Heavy Lies the Crown: Observing the Unfortunate Implications of the Warchief and His Expectations

When I made my post lamenting the decision to restore the mantle of Warchief to Thrall, I got some very interesting feedback; feedback which has been echoed across the multiple forums that host the debates that send people to this site.

Thrall is the only orcish leader who wasn't a despot, or one corrupted by power, because the orcs are a race that becomes corrupted easily if given to much of it. Thrall is the only one who can survive that because he thinks outside the normal orcish way of thinking...

Also, I vote for him as returning warchief. Vol'jin is NOT AN ORC. Saurfang is TO[sic] OLD TO LEAD. THERE ARE NO OTHER ORCS CAPABLE OF TAKING THE MANTLE.

Inevitably, most of the people who think that Thrall should return as Warchief claim that either there are no other suitable candidates, either because of oddball age and race restrictions, or because Thrall's just got that certain je ne sais quoi that lets him succeed where all others are doomed to failure. This is an extremely narrow minded viewpoint, and one that's constricting the narrative, preventing it from exploring it's potential. I've already talked about what this kind of mindset says about Thrall, but let's flip it around: let's take a look at what this viewpoint says about the Horde.

Whenever you're constructing a story, and you've got two major elements of your narrative interacting, you've got to look at the relationship from both sides to ensure that in your attempt to elevate one element in the interaction, the other element isn't denigrated in ways that you didn't intend. These problematic inferences occur on two levels, in universe, and out of universe.

In universe, these situations are destructive to future narratives, unless monitored and properly accounted for. A good example in WoW is Varian Wrynn's slavery at the hands of the Horde. What was intended to give proper motivation to Wrynn's hatred of the Horde also had the side effect of completely undermining the idea of the Horde as an entity that respects individual rights, and more directly made Thrall look like a tool whenever he raged about his own past enslavement.

Out of universe, it's not as dangerous to the story, but it's potentially hazardous to the author. These occur when the creator draws too heavily on stereotypes in their characterization, and then place those stereotypical characters in situations that run a little too close to comfort to modern hot button issues. Blizzard's one "pound of flesh" comment from their race of former slaves with huge noses and an insatiable avarice away from a visit from the Anti-Defamation League.

While this scenario has the potential for both, let's look closely at the in universe implications, because if they offend someone in real life, then it's a completely different problem, and one that I may or may not cover in a separate post at the time that it becomes and issue.

Let's look first at the comments that only Thrall can lead the Horde, and any other candidate would succumb to their baser impulses and threaten both the Horde and their neighbors with ruination, as Garrosh's regime has done. What does that say about the Horde, and orcs in particular, when the only orc that can lead the orcs successfully is the only orc that was raised by Humans? Are the orcs so inept at basic social conduct that even Adelas Blackmoore, generally considered one of the worst human beings to set foot on Azeroth, is a superior parent to every orc in existence? If Durotar and Draka had had their shot, would Go'el be just another bloodthirsty orc who wars with everything that comes within reach of his axe?

So far, there have been eight orcs that have claimed the title of Warchief to one degree of legitimacy or another, not counting the ancient warchiefs that predate the Draenei Genocide. Blackhand the Destroyer, Orgrim Doomhammer, Ner'zhul, Thrall, Garrosh, Kargath Bladefist, Rend Blackhand, and Mor'ghor.

Blackhand the Destroyer was the first Warchief of the Horde in the Warcraft era. He ruled the Horde from just before the opening of the Dark Portal, until his assassination at the hands of his subordinate, Orgrim Doomhammer. Some of the highlights of his command: The consumption of Mannoroth's blood, the use of fel magics to steal the youth from orcish children in order to grant the Horde more soldiers, the invasion of Azeroth, and the Corruption of Draenor. He consumed the blood of Mannoroth, and was, in general, not a great person.

Orgrim Doomhammer succeeded Blackhand, via assassination. He ruled the Horde from the Siege of Stormwind until the Battle of Blackrock Mountain at the end of the Second War, where he was defeated and captured by Turalyon. Some of the key points of his reign: Torture and murder in the sacking of Stormwind, the use of necromancy to create Orcish Death Knights such as Teron Gorefiend, the use of fel magic to corrupt the runestones of Quel'Thelas to warp his Ogres into Ogre-Magi, the Burning of the forests of Quel'Thelas, and depending on which source you consider cannon, the cowardly ambush of Anduin Lothar under the auspices of parley. It was under Orgrim's command that the Horde became so corrupt and decadent that Eittrig fled in shame. Orgrim did not partake in Mannoroth's Blood, so his decisions fall upon his own head. Thus far, Orcish Warchiefs are 0-2.

After the capture of Doomhammer, a large contingent of the Horde fled back to Draenor, where Ner'zhul assumed the mantle of Warchief. Leaving the atrocities the Horde committed under his command prior to the official formation of the Horde, and the atrocities he committed as the Lich King after his capture by Kil'jaeden, Ner'zhul's reign was not a peaceful one. Ner'zhul promptly turned to a visitor to Draenor for an alliance, Deathwing, the Mad Aspect of Earth. Under Ner'zhul's command, the Horde raided Azeroth once more. They destroyed Alliance outposts in Alterac, stole the Book of Medivh from the Stormwind Library. They raided Dalaran and murdered Sathera, a close friend of Archmage Antonidas, taking the Eye of Dalaran in an eerie forshadowing of the attack on Dalaran that Ner'zhul would command in his future capacity as the Lich King, which would take Antonidas' life. These items, along with the Jeweled Scepter of Sargeras, granted Ner'zhul great power. When the Alliance Expeditionary Force laid siege to Ner'zhul's bastion of power in Shadowmoon Valley, Ner'zhul panicked, and attempted to flee the world to escape his fate. The magnitude of power he unleashed tore Draenor apart, and cast him into the Twisting Nether, where he came into the cruel embrace of Kil'jaeden. Ner'zhul never drank Mannoroth's Blood, and puts orcish warchiefs at a dismal 0-3.

Following the shattering of Draenor, the Horde bifurcated into two entities, with two Warchiefs. On Draenor, Magtheridon rallied the remaining orcish clans to his banner, empowering Kargath Bladefist as the Warchief of the Horde of Draenor, commonly known as the Fel Horde. Kargath was an easily manipulated orc, far closer to Blackhand the Destroyer, than either of the two more independent rulers who directly preceded him. Kargath served Magtheridon, and warred constantly with the Sons of Lothar, who held the line at Honor Hold, in the very shadow of Hellfire Citadel. When the Illidari enslaved Magtheridon, Kargath's loyalties turned to the new ruler of Outlands, Illidan Stormrage. Kargath led the Fel Horde until the rebellion of the Ashtongue Deathsworn led to the downfall of Illidan, and without Illidari support, and with the forces of Honor Hold bolstered by reinforcements from the reopened Dark Portal, Kargath was eventually hunted down and slain within the Shattered Halls of Hellfire Citadel. Not only did Kargath drink Mannoroth's blood, but he also drank Magtheridon's blood, to the point where he turned red. Corruption ran deeper within Kargath than any other Warchief in the bloody history of the orcs. 0-4.

Meanwhile, back on Azeroth, the overwhelming majority of the orcs languished in internment camps. One Orc had a dream. A dream to reunite the disparate souls trapped under the lock and key of the Alliance. So he raided the internment camps, freeing those orcs that he could, and reached out to a downtrodden tribe of trolls to aid him in rebuilding a Horde where orcs could live free of the humans who defeated them so long ago. That orc's name was... Rend. Personally, I find Rend Blackhand to be one of the most damning, and compelling indictments of the orcs. Rend IS Thrall. A young orc was the son of a prominent clan leader who was assassinated by a fellow orc. His youth was stolen from him. Upon seeing and escaping the ruin of his race through sheer luck, he took it upon himself to free his brethren and to fight to create a place for the orcs in a world that was not their own. Personally, I'm very disappointed that Blizzard didn't take the time to explore the relation between Thrall and Rend. Rend escaped the final battle at Blackrock Mountain because his clan, the Black Tooth Grin, was tasked with reigning in Gul'dan's renegade Stormreaver Clan. After the Horde was routed, Rend and his brother, Maim, served as the rear guard for the Horde's flight back to Draenor. At the foot of the Dark Portal, the brothers fought against Turalyon himself, barely escaping with their lives as they fled into the wilderness. Thereafter, Rend declared himself Warchief of the True Horde, and freed the warriors of the Blackrock Clan and Dragonmaw Clan from the internment camps, leading them to an ancient city carved into Blackrock Spire. There, they became caught up the internal struggles of the denizens of Blackrock Mountain. The depths of the mountain was ruled by the Elemental Lord of Fire, Ragnaros, who dominated the Dark Iron Dwarves who inhabited the Shadowforge City, and sent them to purge the new alien presence within the mountain. These attacks quickly began to overwhelm the nacent Horde, and took the life of Maim. Rend's Horde was only saved from annihalation by a timely alliance with the rulers of the peak of Blackrock Mountain, Nefarian and the Black Dragonflight. Ironically, Nefarian's backing gave Rend a strong enough position that he could turn away envoys from Ner'zhul's Horde seeking the aid of the Dragonmaw who served Rend. This forced Ner'zhul to obtain his airpower from another source, an alliance with Nefarian's father, Deathwing. Rend conducted several incursions into Alliance territory, most notably in Redridge. Rend's reign finally came to an end at the hands of adventurers who slew Rend during their assault on the way to Nefarian's lair in the peak of Blackrock Mountain. He drank the blood of Mannoroth, much like the other mediocre warchiefs, and leaves the orcish warchiefs at 0-5.

