Thinking about Time as a Raider (and GM)

I’ve had a lot of free time since my exams ended last month. Combine it with short raid weeks due to clearing content and the fact that Diablo III came out and, honestly, I haven’t spent a lot of time in-game.

This is vastly different from how things were for me back when I started playing. I was always trying to improve my character by getting things done, like getting all of my T0 set or working on my T0.5 questlines. Or farming for consumables and consumable-related stuff. Doing stuff that I genuinely needed to do to improve, not just because there was some achievement for it. (Because achievements did not exist back then.)

It dawned on me that I really don’t need to do that anymore.

Back in the old days, there weren’t these limits of “one flask or one guardian/one battle elixir”. You could have a flask and several elixirs active at once.

Early in Burning Crusade, the developers decided that was making it really difficult to balance the encounters. How do you balance an encounter for a raid group that is using 0 consumables and a raid group that is using every single consumable in the game? Simple, you cap the consumables and balance for a raid group at that cap.

Back in Burning Crusade, I will freely admit that Apotheosis was not a guild where most of its members used consumables of any kind. It was like pulling teeth to make people use elixirs or flasks. For myself, I always used the Elixir of Healing Power and the Elixir of Draenic Wisdom. This is primarily because, back then, Elixir of Healing Power was +healing (while Adept’s Elixir was +dmg/healing). I also used to eat the Golden Fish Sticks for the +healing.

I was, unfortunately, an exception in our raids back then. I had no idea addons existed to help verify/enforce consumable usage. On the night that we finally, finally killed Lady Vashj, my whole raid team was actually using max consumables and it was amazing. What was less amazing was clicking on 24 other people individually to see if they had their elixirs and food buffs…

That stuff, back then, was time consuming to get or expensive. And not remotely close to the way all of it was back pre-BC. In Vanilla, due to the lack of a cap on this stuff, you could farm for twice as long as you raided every week and still not have everything you needed. Hell, I never even used a flask in Vanilla, not on Kurn. The first time I actually used a flask in Vanilla WoW was when Tia and a warrior friend of hers and I decided to three-man Emp runs in BRD (me on Madrana). It was a Flask of Distilled Wisdom and it was glorious.

But I digress.

In Wrath, I fished up my own fish and cooked it myself. I made my own Flasks of Distilled Wisdom, yes, that same Vanilla-era flask, since they were SO good for holy paladins. It took a good deal of time and occasionally made me go farming in places where I could get Icecap and Dreamfoil and, of course, Black Lotuses.

It’s been different in Cataclysm.

Once all Valor Point stuff I want has been purchased, I feel that I only have to spend maybe an extra half an hour in-game per week. That extra time is all I need with regards to providing consumables for myself.

For me, consumables are not negotiable. I need to have a flask, I need to have food, I need to have various potions (I use Volanic sometimes, but mostly I use Potions of Concentration) and that’s all there is to it. I feel if you’re not buffed with flasks and food, you’re not going to be able to do your best.

This is something I’ve codified into our guild stuff. Raiders MUST be flasked with a food buff, or using two elixirs in lieu of a flask.

How is it, then, that I only need to spend a half an hour in-game per week on consumables? It’s easy. We’ve organized it so that the guild collectively takes responsibility for the major consumables.

For the majority of this expansion, every raiding member of the guild (Initiates, Raiders and Officers alike) was required to “donate” three flasks of a certain kind (pre-determined and they stuck with the same one) to the guild bank every week, due before Tuesday maintenance. This is a LOT less work than people needing 9 flasks of their own per week (or six in the case of Alchemists) and was made possible once we opened up the Big Cauldron of Battle after making 3000 flasks (gah) and then hitting Level 20 so we could have 30 flasks down per cauldron.

So we’ve been collecting flasks from people on a weekly basis since, uh, last April, maybe? We eventually brought that down to 2 flasks per person per week and now we’re about done with flask donations, period. It’s weird to be done sending in flasks, but definitely nice. So every raid night, I take six of each flask out and I drop a cauldron prior to the first boss pull and another one just after break. This worked out so well for us that I imagine the same sort of thing will be done in Mists. The guild bank has had to spend ridiculously little gold on flasks since we pushed a bit to get to 3000 flasks crafted.

