crying about balance.

Lastly, I don’t want to pay for a second rate development team that can’t solve problems of their own design and patronize anyone who chooses to criticise them.

If all you take from this is “Zell just wants a game made for him and only him”, then I honestly pity you. It’s close to impossible to hold a more incorrect opinion.

Good luck with your blog, and the game. Whether or not you believe me, I truly do hope you can enjoy the future as much as I enjoyed the past – I wouldn’t deny it from anyone.