Both Rend's Horde and Kargath's Horde had one common element, both included portions of the Dragonmaw Clan, which was split upon the collapse of the Dark Portal. One portion escaped to Draenor under the auspice of the Clan's chieftain, Zuluhed the Whacked. The remainder of the clan was trapped on Azeroth, and were led by Nekros Skullcrusher, Alextrasza's jailor. Zuluhed's portion of the clan pledged alliegence to the Fel Horde of Draenor, and Nekros' portion pledged themselves to Rend's Dark Horde. Both leaders were killed shortly before their Warchief's own deaths, and the Dragonmaw clan found itself split, isolated and alone. Zuluhed's second in command, Overlord Mor'Ghor, took advantage of the reopened portal, and traveled to Azeroth, where he seized control of the Azerothean Dragonmaw, and named himself Warchief of the Dragonmaw, and presumably the successor to Rend's Horde. Mor'ghor was by far the most impotent warchief that any orc ever had. When confronted by Garrosh Hellscream, he found himself deposed in a bloody manner in very short order. He drank the blood of both Mannoroth and Magtheridon. 0-6.

We can safely assume that Garrosh will do something even more atrocious than usual that will condemn him to be the 7th failed orcish warchief, nearly half of those failed leaders having been free of any corruption on the part of the blood of either Mannoroth or Magtheridon.

This leaves us with Thrall, the only somewhat functional leader the orcs have ever had. Like Garrosh, Orgrim, and Ner'zhul, he never partook in the blood of a Pit Lord. Like Garrosh, he was spared the horrors of the First and Second Wars. Like all the Warchiefs, he never suffered within the internment camps. Like Ner'zhul, Thrall is a powerful shaman. The only thing that separates Thrall from the multitude of failed despots that his race has produced is his upbringing among humans. What does that say about orcs? Is that really the message that Blizzard wants to send? The only time that the orcs weren't a terrible menace to everything around them is when they were kept human supervision, and barring that, the only time that they were ever within spitting distance of civility was when they were being reigned in by the most human orc in history. Great message to put out there, Blizz.

Putting Thrall back on the Throne just reinforces this ugly truth. The moment he takes a breath from the laborious job of holding back the orcish bloodlust, everything falls apart. So he must return to the throne, and resume his role as the warden who holds back the base nature that damns the orcish people. Garrosh might have asked Sylvanas what difference there was between her and the Lich King, but this plot begs the question: what difference is there between the orcs and the Scourge? The same mocking answer applies: isn't it obvious, they serve the Horde.

However, truth in fiction is malleable. The future is unwritten, and with skillful craftsmanship, anything is possible. If Blizzard wants to raise the orcs above their current depiction of the base savage, then all they need to do is find a way to write it in that fits with the narrative. Give the orcs a leader. Not someone like Thrall, who's a few broken tusks and a skin dye job away from being human, but a leader of the orcs, from the orcs, and for the orcs. Give them a leader who can coexist with their neighbors better than Thrall could, which honestly, looking at the constant skirmishing in Ashenvale dating back to prior to Thrall's formation of the Horde, shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish. It could be an older orc, to show that an orc can rise above their past. It could be a younger orc, one born in the aftermath of the Second War. An orc born just after the Battle of Blackrock Mountain would be in their mid twenties now, a young charismatic leader, perfect for deposing a despot like Garrosh. Che Guevara was 28 during the Cuban Revolution. Mustafa Ataturk was in his thirties during the Turkish War of independence. Give the Horde an icon like that, someone with that kind of charisma and magnetism, without all the baggage that Thrall has unfortunately accumulated. A young revolutionary who challenges the orcish mindset that has existed for decades, and wins. That's the leader that the orcs need. That's the leader that this story deserves. And no, that doesn't mean Med'an.

Blizzard spent two expansions building up Garrosh to take the mantle of Warchief. The overall leader of the Horde should be a well developed character. Someone that's been seen before. As many people have mentioned, there really isn't an orc that's had the degree of exposure that Garrosh got during BC and Wrath outside of Thrall and Saurfang. Thrall is a terrible choice, which leaves Saurfang, whom many write off as too old, and I tend to agree with them on that point. I do think that they could make a salvageable go at things with Saurfang in charge, I really like the idea of infusing some young blood into the orcs. With both the available candidates being sub-optimal, a question presents itself. Why does the Warchief have to be an orc?

Several reasons have been presented in arguments. The Warchief must be an orc because the warchief has always been an orc. Fat lot of good that's gotten the Horde thus far, eight Orcish leaders have managed to get the orcish population decimated, corrupted, and took them from holding nearly an entire world, to holding some deserts and blighted lands on an alien world. Some traditions aren't worth clutching to.

The Warchief must be an orc because the orcs are the core of the Horde. This one has a degree of merit. As long as the orcs are the majority in the Horde, both in terms of population and military power, then the other races are second class citizens, and their voice is of minimal importance. But as I said earlier, the future is unwritten and the status quo is not god. Just because the orcs are the core of the Horde now, does not mean they have to stay that way. There's going to be open war in Orgrimmar. Garrosh is going to die. The Warchief is going to die. Do you think the core constituency of the orcs will just roll over and let it happen? Do you think he won't have supporters who will fight with him, who will die with him? No. Like any civil war, casualties on both sides will bleed the whole. I expect the Kor'kron, the Warchief's elite bodyguards, to die to a man to protect their Warchief, to protect their honor. Think about that for a minute. The finest warriors the orcs have to offer, making their final stand. How many of the rebels will they kill before they fall? We're going to watch the core of orcish military strength eat itself alive. Once that's happened, can the orcs still make the claim that they're the heart of the Horde? If the tables have turned on the orcs, and they're but a shadow of their former selves within the Horde, then what's preventing the Trolls, Tauren, or even the Forsaken for making a push for the Throne?

It was the plan all along for Thrall to come back. This is probably the dumbest defense out there. Plans can change. Bad plans should change.

Ultimately, I've become more and more convinced that not only should Thrall neither return as the Warchief, but that the orcish leader who replaces Garrosh should not also succeed him as Warchief. Sylvanas, Vol'jin, and Baine are all more established than any of the current crop of orcs, and any of them could produce more compelling stories than we would get with Thrall back at the helm. However, it would be difficult to justify a cease fire between the factions with Sylvanas running the show, which really only leaves Vol'jin and Baine as viable candidates. Vol'jin is a pretty stable character, his leadership credentials are well established, and he's already established a degree of cooperation with the Alliance. While it would be more difficult to create internal storylines with Vol'jin in charge, it would do wonders to stabilize the situation and allow Blizzard to put the focus back on external threats. Baine is a much less proven leader, and as such, it opens up a lot of potential openings in terms of internal Horde storylines with regards to his struggle to find his leadership identity, and weather he can be firm enough to reign in the disparate factions that make up the Horde. He's also the easiest to shore up the relationship with the Alliance, as he already has a friendship with Anduin and Jaina, which might help take the edge off Jaina's purported bloodlust, and Anduin is the easiest route to soften Varian.

For the crazy, out of nowhere, no chance in hell candidate... Magatha Grimtotem. The Grimtotems had already allied with the Alliance in Stonetalon, and she has all the reason in the world to want Garrosh to go down. If she were to take advantage of a poor turn in the war to return to Thunder Bluff and finish her coup, she could then withdraw Tauren forces from the conflict, holding them in reserve as the orcs and trolls take the brunt of the punishment from the Alliance forces. Once the Battle of Orgrimmar concludes, Magatha seizes the throne and uses the Grimtotems recent assistance to the Alliance to leverage Varian to withdraw his forces and treat with her diplomatically rather than risk an occupation of a hostile populace. This can create far more internal storylines than any other option. Vol'jin will likely distrust Magatha, the new orcish leader might fall on either side, Sylvanas' approval will depend on entirely how much Magatha tries to leverage control over the Forsaken, and odds are Lor'themar will fall in line behind Sylvanas. On the Alliance side of things, Varian might trust Magatha, but Jaina and Anduin, who befriended Baine, will likely be suspicious of her. I think Magatha would build quite a compelling story upon Baine's corpse. But as I said, there's no chance in hell that Blizzard would pull the trigger on that.