As to food… Well, food is basically the Seafood Magnifique Feast, which is 90 of a useful stat to you and 90 stamina. We have the guild bank provide that, but I would say that we have spent… probably no more than 2500g over the last year and a half on various fish for the feast.

Every week, we have a specific donation for something we need in Apotheosis and if you give us what we’re looking for, we give you 200 EP. (We use the EPGP loot system, but you can easily adapt this for DKP or suicide kings or something else.) As such, we almost always have any sort of fish or anything we need. Every week, it’s just like “hey, do you want an extra 200 EP? Then donate (items here)” and people do it. Personally, I enjoy fishing, but sometimes I’m strapped for time, so I’ll occasionally buy the fish at the AH and donate them, but most of the time, I like to fish them up myself.

For enchants and gems and such, we introduced Raider and higher free enchants some time ago, including everything, basically, except for helm enchants and shoulder enchants. Again, we fund this primarily through EP drives from the raiders. Since we introduced this sort of thing, I don’t think we’ve had to spend any money on things like Greater Celestial Essences, Hypnotic Dust or Heavenly Shards. (Especially since shards can now be gotten from Maelstrom Crystals.)

The best part about EP drives is that they’re optional, but so many people decide to participate anyway. I have never missed a week and many others haven’t, either. It’s just a small amount of EP, but it’s a nice little token that may or may not make the difference in your EPGP priority versus someone else who might be after the same item you are. Over time, it certainly adds up.

This way, though, everyone becomes responsible for everyone. Small donations (20 fish here, 40 fish there, 3 Greater Celestial Essences here, 2 Heavenly Shards there) add up quickly, even if you only have 30% of your guild donating. Flasks are taken care of automatically because everyone’s donating every week. Fish and other stuff are taken care of as needed.

Even repairs are taken care of by the bank on a rank basis.

Alts: 100g/day
Friends: 100g/day
Initiates: 250g/day (people who raid but are in their trials)
Members: 250g/day (older members, retired raiders, no longer raiding with us regularly)
Raiders/Officer Alts/Officers: 500g/day

This is funded through the sale of BOEs, of crafted stuff, of crafting materials and patterns, plus the gold-to-bank guild perk, Cash Flow (2) and despite shelling out for epic gems to give out to raiders now and again, the Apotheosis guild bank has over 500k at the moment and has remained at about that level for a couple of months.

Making the whole guild responsible for consumables frees up a huge chunk of time for you and for everyone else. If everyone throws in just a little bit of effort on a regular basis, no one needs to do a ton of work. It’s great. In our system, there’s still individual potions to take care of, but I’ve always found that if you mix up one big batch at a time, you should be good for weeks on end.

So apart from potions, Raider-ranked folks are taken care of in the guild by the guild, with Initiates getting at least some of the benefits as well.

On the flip side, over on the baby pally, I basically pay 400g a month to Choice, which entitles me to flasks and fish feasts and repairs, but I take care of my enchanting myself and I often bring my own Fortune Cookies just because I’m a scribe there and I always have extras. They also have EP donations, but they’re on a grander scale and tend to be steady (whereas one week, Apotheosis will want fish, but the next week will want enchanting mats). Potions are taken care of by me as well, but being a potion master alchemist, that’s not remotely an issue, especially since my mage is an herbalist.

Back in the old days, being a “raider” meant endless farming before then wiping endlessly. Being a raider was a huge time sink. It’s not that it’s not a time sink these days as well, because it certainly can be, but as someone who has recently finished with school and is enjoying her free time, I really appreciate how everything is taken care of by everyone equally in my guild.

(If you want to start flask donations or EP drives, Google Docs’ spreadsheets are the most amazing thing in the entire universe ever, by the way.)

Why I Disabled RealID

Majik and I discussed RealID in this week’s episode of Blessing of Frost. We discussed how RealID and BattleTags are inelegant and always on and I rehashed some of the stuff I talked about in my RealID post from last week.

In the episode, Majik, playing devil’s advocate, challenged why on earth I used it at all. “If you don’t like it,” he said, “why use it?”

In truth, I’ve been thinking about disabling RealID for, well, ever. Since it was introduced, actually. I hadn’t actually done it, though. It was, for lack of a better word, handy, though those occasions were rare.