As for the orcish leader, there are a number of character who have had about as much development as Garrosh got in BC. I've got a couple that I think might have potential. Warlord Zaela is one of the best candidates. She's a young orc with limited ties to the Horde. She's essentially an unknown quantity to the majority of the Horde. She developed nicely in Twilight Highlands, but unfortunately, she hasn't been seen in the MoP beta yet. A more likely candidate would be Nazgrim, who went from a lowly sergeant in Grizzly Hills, to a Legionnaire in Vas'jir, to a full fledged general in Mists of Pandaria. He seems level headed, and his combat experience would make a strong case for an Ataturk or Von Stauffenberg style revolutionary. A military leader who sees the route that an increasingly erratic leader is dragging the country in, and he takes it upon himself to try and overthrown the tyrant. Ultimately, I think that Zaela is the best choice to take over the orcs, but I think that given Nazgrim's implementation into Mists already, he'd be the easiest choice to implement that wouldn't be terrible.

Forcing the orcs to step back from their primacy is the best way to allow the orcs to evolve as characters, and it's also the best way to advance the Horde's narrative. Stories need to move forward, and the return of Thrall to the Horde would force stagnation onto the World of Warcraft's story.

Siege Addendum: Mistakes of Futures Past

Sometimes, they just don't learn. Some things are like watching a cheap horror movie where everyone repeats the exact same mistakes that got everyone else killed in the previous movie. No, you can't keep your loved one around now that s/he's a zombie, they'll just break loose and eat everybody. No, the bathroom is not the safest place to run from a slasher killer, there's only one way in or out, you'll die in that bathtub. But do they learn? No. They seem like they learn, but they have the memory span of a goldfish, and they constantly repeat the same hackneyed plot scripts with a fresh coat of paint on them.

WoW's story telling is quickly devolving to that level. In the wake of the NDA on the MoP press release, and a shockingly quick turnaround to Beta, there's been a lot of information getting put out. I already spoke about the Siege of Orgrimmar, what it represents, what its flaws are, and what Blizzard should avoid to really fuck things up.

If the raid devolves into "Help Thrall defeat Garrosh!" for Alliance players, then it would be, as I said earlier, the death knell for the Alliance as a interesting faction, they'd be nothing more than foils to help propel Green Jesus to greater glory. It's an incredibly demoralizing prospect.

This was something that Blizzard seemed to have picked up upon during the massive discontent at the direction of the story during patch 4.2. Dave Kosak wrote a blog post attempting to address the discontent, writing most of it off as a byproduct of good storytelling *snicker* There was one thing that made me thing that they had at least an inkling of the actual root of the problem.

If you’re a die-hard Alliance player, I can understand if you feel left out of Thrall’s story arc. Thrall feels like “their guy,” and Thrall’s journey over the last couple of years may not feel like “your” story, even if his mistakes are about to send the whole world into a potential death spiral. Fair enough. Stick with Thrall as he fulfills his destiny at the end of Cataclysm, and I promise we’ll catch up with other characters -- from both factions -- as we pick up the pieces in the aftermath.

So, just tough it out until the end of Cata, and then the focus will be off of Thrall, and onto other characters. Ok, you're asking for a mulligan. Make use of it.

Back to this week, and the flood of information showing that Garrosh was being deposed, and rampant speculation as to who would take the reigns of the Horde. The usual cries for a basic campfire were thrown around, and a lot of people thought that Vol'jin would be a good choice given the foreshadowing from the Troll starting zones where Vol'jin swore that the last thing Garrosh would feel would be Vol'jin's arrow piercing his heart. Others mentioned Overlord Saurfang, Garrosh's mentor in Northrend, who swore to kill Garrosh himself if he began to lead the Horde back down the dark paths that led to their downfall on Draenor. That speculation ended very quickly when Machinima Realm released a video of an interview with J. Allen Brack, WoW producer, who explicitly stated that players are fighting to restore Thrall as the Warchief.

There's another, someone less high profile source that has also been putting out information. At Blizzcon 2010, someone caught Alex Afrasiabi and Chris Metzen in a continuity error on the lore panel for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. This led to an alteration on the Beta, and ultimately live servers, an that person became a wow celebrity, with his own avatar in game. He's known as the Red Shirt Guy, after the shirt he wore when he caught Blizzard at their own convention. Among the perks he received was a personal interview with Chris Metzen on the path of lore in the upcoming expansion. Now that the Beta has opened up, he's been open about some of the things Metzen told him about. He asked about who gets to kill Garrosh in Mists, and Metzen's quote was "Garrosh's been a bad boy, and Thrall's gonna have to give him a spanking."

*Sigh* Really? This whole expansion, this whole story arc that's been brewing since Burning Crusade is going to culminate in Thrall, again. People didn't like it in Cataclysm, when he was ostensibly, neutral. How bad are you going to have to warp the story to make the Alliance feed into the idea of replacing Garrosh with Thrall and being ok with it? Everything involving the Horde or Alliance directly in the past two expansions is being thrown away for the greater glory of Go'el, just like Staghelm's narrative was chucked aside to puff that orc up a bit more. Cairne's death, Vol'jin's animosity, Saurfang's guilt, Ashenvale, Turajo, King Wrynn's return and rehabilitation, the destruction of Theramore, the Siege of Orgrimmar, the entire war between the Horde and Alliance, none of it matters as anything more than a plot device to allow Thrall to be painted as the messianic bringer of peace in addition to the World Shaman, Aspect of Earth, and the Once and Future Warchief.

Enough is enough. Most of the core of the story is already locked in. WoW is on rails that they can't leave at this point. But the Siege of Orgrimmar is still the final content patch of the expansion, it's at least 18 months away, and there's still time to fix the crescendo of this flawed song. Here's how:

There's several arcs that need to be wrapped up. I mentioned several of them. In order to establish the final raid, both factions have to have a reason for participating. Contrary to Blizzard's thinking, the Alliance actually doesn't need any more motivation to invade, they just need to do so. The content patches leading up to the Siege should feature the Alliance turning the tide and beginning the march towards Orgrimmar. Do not have them just show up overnight. Scenarios will be a powerful tool here, because they will allow the developers to play create additional content in certain zones that they would otherwise no longer attempt to overhaul again.

There needs to be at least three points on the road to Orgrimmar. First is the turning point. The Alliance needs to decisively defeat the Horde, and get them on the run. This could take place on Pandaria. Once the tide has been turned, the pursuit needs to be shown. With the destruction of Theramore, the Alliance two real roads to Orgrimmar, either from the North through Ashenvale, or from the South from Feralas. I prefer the second option, Feralas is closer to Pandaria, and Shandris Feathermoon's sentinel army has been begging for a real use. Show the might of the Alliance on the march, traveling across Feralas, towards thousand needles, where they will cross into the barrens. Horde resistance in this scenario should be guerrilla, tricking the Ogres of Dire Maul into attacking the Alliance flanks, blowing up the roads, and setting up traps. Once the army is established to be on the move, then the next stop is Orgrimmar, pretty easy.

Getting the Horde players to be willing to depose Garrosh is more difficult, especially trying to do so in a manner that doesn't just cut off the hanging plot lines. There needs to be something that Garrosh does that makes Horde players hate him. The answer, in my opinion, lies with his relationship with Varok Saurfang. After taking time to properly mourn the death of his son, Varok returns from Northrend to witness the destruction of Theramore, and as with the lion's share of the Horde military, he travels to fight over Pandaria. As he serves, and sees what Garrosh has created. After the Alliance routes them on Pandaria, Saurfang realizes how close Garrosh has become to the orcs like Orgrim, Blackhand, and Grom, who led the orcs to the brink of extinction, and decides to live up to the promise he made to both Garrosh and himself. He confronts Garrosh, who challenges him to Mak'gora. This mirrors the challenge laid down to Garrosh from Cairne during the Shattering. Garrosh defeats Saurfang, the student surpassing his master, and kills him, much to the outrage of the soldiers present. Saurfang was an old soldier who had served the Horde faithfully his whole life.

Seeing another dedicated elder of the Horde struck down by Garrosh in a duel resonates with Vol'jin and Baine Bloodhoof, who had watched Cairne die in the same manner, fighting for a last chance to keep the Horde away from the monstrosity that it has become. As the full fury of the Alliance reaches the walls of the Horde's capitol, Baine and Vol'jin decide that the time has come for their words to become actions, rather than merely speaking their discontent in shadowed halls, they rise up against the Warchief. In Orgrimmar, the heart of Garrosh's power, Baine and Vol'jin's rebellion is savagely persecuted, and with their backs against the wall, facing both the relentless shelling of the Alliance and the implacable blades of the Kor'kron, they resort to desperate measures. Baine throws open the main gates of Orgrimmar, allowing wrath of the Alliance to flood into the city, creating chaos. Garrosh and his Kor'Kron loyalists find themselves suddenly fighting street to street against two enemies, and the end of his reign is suddenly far closer than he could have ever imagined.