So I started thinking about how I would get in touch with the people on my RealID list if I turned it off and if my gaming experience would be richer or poorer without RealID.

My brother – My brother obviously has my phone number, can text me, could even drive over and buzz the crap out of my building’s buzzer if he needs me.

Majik – Majik’s favourite way to bother the crap out of me is to harass me in Gmail’s chat. Occasionally, when I raid on the baby pally, he’ll whisper me and mock me for raiding with a second guild. If he needs to reach me, he can text me, G chat me, email me, etc.

My RL Friend the Resto Druid – Similar to my brother’s methods, my RL Friend the Resto Druid has my phone numbers and she can also email me and text me and such.

My ex-boyfriend from high school – While my ex-BF and I didn’t end things happily back in high school, we’ve been in touch for several years (off and on) and in an email exchange a couple of months ago, we swapped RealID info. We haven’t actually used RealID at all to communicate with each other in that time. At all.

My GM in Choice – Fugara, the GM of Choice of Skywall, seemed like a no-brainer to give my RealID to when it came out, as I was raiding with Choice already but I was ALWAYS ready to drop raiding with Choice and head over to Eldre’Thalas in case of an emergency. I thought that should any emergencies arrive, it was a really good idea to be able to communicate with Fugara about my status and estimated time of return and such. Of course, no emergencies like that every cropped up. To boot, Fugara recently gave birth, like three months ago, and hasn’t even been on WoW in two months. (She gave GM powers to the tank lead, Beezlebubba, for the period during which she’s being a newborn’s mother, though she does plan to come back at some point.) So there was absolutely no issue there.

The last person on my RealID is someone from the WoW blogging community whom I really respect and admire, but we don’t chat much and, ultimately, although I still respect and admire this person, there are other ways for us to communicate, too.

So on Thursday night, after a ridiculously short raid due to achievement stuff, I turned it off.

It feels weird, to be honest, but it’s also a bit of a relief.

Why did I do it?

I did it because of the following:

a) I didn’t use RealID enough, even among the limited number of friends I had with it.

b) The ability to use BattleTags in lieu of RealID highlighted that while one of my major issues with RealID is the use of one’s real name (or the real name on the account, even if that’s not the name you go by), I also really resent the possibility of people ALWAYS knowing what toon or server I’m on, regardless of whether or not I’m identified by “Kurn” or my real name.

c) Majik had a point — you don’t like it? Don’t use it.

Try as I might, I could not think of a compelling reason to keep using it after I highlighted the various issues in my last post and it just sort of came to a head during the recording of Blessing of Frost.

Ultimately, it stems from my convictions about how online chatting works. I have worked, like as a profession, in online communities, building them, moderating them, directing them, since 1997. Prior to that, I was an active participant in various online communities since 1986. No joke. Before the Internet was really commercially available, I was building communities on local Bulletin Board Systems. I may not know a lot in life, but I know how online communities work.

Video games used to be solo-player things. Or you’d play a game (like Jones in the Fast Lane or You Don’t Know Jack) while sitting at the same computer  as other people. BattleNet started up and you could chat in multiplayer games or in the lobbies and such. That was new and cool.

Back in the late 90s, messenger-type programs started cropping up. Things like MSN Messenger, ICQ, AOL’s own Instant Messenger, Yahoo’s Pager (now Messenger) burst onto the Internet scene. These (and others) were all proprietary clients that connected to proprietary networks owned by MSN, ICQ, AOL and Yahoo (and the others were owned by their respective developers too). Each introduced different aspects of “messaging”, but all featured ways to instantly send messages to others. AIM didn’t have invisible mode for quite some time, but since it included being able to message those on the AOL network, it was quite popular. MSN came bundled with all computers with Windows, so it was hugely popular despite its bugginess and lack of features. Yahoo’s Pager/Messenger was never really popular at the time, although I think (I could be wrong) it was the first to try to include voice chat. ICQ was the darling of the Internet, though. And it had so many tools! You could live-time chat, seeing people type (typos and all!) or you could send instant messages. You could have more than one person in a conversation. You could send files to various contacts or receive files from them. It was great! ICQ was also one of the first, if not THE first, to have statuses like Available, Busy and the like, including invisible mode. And even with invisible mode, you could right-click on a user on your contact list and select and option to make yourself visible to them.