That's how I would like to see it done. It empowers the Alliance, and allows the Horde to reclaim a piece of what it once was while still evolving, rather than devolving into the complacent entity that it was under Thrall. I could flesh this scenario out for days, involving every race in both factions, but I just wanted to get the bare bones out there.

I mentioned that it wasn't too late to change the ending here. Here's how. Blizzard reads the forums. They know when you're angry about something. You lit the forums on fire when you were unhappy, and they responded. You didn't like Garrosh, so they're letting you kill him. Express your displeasure. There's already a thread on the official forums where people are expressing their irritation at this development, and Daxxari is actively asking people if they would rather see someone else as Warchief. Go post in that thread, make other threads discussing potential alterations that you'd like to see made. When those threads cap out, make new ones. Don't let it rest. Keep the fire alive.

The Siege of Orgrimmar: A Roadmap for Failure

On March 19th, Blizzard lifted the NDA on the Mists of Pandaria press tour. It was already known that Blizzard intended to focus on factional conflict in the upcoming expansion, even more so than they did in prior expansions. Blizzard is continuing to paint themselves into a corner here, and one of the keystones of their presentation was the unveiling of the final raid of the expansion, The Siege of Orgrimmar. Apparently the final boss of the expansion that they weren't willing to reveal earlier in the process is going to be Garrosh Hellscream. We know a few things about the intended raid and its storyline, both factions will be involved, with King Wrynn leading the raid for Alliance players, and the end result will be the restoration of Thrall to the throne of the Horde. Some bloggers and many forum goers and commenters have mentioned their fears of this being a signal of Alliance favoritism. Spinks has a good post on her fears, you should read it. There are others who fear that it signals yet another expansion of Horde favoritism and Alliance marginalization. Both these groups have valid fears, there aren't many ways Blizzard can take this, a lot of people are going to be unhappy no matter what they do, and there's some major concerns that will need to be addressed to minimize the impact of this poor choice of plot arc on the overall narrative. I'm going to go over their fears, and lay out a blueprint for Blizzard to try and minimize the damage, as they are clearly too far into development to completely abort the story line.

It seems like the story is going to progress through Mists of Pandaria that Garrosh is going to come increasingly under the influence of a mysterious entity called the Sha. These creatures gain strength from negative emotions, such as doubt, and use that strength to corrupt those around them. Eventually, Garrosh is going to cross a threshhold, possibly the destruction of Theramore, possibly something hitting closer to home, such as the murder of Varok Saurfang, that will convince Thrall that it is time to remove Garrosh from the throne. That's the Horde side of the raid, the Alliance side is pretty much that they finally figure out that they're at war. I have a lot of issues with that set up, but I'll save those for when we have more information, or I'm particularly bored. The biggest fears at the moment are with regards to how the event itself will be handled and how the aftermath will go down.

Alliance players are afraid that this is going to be a rehash of the second half of Cataclysm, where it's nothing but "Save Thrall from his own angst!" and "Help Thrall become the Earth Warder!" and Alliance players are wondering why they're helping their sworn enemy. If the raid devolves into "Help Thrall defeat Garrosh!" for Alliance players, then it would be, as I said earlier, the death knell for the Alliance as a interesting faction, they'd be nothing more than foils to help propel Green Jesus to greater glory. It's an incredibly demoralizing prospect.

At the same time, Horde players are understandably upset at the prospect of an Alliance army, led by King Wrynn, smashing down the gates of their capitol city and butchering their leader. If an opponent can take your capitol and decapitate your leadership, then your nation is a step away from the dustbin of history. Spinks was worried that it could herald the annexation of the Horde into the Alliance in order to facilitate cross faction grouping in the expansion afterwards. While I find that notion unlikely, the fear of losing their unique perspective within the game is a very primal one.

Blizzard is walking the razor's edge here, and they don't even have a good reason for it. But I have some advice for them as to how they can avoid catastrophic alienation of either factions.

The first step, and admitedly, the most unlikely, is to scratch Thrall from the story. Either just put him on the first bus to Nagrand so he can raise his oddly colored children in peace, or, my personal favorite, have Garrosh kill him as the catalyst for the Horde players to rise up against him. Whatever you do, don't just put him back as Warchief and then carry on as if nothing happened. Doing that exposes Garrosh as nothing more than a cheap plot device to create the war that allows Thrall to come back as the messianic peacekeeper. The Horde then gets to deflect all the blame onto Garrosh, completely undermining any analysis of the foundation that the Horde is built upon. At its core, this path is tantamount to retconning away everything the Horde has done in Cataclysm. Nothing that happened would matter because it was "Garrosh's Horde".

Regardless of weather they keep with the decision to use Thrall as Garrosh's successor, or someone else, there's another thing that they need to keep in mind, faction segregation. Do not have the Alliance following the Horde leader around again. Do not have Horde players following King Wrynn around. You can have them meet up in an ICC gunship or ToC faction champs fight, but don't make them feel subordinate to the opposing faction. That's a recipe for discontent. Both factions need their own reasons for pushing after Garrosh, and their reasons have to be driving force within their instance.

One final tip. Do not make the impetus for Horde action be that Jaina went and cried to Thrall after the Horde smashes Theramore. That'll just piss everyone off.

As far as to how the Alliance is going to be convinced not to simply crush the Horde under its boot after they storm the streets of Orgrimmar, you're on your own there Blizz. I warned you this would be coming, and you really don't have a way out that doesn't involve some ridiculously hack writing.

Quoth the Crab: The Choice Doesn't Matter

One of the important philosophies of game design is that interesting choices are fun. The word 'interesting' is key. Choosing between a talent that grants 10% damage and one that grants 5% damage, all else being equal, isn't interesting.

This is a quote from Ghostcrawler on the merits of the new talent tree in Mist of Pandaria. However, I'm not here to talk about talents, or Mists of Pandaria, or even anything Ghostcrawler works on. I'm here to talk about the Power of the Aspects buff in Dragon Soul, which will soon be ratcheted up to 10%.

With the impending increase, it's uncorked a mass of discussion on the matter, and once again, WoW Insider draws the lines, on both sides. Dan Desmond wrote an editorial on the effects that these sort of nerfs have on the raiders in the instance.

Well, it seems I was wrong, for in the very next tier of content Blizzard released, we saw progressive nerfs to these difficult fights. Personally, I prefer to keep these encounters the way they are, at least until a new tier is released. Something just feels wrong to see the hardest fights available made easier through a series of hotfixes. Even with respect to my own guild's progression, having sweeping nerfs hit Firelands just as my guild was putting in some really good attempts on Ragnaros felt like Blizzard moved the finish line, taking what would have been a very gratifying kill and turning it into an accidental one-shot that contained none of the catharsis we had felt during previous boss kills.

In response, Adam Holisky wrote an editorial on the merits of the nerf for all guilds, and in the end, he fell back on that same flawed defense that so many others have leaned upon.

Because there's an easy answer if everything I said in this editorial rings false to you.

Just turn the nerf off.

Now, there's a lot of flawed thinking in Adam's editorial, and I'll get around to those flaws in other posts. What I want to talk about now is the supposed "Choice" that raiders have to turn off the Power of the Aspects. Ghostcrawler said that a choice that had one option that was obviously more beneficial than the other isn't interesting, it isn't compelling, and ultimately, it isn't a choice at all. This is the situation that the non raiders who fall back on this line don't understand, there is no choice to turn off the debuff. Any guild that has already cleared all the content has no reason to do so, and any guild that hasn't cleared the content gains no benefit from doing do. Raiding guilds live on three things, interesting content, recruiting, and consensus within the group. While the nerfs may or may not undermine how interesting the content is for your raid group, it can only have a negative impact on the other two aspects.

Consensus: One of the primary arguments that people make against these kind of nerfs is that they wanted to see what the content's really like, not to be given their kill as charity by the developers who take pity on them. The dissenters claim that they can simply turn off the nerf, and everything will be the same as it was before. This is not true. Raiding is a team activity. You need nine or twenty-four other players to go along with you in order to raid with any serious degree of success. While you might get enough satisfaction to justify turning off the debuff, you need consensus within the group. The odds of everyone in the group agreeing with you is slim, and even one person in the group who would rather raid with the debuff will put the group in a very awkward position. You're asking them to sacrifice their personal progression, not for an achievement, not for loot, not for a mount, but for something even more trivial, for your pride. If they give in, then they feel resentful at your imposition, and if you give in, then you feel disappointed with the instance. Ultimately, the very fact that a choice had to be made alters the dynamic of the raiding experience, even if you choose to turn off the buff.