Blizzard’s main focus has always been its games, but now that “social media” is popular and everyone and their brother is jumping on the bandwagon, they’re trying to build a chat-based community, complete with requisite friends list. The problem is that the revamped BattleNet and RealID and BattleTags are just sort of tacked on to WoW and are better integrated in StarCraft II and Diablo III and, as such, it’s pretty clear that the tools are just unfinished or at least not remotely polished. Sure, it’s a great idea to be able to chat with your friends who are online, but one thing all the chat programs in the 90s eventually did very well (and all the more recent applications that learned from these initial instant messengers) was giving the user the option to use it (or not) on a day by day or moment by moment basis.

RealID and BattleTags do not give you that choice. Yes, you can turn it off, which requires going into your account settings on the BattleNet site. Turning it back on, however, means that if you want to re-connect with the people formerly on your friends list, you must re-request access as their friend, since turning it off will wipe all that data. Enabling or disabling RealID is not a choice you make based on how you feel at a particular moment in time. The repercussions of this choice are not simple, rather the repercussions of disabling a once-used RealID means the actual destruction of those connected contacts that need to be re-requested if you ever decide to re-enable RealID (and want to reconnect with those individuals).

So, realistically, those who don’t want to be visible to anyone but still want to play the games will not turn off RealID if it’s just a passing feeling of “oh, I feel like farming but I don’t feel like talking to anyone”.

Why, in the year 2012, is a company as large as Activision-Blizzard not using lessons learned by Mirabilis (the developers of ICQ) and others as early as 1996? Google understands the importance of invisible mode in its Gchat client. Facebook allows you to appear offline in its chat. Steam’s community allows you to play its online games while offline in its chat client. All of these companies (and more) understand the importance of user preference and user choice and they understand that sometimes people feel more social or less social and will flip their availability depending on those feelings.

Essentially, each client that allows you to see someone’s online status has some option for an invisible or offline mode.

There are over 10 million WoW players. Diablo III has ~4.5 million people running around there shortly after launch (1.2 million or so are WoW players who had the Annual Pass). SC2 has sold something like 4.5 million copies.

Even if all D3 and SC2 players are WoW players, that’s still over 10 million people who are automatically enrolled in this “social network”, although due to regional differences, not everyone can talk to everyone else. Still, that’s a ridiculous number of people playing these games with a built-in social network that’s on by default, where the only options are “use it (either freely or conservatively)” or “don’t use it at all”.

The thing is, of course, Blizzard wants us to use it. Blizzard has created this social system in order to make their games stickier. Everyone I know who plays WoW says that they play because they enjoy the game also plays it equally for the people. Let’s be honest. If my old Burning Crusade era Apotheosis folks hadn’t wanted to get back together to raid for Cataclysm, chances are I would have stopped playing. But they WERE interested, so I was interested in leading these people to a Deathwing kill.

Therefore, it’s in Blizzard’s interest to encourage people to use RealID and BattleTags and it’s not in their interest to make it intuitive to turn off RealID and to institute repercussions (such as having to rebuild any contacts) if you turn it off. Blizzard should want us to use RealID and BattleTags.

Their tools, as I’ve stated earlier, are clumsy, clunky and, like I said earlier, have not learned the lessons most companies learned from the chat clients available in the 1990s.

As such, I have opted out. The simple choice of “on” or “off” doesn’t sit well with me. The use of my real name with RealID never sat well with me. The developers’ blatant ignorance of the necessity of certain baseline tools hinders this system and holds it back.

What really upsets me, and this is why I keep talking about it, is that it could have been something really wonderful. I would have been its number one supporter if the developers had implemented it differently, because the idea of it is fantastic, but the implementation of it is absolutely ridiculous.

What I would have done is this:

– BattleTags first, option for “RealID”/real names later, not even the hint of a forced use of real information, unlike the RealID Forum fiasco of two summers ago
– Options available from Day 1, once online: Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Offline
– Eventually, integrating “invisible mode” and allowing others to see you if you chose, the way ICQ did it, or perhaps doing the group thing I suggested last week right from the start

Having that sort of thing done from the start would have had me praising BattleTags and the social system Blizzard was setting up from the start. It would have shown respect for the users, basic understanding of social media and chat programs and it would have allowed me to use my BattleTag more freely to do what I need to do in terms of guild recruitment.

As it stands, they scared the crap out of us by saying RealID/real names would be used on the forums, they didn’t give us any flexibility in terms of options of using it or not and now they have required the use of a BattleTag for Diablo III. Even if you never give it out to anyone, you still have to have one.

I feel strongly that it’s the wrong way to go about it and the small benefits I get from the use of RealID are absolutely not worth being consistently frustrated by the poor choices Blizzard has made in the implementation of their system.

RealID, BattleTags and Blizzard's "Social Network"

Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog probably already know that I am not a fan of RealID in its current iteration, nor am I all that thrilled by BattleTags (yet). Apart from all the privacy concerns and the fact that online harassment is not only possible, but likely when you’re a woman, there are some key deficiencies in the whole RealID/BattleTag system from a structural standpoint.

First of all, you have two choices: allow it to be enabled (by default) or turn it off through parental controls. I don’t actually have a problem with this. Anyone who’s in control of their own account should be able to be smart enough with their RealID info to prevent too many creeptastic exchanges. But in order to even play Diablo III, even as a single-player campaign, you absolutely must make a BattleTag, which functions similarly to RealID in many ways. The only major difference is that you’re referred to as your BattleTag name instead of your real name. (This, in my not-remotely-humble opinion, is what RealID should have been in the first place. Apart from the forced-to-use portion of it.)

Assuming that you’ve chosen to allow it to be enabled, then, if you choose to give either your RealID info or your BattleTag out to people, they will always be able to tell if you’re online, regardless of what Blizzard game (WoW, SC2, D3) you’re playing, regardless of which character you’re playing. By the same token, you’ll always see when that person is playing as well.

Rohan over at Blessing of Kings had a really interesting post about how we all want to be invisible but want to know if our friends are online and came up with an idea about “going dark”, which would effectively show you as offline to your friends, but you’d be unable to see them  if they were online while you were dark. While I think that’s probably a fair and simple way to accomodate requests for some kind of invisibility mode with RealID and with BattleTags, it doesn’t address the major problem with the system.

The major problem with the current system is that it assumes everyone who has your RealID or BattleTag is of exactly the same importance to you and you would want to be potentially contacted by any and all people with that RealID/BattleTag info at any given point in time.

That, of course, isn’t how people work.

I make very rare use of RealID and I haven’t given my BattleTag out to anyone as of yet. I have precisely six people on my RealID list; one is my brother, one is my Real Life Friend the Resto Druid, one is Majik, one is (I’m not even kidding here) my highschool-era ex-boyfriend and the other two are people I’ve encountered in-game and known for quite some time and respect quite a lot.

Any one of those people are more than welcome to contact me in-game if I’m online. My brother does now and again, as does my RL Friend the Resto Druid. Majik uses RealID with me more than anyone else does, whereas the in-game people and I rarely chat (we’re rather respectful of each other’s time and privacy) and my ex-boyfriend and I haven’t even said “hi” through RealID in the month or so since we’ve been RealID friends.

Again, I like and respect all of those people (well, except Majik… ;)) and I’ve been extremely careful in giving out my information.

However, I also do recruiting for my guild (apply now!) and I see recruiters throwing their RealID info out all over the place. Due to privacy concerns, I won’t do that, but I was thinking seriously that I should throw out my BattleTag info when it’s fully integrated into WoW.

If I did that, though, I would be changing my online experience substantially. What if a potential applicant whispers me through RealID when I’m raiding with Choice on the baby pally? What if some random person on the forums sees my post and decides to hop into my Diable 3 game? If I give out my info, which would be really helpful in terms of recruitment, for example, then I’m potentially changing my gaming experiences significantly. All of a sudden, I’m much more available to a set of people I don’t really have ties to. Suddenly, I have elevated random people to the same level of importance in my life as the six people on my RealID list. Any of them, so long as I accepted their request (and why wouldn’t I, if I were trying to recruit them?) would be able to see when I’m online, in which game and on which character.