Recruiting: Just as dangerous as the volatility of forcing the issue into a group dynamic is the impact that the buff has on recruiting. If you're in a raiding guild, your guild is recruiting. There's an almost constant rate of attrition that takes its toll on a raid's roster. Kids, school, work, burnout, and new games are all among the factors that might drive a player to set aside raiding. If the group wants to continue raiding, they need to replace those people. One of the primary things that players look for in a guild that they choose to raid with is progression within the current instance. All else being equal, a prospective raider will tend to sign on with a guild that's further progressed. With no way to differentiate themselves from guilds that do use the debuff, a guild that decides to pursue raiding without the buff deliberately hamstrings themselves on the recruiting front. To make matters worse, any guild can claim to have gotten their kills without the debuff, because there's no way to prove it one way or another.

There is no choice here, it's akin to being given the choice between a raisin bagel or a kick in the crotch. These nerfs aren't about tuning, they're about longevity. Just like ICC with the Strength of Wrynn, we're going to be stuck in Dragon Soul for another six months. There is no tier of gear after this to help the flagging guilds. So they give us the Power of the Aspects, and jokingly tell us that we have a choice, while they cite the exact opposite logic to justify their decisions in other aspects of the game. If Blizzard had made it an actual choice, they would have given an incentive to raid without the Power of the Aspects. A title, or a mount, or even just a simple achievement for clearing Dragon Soul without using the Power of the Aspects would make it an actual choice, not this mockery that we're faced with at the moment.

Cataclysm Final Grades: The State of the Protection Paladin

Tzufit at Tree Heals Go Woosh has asked for people to compile their opinions on the state of their favorite specs now that the dust is settling on Cataclysm. So let's take a look at how the changes in Cataclysm have impacted my play on Dämmerung.

Do you feel that your class is better (in that it is more fun to play, more effective, etc.) now than it was at the end of Wrath? Do you feel that your class is better now than it was at the beginning of Cataclysm?

I feel that playing a protection paladin has been made more complex, and in large part, more effective at single target tanking than they were at the end of Wrath. While they have taken a bit of a step back from their preeminence at the beginning of Cataclysm, due to the weak scaling on Paladin's mastery, and several nerfs to outlying abilities such as Divine Guardian. Does this translate to more fun? I don't believe so. The most engaging portion of playing any class is the buttons you push, and with the added complexity of the protection paladin priority system came a direct injection of clunk. While many found the old 969 rotation to be boring, I find empty GCDs and off kilter CDs to be irritating and boring.

One place where I feel Blizzard really dropped the ball was on Paladin AoE tanking. During BC, paladins were the defacto AoE tank, and throughout Wrath, despite lacking in snap AoE threat, no tank could match a Paladin's sustained AoE output, with Hammer of the Righteous proccing Seal of Truth across multiple mobs, perma consecrate, Holy Wrath with undead everywhere, and Holy Shield procs. In Cataclysm, I get the distinct feeling that Blizzard gave one aspect of our AoE rotation to a different intern, told them to break it, and then shoved it back together without regard for how destroying each of the individual components would cripple the whole. Holy Shield completely lost its damage component. Consecration was put on a 30 second CD, had the mana cost hiked through the ceiling, and did less damage per tick at 85 than it did at level 80. Holy Wrath had its scaling with AoE removed entirely, and now functions as a gimped version of shockwave. Hammer of the Righteous was rebuild entirely, it no longer procs seals on multiple mobs, and somehow, someone at Blizzard thought it would be a good idea to base the AoE off a single roll. What this means is that if HoR misses its primary target, it misses everything. If you've ever had a paladin tank completely miss the pickup on a trash pull, it's probably because of that move, which Zarhym defended as "Flavor". This left Paladins as the only tank without the ability to spread DoTs across multiple mobs, the only tank who's primary AoE has a facing requirement, and the only tank whose AoE can't chain off bosses with large hitboxes. Can't cleave on Rag, or Magmaw, or Conclave, or Al'akir, or Zon'ozz... Nice job breaking it Blizz.

How much have you enjoyed or found uses for your class’ level 81, 83, and 85 abilities? Given the chance, what would you have changed about them?

Inquisition added some interesting complexity to the single target rotation, although it becomes lackluster when you take into account its position as the only AoE HP finisher available.

Holy Radiance was helpful prior to its overhaul giving it a cast time. On some fights, every bit of healing mattered, and being able to shore up the raid a couple K in the feuds on Chimaeron felt helpful.

Guardian of Ancient Kings... While it was kinda cool for ret and holy, it was honestly kind of insulting to Prot paladins. 50% damage reduction, it's great. But we already had Divine Protection giving us 50% DR in Wrath, and during that odd phase where we were using Cata talents and spells at level 80, it left Paladins as the only tank without a 50% damage reduction when they nerfed DP.

Did you switch mains during Cataclysm? If so, why did you make that choice?

I did not, I did however raid significantly on my Warrior with another guild, because they asked me to help them.

What were your class’/spec’s strengths throughout Cataclysm? What were its weaknesses?

Paladins were a solid middle of the road tank in Cata. We weren't as strong against physical damage as Druids were with their increased armor or warrior with their mastery that scaled much better than our own. Nor were we better against magical damage when compared to DKs with the ridiculously OP AMS, or Druids with their 22% passive magic damage reduction. I guess "I Am Third" would best sum up paladin tanks in cataclysm. Whatever the task was, there were better tanks, but we weren't the worst, which actually gave paladins a strong position in persistent groups that couldn't afford to swap tanks around.

The biggest weakness was the aforementioned abomination that our AoE output became. But then again, when your biggest weakness is trash, I can live with that.

Did you enjoy the addition of the mastery stat? What did you like about it, or, what would you change?

Mastery didn't really change anything. The change to block, converting it from a flat value, generally something like 2.5k, to 30% of the physical hit made block something that became sought after. While other specs got cool tricks like extra lightning bolts and empowered demons, Blizzard followed in the tradition of Guardian of Ancient Kings and our T13 4pc bonus for paladins, and took block away from us, renamed it mastery, and gave it back.

How, if at all, did Cataclysm’s revamp of the talent trees affect your class? Did you feel that these were changes for the better or for worse?

The addition of specializations made Protection the number one tanking spec from level 10 onwards. They gave new tanks the majority of the tools they needed to at least be functional as a tank right off the bat, which was a stark contrast to leveling in Wrath, where all the lowbie tanks in the know were specced ret.

Did your class experience any significant changes or additions to its lore during this expansion? If so, how did you feel about those changes?

Tirion apparently can't be bothered to look from his giant tower to see Scourge 2.0 forming up a block from his house? All sarcasm aside, this was the Shaman/Druid expansion, just like Wrath was the Pally/DK/Mage expansion. I'm ok with that. Taurens got Sunwalkers, which was cool, although my god, there's nothing uglier than a Tauren wearing Paladin tier helmets. I felt like the Horde paladin orders, the Sunwalkers and the Blood Knights could have had their lore fleshed out more with the Azeroth revamp, and as always, the Draenei got heinously neglected. I will say that Eastern Plaguelands was in my opinion the best zone in the revamped world. It showed development, while still maintaining the feel of the previous zone, and the friendly rivalry between Gidwin and Tarenar balanced a fine line between levity and weight.

Is your class easier or harder for a fresh 85 to learn now than it was at the end of Wrath? Is this a good or a bad thing?

There are more buttons, and the rotation is more complex, but at the same time, there weren't any encounters in Cataclysm that taxed the tank in the same way that phase three Yogg and Firefighter pushed me. along with the massive threat boost and taunts and interrupts no longer missing, a lot of the things that all tanks face have been simplified. I would say that the spec has gotten harder, but the role has become easier, so it's kind of a push in that regards.

What aspects of your class’ gameplay do you think the designers really got right in this expansion? What aspects were clear misses?

Once again, the AoE component was a complete failure. The implementation of Holy Power was pretty muddled, and the more the tweaked, the more irritating it was, but I wouldn't write it off as a complete failure. Aside from that, not a whole lot changed.

Overall, do you enjoy the playstyle of your class more now, at the end of Cataclysm, than you did prior to patch 4.0 at the end of Wrath? Why or why not?

I definitely enjoyed Tanking on a paladin in the back half of Wrath more than I did during Cataclysm. However, with that said, prior to patch 3.2, paladin tanks were unambiguously weaker than the other classes, by a margin far wider than anything any of the tank classes have seen in Cataclysm. I have to give credit to the class balance team for bringing the tanks closer to complete parity than ever before. I never felt like my playing a paladin was holding the raid back the way I did when I was tanking OS3D and Ulduar HMs. Which is a huge achievement.

Embrace the Treadmill

So, there's been a refreshed wave of complaints and praise about the concept of Mists of Pandaria. Some people don't like the theme, which I guess is a valid opinion to hold, albeit one that I find a little odd that in a game that sends you fully grown and domesticated dragons in the mail (What's the shipping cost on that? I can't imagine the hazard pay the Azerothian Postal Service Earns.), people are drawing the line at anthropomorphic pandas. Other people take umbrage with the new features, such as the minipet battles. I for one look forward to sending Stevie the Squire to bleed for my honor in the Ring of Death.

There's another wave of complaints. People whine about the game being a perceived pixilated hamster wheel. Level up another five levels, grind through the heroics again, and get back into raiding/PvP shape. Wooooooo...

This is an MMO. If you wanted a defined end state, well, Diablo III and Mass Effect 3 will both come out soon to sate your hunger for single player games with multiplayer tacked on. And threes, lots of threes this year. MMOs, particularly subscription based MMOs, are a treadmill. The entire plan is to make it so that you can't "beat" the game, and then shelve it until the sequel comes out.

Which brings us back to the people complaining about the expansion. I think they're right. Why should we pay $50 for a box that lets us keep running on the treadmill we're already on? What's the point of another five levels that endgame players are going to blitz through blindly in less than a week, and tacking on another five levels for a new player to wander through? The barrier to entry gets taller and taller, and as a result, the leveling content prior to the current expansion get stretched thinner and thinner, to the point where current players can go from Winterspring, to Hellfire, to the Borean Tundra, to Hyjal without spending more than a few hours in other zones. Level 58-80, and new players miss 90% of the content that exists in those regions.

The current leveling model is an annoyance to established players, and an increasingly insurmountable barrier to new players, whom Blizzard must court to feed Azeroth the bodies it needs to sustain its grim rate of attrition. Why? What's the point? What's the purpose of leveling in the modern World of Warcraft?

Is it to teach players how to play in endgame content? That was one of the old ideas behind it, and one that Blizzard attempted to return to in Cataclysm, introducing quests that simulate raid mechanics such as LoSing casters and dodging void zones, but the penalties were so light that the majority of player bulldozed their way through the quests without learning the intended lessons. This idea is further undermined by Blizzard's tendency to give players abilities right before they hit the endgame, that completely and fundamentally alters the manner in which the player plays their character, which pretty much obliterates most of what they learned prior to the acquisition of that keystone ability.

Is it to increase the power of the characters? They slapped differing scalars on ratings at different levels, leading to the rather humorous reality of a level 80 tank dinging level 81 and losing 60% of his avoidance, or fire mages just now crawling back the levels of crit that they had in Naxx. It's not like you're getting a talent point every level now, either. Come MoP, you'll only be getting six points total, and they're stretched out in a doldrum of 15 level gaps.

Is it a vehicle for new content? It is, but it's not the sole vehicle, and while leveling is failing at all its primary functions, those other vectors, raiding, dungeons, and daily hubs, not only do just as good a job of delivering new lore and content, but they also serve their primary purposes of providing gear, gold, and incentives to come back.

Now, I'm not advocating the death of leveling content. I believe that it should be returned to its roots. Leveling content should be difficult. It should introduce players to mechanics that are seen consistently throughout the endgame. Void zones, LoS, Interrupts, DPS and Heal checks, 3D maneuvering, and kiting should be introduced to players, and reiterated throughout the leveling experience. It should have real consequences, too. If you stand in that void zone when it blows, you should die, and the game should tell you why you died, and let you try again.

What I do want Blizzard to kill off are these little leveling breaks between raid tiers for each expansion. I'm here for the treadmill, not for cross training. You don't run for a half hour, stop and stretch, then run for another half hour, and stop to stretch again, repeating ad nauseum. You stretch to prepare yourself for your run, and then you run until you're finished.

Questing is not the sole province of leveling content. Questing can work as an excellent means for moving the story along. The 4.1 ZG/ZA questline was an excellent example of moving the storyline along through quests that were available only at the level cap.

So what I'm proposing is that Blizzard embrace the treadmill nature of the endgame of WoW. They need to acknowledge that they create two games, the leveling game, which is largely a solo game, and the endgame, which is both a single player and multiplayer game. They need to create a leveling game that serves their purposes, and then allow that to stand on its own. Once players complete the leveling game, the basic training of WoW, they should be at least competent at the class they leveled. That's when they hit the endgame. They've finished their stretches, and they step onto the treadmill. Content updates should come every six to eight months, and should introduce multiple levels of content. There should be a set of daily quests for solo play, along with quests introducing the new multiplayer content. There should be about ten to twelve new five man bosses, in two to three new dungeons, and a new tier of raids with ten to twelve bosses. What there shouldn't be is thirty hours of solo content acting as a barrier to entry to the new content. They can realign the talents when needed, and introduce new zones, new abilities, and new BGs as needed. You don't need a new expansion to do that. You just need a patch.

Numbers 2.0: Insight Into the Design Theory of Cataclysm, Casual Raiders Are Not the Majority, Churn and Attrition Are Two Different Things.

So, my last numbers post got me thinking about some more numbers. Go figure.

One of the metrics people were using for analyzing the difficulty of T13 content was that by Christmas, only 175k characters had downed Madness of Deathwing on normal difficulty, which is only 4% of the total level 85 population. What I found interesting about that particular metric, was it gave me something that I didn't feel like putting in the effort to find on my own. The total number of level capped characters in World of Warcraft. There's a hair under 4.4 million level capped characters.

This is interesting. We all know that there's 10 million active accounts in World of Warcraft right now. It's something that they slap onto every single advertisement for the game. That means, that if we make the patently false assumptions that no one has a level capped alt, and that no one with a level 85 character has let their subscription lapse, then we wind up with the figure that 56% of paying players have not hit level 85 yet, and that's the absolute lowest percentage it can be. Even by the most conservative estimates, if you've hit level 85 in World of Warcraft, you're in the minority. In reality, the percentages are more skewed.

Two and a half million net players have quit since the release of T9. Two million alone in the last year of Cataclysm content. Some of those were players who made it to level 85 and quit playing. Those players were listed in the 96% of players who hadn't downed DW, and as such, are listed in the 4.4 million. This means that the percentage of endgame accounts is actually smaller than the 44% posited in the most conservative estimate.

Further complicating the issue is the matter of alts. How many people do you know who have another character at level 85? Or two? I have five, there's another player in my guild who has ten, and I know a couple people on the server who have 15+. Of my five level 85 characters, I only raid seriously on two of them. Those other three get lumped in as casual players incapable of raiding without help from papa Blizz. If you assume that half of the players who make it to level 85 also have one alt at level 85, then suddenly the percentage of players in endgame content plummets to 29%. That's lower than the President's approval rating. Over 70% of the players who pay for this game never make it to level cap. Now, because my brain makes jumps like Bob Beamon at times, I was reminded of somewhere else I saw 70% in relation to WoW demographics.

In the 2009 4th Quarter shareholder's conference call Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard, cited that their internal numbers showed that 70% of new players to WoW quit before they reach level ten. Any guild master will tell you that retention's a bitch. Hell, Bioware could tell you that after they lost 15% of SWTOR's playerbase after the first month. By taking all the numbers we've seen here, we can see the force of attrition at work here. For every player that quits the game, Blizzard's gotta sort through 2.3 new players to replace them. For every level capped player that quits, the number of new bodies that have to be hewn through is probably closer to 5.3.

Attracting new players to replace those lost to attrition becomes increasingly difficult as the game ages. Not only are there new competitors out there which have the advantage of having learned from the mistakes made during WoW, but the barrier to entry becomes higher and higher. At Cataclysm release, it was over a $100 investment in boxes alone to break into the game from the start and make it to level 85, not including subscription fees. That's a lot of money to sink into a game, and keep in mind that for every dungeon buddy, arena partner, or raider, that has quit your guild in the past year, Blizzard needs five people to replace them. That $100 becomes a pretty steep price.

This explains the idea behind investing the bulk of the expansion into revisiting the leveling content. In the back half of Wrath, the retention rate on players dropped low enough that the attrition rate caught up, and they went through 18 months of no real growth. Looking at this, they decided that rather than attacking the attrition rate of established clients, they would try to increase the recruitment rate of new players by making the early leveling content more attractive. The more cynical side of me thinks that they were hoping to keep people interested in the game long enough to build enough baggage in the game that they'd not quit when they hit the dearth of endgame content. The more optimistic side of me thinks the cynical side of me is a jerk.

This idea, to mortgage the endgame in favor of the leveling game, was a rather spectacular failure. WoW lost 1/6th of its player base in less than a year, after six years of nearly uninterrupted growth.