In his post, Rohan says that ICQ, which was a great instant messenger client that was hugely popular in the 1990s, was overly complex and complicated in the way they used their invisible modes. I’ll say that it was complex, sure, but I would argue that relationships are equally complex and deciding when and how to communicate with others is complex in and of itself. Thus, a system is needed that is better than “always on” to help deal with the subtleties of human interaction.

There are a couple of different ways that I think this could happen.

1) A Ranked System.

In a ranked system, I would ideally be able to create a group called, for example, “Close Friends” who would then have permission to see me online regardless of what I’m doing in what game. These are the people like my brother and Majik and my RL Friend the Resto Druid, for example. This group would have the most privileges and would be my top-ranked friends.

Then, I’d like a second tier, lower down, which would have mix-and-matchable privileges that include what games people can see me playing and, ideally (well, as long as I’m dreaming, you know?) even be able to distinguish which characters I’d like people to be able to see me on.

So I’d like to create a second group called, for instance, “WoW Friends”. My “WoW Friends” would then have permission to see me regardless of where I am in WoW. Whether I’m farming on Eldre’Thalas, making money on Skywall, raiding somewhere or whatever, they could see me on any WoW character. But they would not be able to see me if I were playing Diablo 3 or StarCraft 2 (not that I play, but you get the idea). In this group, I’d put a couple of the people I’m RealID friends with whom I’ve met through WoW and greatly respect. That said, I’d prefer that this group not have my real name. (It’s kind of too late now, but anyhow.)

The selection screen could look something like this.

See what I’m getting at? Each group, even the top-level group, would have options you could set that would include limiting visibility based on what you want them to see. Using specific selections like this, you could have a really intricate system of groups of people who can/can’t see when you are online, and to whom your private information (such as your name) is revealed.

It’s not the simplest solution, but I think it deals nicely with all of the potential concerns I have. Further, no one knows what “rank” they are because everyone’s ranks are different from everyone else’s. So there’s none of that “hey, Kurn, why am I ranked THREE on your list?? You’re in my first group!!!” nonsense.

There could also be default groups with default settings, but all of them would, ideally, be very easy to customize.

2) The Invisible System.

The second major way I see to deal with the complexities of human interaction is to have exactly what Rohan discarded right off the bat — an Invisibility system. In such a system, you would be able to GO invisible, first of all. (And actually, I would append this to my ranked system, too!) Then, you could select players who would be allowed to see you while you are logged on and invisible. To these people, you would simply appear as “online”. (Note that you would still always be online to guildies and people on your server — I’m just talking about RealID/BattleTag friends.) It would be much less customizable than the ranked system I laid out, but it would still address some major issues.

What if I’m raiding and I don’t want some potential recruit whispering me as I’m working on Heroic Spine? Invisible for the duration of my raid. What if I’m farming and don’t want to be bothered while I’m chilling out, but wouldn’t mind hearing from friends? Invisible but anyone marked as being able to see me while invisible would be able to chat.

It’s not as complicated as the ranked system and so it also lacks some finesse, but this could be a good way to allow people to make use of RealID/BattleTags without someone becoming “too accessible” to various people.

The Blizzard Social Network

I know that I’m dreaming by even thinking that Blizzard will ever evolve their RealID/BattleTag system beyond what it already does. I know that my ideal ranked system will never happen. I strongly doubt an invisible mode will ever come to be.

However, just because Blizzard won’t do that doesn’t mean that we should roll over and accept a system with which we’re unhappy. It doesn’t mean that we should blindly accept whatever they give us with regards to their idea of a “social network”. While it’s nice to chat with people on other factions and other servers in WoW, don’t be fooled. RealID/BattleTags aren’t there for you to conveniently chat with your friends. The system almost certainly exists to take the middleman out of social networking for Blizzard. World of Warcraft has an insanely large community. There are websites, podcasts, blogs, twitters, livejournals, tumblrs, everything under the moon. How are those community sites beneficial for Blizzard? Word of mouth and free advertising for their product, yes, but otherwise, they’re not. They’re taking discussions away from the official forums, they’re allowing people other ways to connect with each other outside the game. If Diablo 3 had come out three years ago, people would have emailed or sent each other messages on guild forums or IMed or texted each other to say “hey, are you playing D3? Wanna play together?” instead of just seeing that your friend is already in a D3 game and allowing you to quick join in.