So the question is "why?" When you don't put resources into the endgame, the game ends. It sounds like a tautology, but it's not. By creating content for the endgame that is properly farmable, interesting, and challenging enough to hold a player for an extended period, then it's easier to retain a max level player, rather than telling them to just roll an alt and start over. By revamping older content, especially to the degree they did in Cataclysm, they're wasting resources, for several reasons.

1: There's already content there. They're replacing content that they already spent resources on creating, and gained nothing in terms of additions to the game. The players spend the same amount of time in Northshire as they did before. The fact that the Orcs are burning our vineyard down doesn't really make a big difference.

2: New players don't know any better. If anything, revamping the old world just makes the newer content less engaging when you reach it. I know it's a pain leveling alts through some of that stuff, and the new content was a godsend for those of us who couldn't stomach the idea of having to choose between Winterspring or Silithus again. But when I was leveling Dämmer, Eastern Plaguelands was the shit. I murdered Scourge with gusto. Then I got to Hellfire Peninsula, I flew through the Dark Portal, and witnessed Fel Reapers striding the wastes, shaking the ground with their steps, and casually crushing curious players who wandered too close. Then I got to Northrend, and I surfed a harpoon across a gaping canyon after gunning down a plethora of super vikings riding primordial dragons. The bar was constantly being raised, and kept me engaged the entire time. Granted, when I went back to Azeroth to level my warrior, I had a new perspective, and found it painful to level, but that's what heirlooms are for. The revamp screwed up the perspective of new players.

3: It's too much to put on one plate. I'm a firm proponent of getting it done right, rather than rushing it out the door. However, with Blizzard's glacial working pace, there comes the side effect of leaving players in the same raid instance for a year, or whole projects simply sublimating into vapor. So there's a caveat that needs to be attached to it: Don't promise what you can't realistically deliver. Cataclysm was a very ambitious idea for an expansion, one that Tom Chilton's crew did not do justice to, at all. On the EK/Kalimdor revamp, there's a ton a places where they simply repeated the exact same thing that happened in the zone before hand. Elywnn forest is just tragic. I'm still trying to hook Romeo and Juliet up? Didn't I fix that years ago? Other things that I harped on in previous posts, like the horrible treatment the Worgen get when they leave Gilneas, speak to unfinished content that was rushed out the door to meet a deadline. Even worse, the endgame content, the stuff that the expansion is built around, also felt the sting of over extension. When Wrath launched, Ulduar was already deep in development. When Cataclysm launched, they had nothing set on T12 content beyond the broadest ideas. Hence why Ulduar was a 14 boss masterpiece, and T12 was a 7 boss abortion that had an entire second instance, The Abyssal Maw, cut from development, leaving half an instance with an over-bloated loot table created due to trying to squeeze 14 bosses worth of loot into a 7 boss bag. Because of the crunch applied to T12, T13 suffered, becoming the Deja Vu Tier, where you're pretty sure you've killed every boss in the instance before, because they're all recolors of previous bosses, not even reskins, with the sole exception being the tendons on Spine, and Deathwing's head and limbs on Madness.

The lesson to take from Cataclysm is this: Don't waste resources "revamping" old content. As much as it pains the lore geek in me to say this, don't ever revamp any non level cap content again. No Outland revamp, no Northrend revamp, nothing. Sure, you can add zones for level capped content to the continents, sure. But don't try to make the new player experience amazing, because new players won't know the difference, and the players who will notice the difference, the current players, will notice that the revamp is coming at the expense of new content for them.

Chalk Cataclysm up as a learning mistake. You screwed up, lost two million subscribers that probably won't come back. As far as mistakes go, it's a big one, but not a lethal one. The time you spend trying to reduce the churn in the lower echelons of the player base is time wasted, and it allows attrition to take its toll.

Lets Talk Numbers: Raid Kills, Difficulty, and Proper Interpretation.

Ok, this has been something that I've been noticing in the recent storm of blog posts and comments about the Dragon Soul nerfs. It's been mostly happening in comments, but some of the more prominent bloggers have fallen into this trap as well. They don't know how to look at the raw data we've been given by sites like Wowprogress and MMO-champion, and turn that data into a usable analysis. From Matt Rossi:

Even if you just consider the 800,000 players who finished Firelands, only a quarter of them are done with normal Dragon Soul. This means when players make comments like "Dragon Soul is easier than Firelands," they're not at all supported by the statistics. As many people had completed Firelands pre-nerf as have now completed Dragon Soul. Pre-nerf Firelands was, statistically speaking, on par with and not harder than Dragon Soul is right now.

That's not only incorrect from an analytic perspective, it's also factually incorrect. Wowprogress shows us that there were 19,500 Deathwing normal kills by January 19th, the date that the article was published. That was 52 days after the instance was opened up on November 29th. On August 18th, 52 days after Firelands was released, there had still only been 9,500 Ragnaros kills. 10,000 more guilds have killed Deathwing than killed Ragnaros in the same time span, a 105% increase. This is an indication of Dragon Soul being significantly easier than Firelands was, not "on par", as Mr. Rossi claims.

I've spoken before about how raid groups will settle onto their appropriate place on the curve of raid kills. There's essentially three factors that decide if you're going to down a boss. There's skill, gear, and commitment. Skill is the combined ability of the members of your raid to know how to play their class and role, and their ability to learn and adapt to the mechanics of the encounter. Gear is just that, the quality of the gear that your raid has. This provides a buffer, stronger tanks are less likely to die, bigger healing throughput keeps the raid up, and more damage output shortens encounters. More gear means an easier encounter, which means less skill is required. Then there is commitment. All other things being equal, a guild that raids five days a week will progress further than a guild that raids five hours a week like Legacy. Skill x Gear x Commitment = the timeline upon which a group can expect to down bosses, assuming the difficulty is equivalent.

Many people measure the objective difficulty of encounters via commitment required to down the boss, either in number of pulls, or number of weeks spent learning a particular encounter. The reason for this is that within a raid group, skill and gear tend to be equivalent at equivalent points of progression in different tiers. A guild in 346 gear working on Halfus will take about the same amount of time as a guild in 359 gear working on Shannox. It's a rare occasion where Mr. McEatstheFloor suddenly becomes an amazing player. These things rarely change.

A guild that requires three months of farming gear in order to raise their SkillxGearxCommitment quotient high enough to down the final boss in the instance does not magically become skilled enough to clear the next instance on the first day, or in the first week, or in the first month. If you were not in the first 10K Ragnaros kills in T12, then you shouldn't expect to be done with normal mode Dragon Soul yet. However, 10k players beyond reasonable expectation have already cleared the instance. We can use this to establish just how much easier Dragon Soul is than Firelands, and through that assessment, we can build reasonable expectations for when a raid group that cleared Firelands should expect to be able to down Deathwing.

The 19,500th Ragnaros kill didn't occur until September 26th, 91 days after release. There's a 39 day disparity between hitting that benchmark in Dragon Soul, and hitting it in Firelands. You can either make the assumption that the lack of difficulty simply frontloaded guilds, that the guilds that downed Rag in the first month downed him the first week, and then things settled. You can also look at it as a compressed schedule, where every day spent in Firelands is equal to 60% of a day in Dragon Soul. It's more likely a combination of the two. However, this shows that it's reasonable to expect your group to reach a milestone in DS about three to five weeks earlier than it took them to hit that level in Firelands. It is not reasonable to expect kills to be rolling in three to five months sooner.

Nerfs Again: Blizzard Recognizes the Dangers of the Skill Gap.

I've talked before about how dangerous having a profound skill gap in between bosses is harmful to the game. Blizzard has taken note of this, and has decied to implement a stacking debuff that reduces the health and damage of everything in Dragon Soul by 5% per stack, akin to the Strength of Wrynn buff in Icecrown Citadel. This debuff, called "Power of the Aspects", will apparently scale beyond the 30% that the ICC buff capped out at. When asked about the reasoning as to why they're nerfing normal and heroic modes, Bashiok spoke up:

Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall. We have actually statistical date we base our changes on, we know exactly how many people are clearing these raids each week, we know exactly how many people are able to down just a few bosses, and how many were only able to down a few bosses every week for weeks on end and then stopped raiding altogether.

The issue we're constantly trying to combat is the one where people feel like they're just out of options. One way this is an issue is the content is too easy, they blasted through it, have everything they could possibly want, and have nothing else to do. Ideally that's a small subset of very hardcore players. For everyone else it's a feeling of just being stuck with no possible way to progress. Very few players are willing to suit up, buff up, do all the necessary requirements to raid, jump in, and then do no better than they did last week for hours and hours, only to return next week and do the same.

This is the skill gap that I warned of. This is dangerous, especially in the year long wait that we're going to have to endure in this short tier. Running out of options this early is fatal. It's good to see Blizzard recognize this. However, in his later comments, and in the actions that Blizzard has decided to take in combating this problem, show that they don't really understand the problem and how it relates to the player base.

The first issue is the timing. From Bashiok:

We feel the content has been out for quite a while now, that most people who have progressed and downed Deathwing on Heroic have done so, they've had sufficient time to celebrate in their accomplishments, and these very small progressive alterations will only help guilds that are already doing well in the raid get over some hurdles they may be facing.

Bashiok, let's make this clear: The content will have barely been out for two months when you roll this nerf out. That's 1/3 of the normal six month life span of a raiding tier. Not only that, but one of those months was December. For those guilds that aren't commited enough to raid through Christmas and New Years, the content has only effectively been out for six weeks. Six weeks is not "quite a while".

Furthermore: "Most people who have progressed and downed Deathwing on Heroic have done so", huh? Most people with blonde hair have blonde hair. Obvious statement is obvious. This isn't about the Paragons and Vodkas of the world. This is about the other guilds. The guilds that would progress if given more than six weeks to down all current content that Blizzard also inexplicably expects to last us another eight months. Six weeks is not enough time for any guild with a reasonable amount of skill and who raid on a reasonable schedule to be hitting their limits. The insinuation here is that if you aren't in the 67 guilds that have cleared all content in the first two months of raiding, then you're toiling hopelessly and Blizzard needs to save you from your own incompetence. Not only is this insulting to the guilds who choose not to raid five+ days a week, it's also irreparably damaging. All kills from February onward will be tainted.

The second issue is the implementation. This is not the proper way to go about correcting the skill gap in content. Skill gaps exist because the content was not properly tuned. Each raiding tier should have equivilent difficulty when attempted at the appropriate level and gear. In properly tuned tiers, guilds will see similar progression on a similar timeline. A guild that cleared all heroic content in the first month should be able to clear all heroic content in the first month. A guild that takes six months to clear half the heroics should expect to clear half the heroics in about six months. A guild that struggles to clear normal mode in that six months should expect to take close to six months to clear all the normal content.

There should be a smooth distribution of difficulty across all the encounters. A guild that can clear one encounter should not find the next encounter hopelessly out of reach. Likewise, a guild that finds the previous encounter trivial should be able to clear the next encounter. The skill gap is created when there's significant jumps in difficulty. This is more likely to occur in stunted tiers like the seven boss Firelands and the eight boss Dragon Soul because fewer divisions means greater stratification between encounters if the end state remains the same as better developed tiers such as the 13 boss T11, 12 boss T10, and the 14 boss T8.

By implementing blanket nerfs, the gaps remain. All you've done is artificially lowered the end state. You've done nothing to remove the gap itself, which is the problem. You address the symptoms, but you allow the underlying cause to continue to fester, and that introduces new problems down the road. This is the equivalent of giving a person with an infected wound a shot of morphine and sending him home. He might feel better, but it's going to wear off, and he'll be in even more pain, and possibly have long term damage because of the short sighted approach to repair.

Blizzard, if you want to avoid running into these situations every tier, you have to bite the bullet, and actually balance the instance. Don't just throw some derpy blanket cut on the instance and call it good. Heroic Spine of Deathwing is an extremely poorly designed encounter. Forcing players to rely on short term burst on the only target that is beneficial to damage renders multiple classes completely useless. The solution to fixing Heroic Spine of Deathwing is not to nerf normal Ultraxion, it's to fix Heroic Spine of Deathwing. All that's happening with these blanket nerfs is that Blizzard is trading the long term health of the game in exchange for a little pain relief right now.

The Flaw of Neutrality

At least one of you read that in Sindragosa's voice, you have my condolences.

In a previous post, I mentioned that one of the reasons why there was such backlash against the idea of Thrall as a world character was the treatment of "Neutrality" in general in WoW, and the way that they altered it for Thrall in this particular instance.

There are two types of neutral characters in this game. There are characters who are born neutral, which is to say that they were designed from their inception in the game to be neutral, and there are characters who are naturalized into neutrality, which is to say that they existed as faction exclusive characters in game, but as the story line progressed, they moved into a position where they have to interact with both factions. A good example of the former would be Tirion Fordring, who's first appearance in game was as a neutral NPC in Eastern Plaguelands, who then proceeded to become the primary NPC for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The latter includes characters such as Malfurion, Thrall, Khagdar, and Bolvar Fordragon, all of whom made their first appearances in game tied to a faction, but have since found themselves turned neutral for various reasons.

A character who was born neutral might have affiliations with a faction in his back story, as Tirion had with Lordaeron in the short story Of Blood and Honor, but that's back story, it serves to set the table for the actions in the game's story arc. Well, at least for pre-Wrath stories. Tirion never raises arms against either faction, and it's believable because of the weight of experience that he had in his back story. He spent the Second War fighting against the Orcs, and then spent ten years exiled from Lordaeron, including the Third War, where he watched humanity tear itself to shreds in the throes of the Scourge. He's seen the worst both factions have to offer, and because of that, he is beholden to nothing beyond his own sense of justice. He holds no allegiance to the Alliance, because they abandoned him, and he holds no allegiance to the Horde because of their propensity for conquest. His neutrality made sense because that's how his character was designed.

On the other hand, there are the multitudes of Night Elf associated characters in Hyjal who went neutral. The two standouts were Cenarius and Malfurion, who began as characters in WCIII. Both were staunch defenders of the Night Elves. Malfurion's first words in game:

The horn has sounded, and I have come as promised. I smell the stench of decay and corruption in our land. That angers me greatly.

Malfurion felt the desecration of Ashenvale even in the depths of the Emerald Dream.

I felt our land being corrupted, just as if it were my own body. You were right to awaken me.

He feels the destruction visited upon ashenvale as if it were commited upon his own body. This is extremely strong language to use. Strong reactions mean strong emotions, and strong emotions mean lasting emotions. You can see similar reactions from Cenarius' in game text.

Who dares defile this ancient land? Who dares the wrath of Cenarius and the Night Elves?

Cenarius identifies with both Ashenvale and the Night Elves as a people. He was willing to fight for them, he was willing to die for them, and die he did. Both of these prominent heroes turn up in Mount Hyjal, where they distribute quests and aid heroes from both the Alliance and the Horde without a second glance.

On the other end of the spectrum is Thrall's turn to yellow text. He supposedly went neutral before the Cataclysm, and since his shift to neutrality, he flew under a Horde flag, slaughtered helpless Alliance sailors, inducted a new race into the Horde, and threatened to split the Throne of Stormwind in two. These are clearly not the actions of someone who's neutral in the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. This is something that I think Blizzard did right. Thrall is the Horde, and even though he ostensibly needs the assistance of the Alliance to handle a greater problem, he shouldn't just instantly forget about those affiliations, it would be unnatural. Alliance players should feel some apprehension when it comes to working with Thrall. When you're going through the elemental bonds questline, an Alliance player should question weather by helping Thrall here you're simply trading one form of extinction for a slightly later form. They're making a choice between two enemies, and it should be a difficult choice, one that you dread making. The impact of this was compromised by Blizzard's incessant undermining of Deathwing as a truly credible villain, but the intent was there.

On the other hand, Blizzard completely failed at this in Mount Hyjal. Everyone was so happy go lucky in that zone that I secretly wondered if all the prominent lore characters had been given a prefrontal lobotomy. Horde characters resurrected a powerful Demigod that wanted to wipe them out the last time they met, for sins far less severe than they hard recently committed in the same place that they fought him at. They needed to surrender themselves back to the demonic corruption of the Burning Legion in order to even wound Cenarius. Bringing him back should be a terrifying prospect for Horde players, and one they only be considering because the situation is that dire. It should be the same with Malfurion, the most powerful druid in existence, who feels the wounds of the Night Elf homeland as his own, and the Horde just completely gutted Azshara and are working to do the same in Ashenvale. the Horde aren't their buddies, they're mortal enemies with whom their enmity should only be set aside because of the looming presence of the Firelord and the Destroyer. When a Horde player opens up that portal to bring Cenarius back, they should honestly be unsure as to weather he'll listen to them, or split their skull open on the spot. None of this happened, and that's a failure on Blizzard's part. Instead, Malfurion and Cenarius simply treated everyone equally. This undermines the story and it undermines the characters. It paints them as uncaring and impersonal at best, especially when put alongside the story of Leyara.

The transition of a character from faction specific to faction neutral is a treacherous road to walk, I think they got it right with Thrall, and they got it wrong with most everyone in Hyjal. Ultimately, they wind up with a cognitive dissonance between the way characters are described, and the way they are portrayed, and if you can't properly aknowledge and account for that gap, you're going to wind up gutting potentially interesting characters like they did with Malfurion and Cenarius.