I’m fairly certain that they’re trying to ensure that their games are “sticky”, in the sense that we won’t need to go elsewhere to communicate. Looking for a friend to LFR with? Log on, check your friends list. Playing D3 to pass the time until your raid? Play with other guildies who might be online doing the same thing. They are, in my opinion, making their three games, and the communication between them, into a whole social media platform.

The only trouble is, they’re forgetting about how complex social interaction really is, particularly in the live format. You don’t need an invisible mode on Twitter, because it’s not realtime. No one knows when you’re checking Twitter or not. Since all three of Blizzard’s games include you logging in (even at the menu selection, in D3 and SC2), there is the realtime factor one must account for. The way Blizzard has accounted for that is this persistent, always-on chat system, which is clunky and extremely basic in terms of the options available.

They’ve got the bare bones of a real social platform built on top of these incredible games and obviously, the games are the priority, but they’re shoehorning the social system into the games as best they can and expecting us (and forcing us, in terms of D3) to use them.

So even though I know they will never make the system work the way a good social system SHOULD work (by using something akin to my suggestions above), I can’t help but wish they would. If they’re going to try to be sticky and make the game platforms a social hub, they need better tools to make the user experience go more smoothly. There is nothing in the world as complicated as human interaction and Blizzard is doing us a grand disservice with their inelegant tools.

Saviour of Azeroth

(Yes, I spell Saviour with a U. I’m Canadian. Let it be.)

I have been playing World of Warcraft fairly steadily since October of 2005. That is nearly seven years. It is very, very, very rare for me to achieve anything for “the first time”, these days. That’s to say, while I can kill a new boss for a first time, I’ve killed plenty of new bosses for the first time. While I can kill a new heroic boss for the first time, I’ve killed plenty of new heroic bosses for the first time.

This tier has been a challenging one for me, and for my guild. Released just before the holidays, the normal modes of Dragon Soul seemed pretty elementary to those of us in Apotheosis. It took us three weeks to clear all the normal content, and part of that was Spine and Madness each taking a week out of us, plus roster issues due to holidays.

Roster issues. Never in my life have I been happier to have had an overflowing roster going into a tier of content. We have lost: Kamilla, Huntertoga, Hestiah, Mabriam, Tiandrina, Xmolder, Daey, Arolaide, Murran and Dar since the end of Firelands. That is 8 DPS (all three of our warlocks and a legendary mage) and 2 healers. And none of them jumped ship to another guild, those are all people who just decided to stop raiding. I feel most comfortable with 33-34 people on a roster for a 25-man raiding guild. We have been running with around 28-29 people. It’s not always been easy for us over the last few months.

But we kept at it.

Heroic Morchok, Heroic Hagara (server first!), Heroic Yor’sahj, Heroic Zon’ozz, Heroic Ultraxion, Heroic Blackhorn… then Heroic Spine of Deathwing and finally, Sunday night, Heroic Madness of Deathwing.

For the first time in my WoW career, I have cleared all heroic content on the current tier. (4/5 TOGC, 11/12 H ICC, 7/13 H T11, 6/7 H T12 and now 8/8 H T13.)

It’s definitely been an uphill climb. Sometimes, it’s been uphill in the snow (yes, hi, main spec healer doing offspec DPS and main spec DPS warrior tanking bloods for Heroic Spine? A night of work on Heroic Madness with 0 main spec tanks in the raid?). Sometimes, the attendance boss would rear its ugly head. But we usually worked it out and at least got something done, even on those sketchy nights.

This is the reward. Saviour of Azeroth. 8/8 HM. And we did most of our progression at the 0-10% nerf level. While it took us a while to get Spine down (and up to the 20% nerf), we would have had it with another week’s worth, regardless of the increase to 20%. And Madness is just such a joke after toiling forever on Spine.

But it’s such a relief to get it done. We’re not done raiding, but the tough stuff is over. One more heroic clear to ensure everyone gets the title/achievement, then over to “fun” achievements to get the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider meta achievement and drakes and all that other jazz, before resuming heroic farm.

In the meantime, my “real” life has been competing with WoW stuff during almost the entirety of Dragon Soul. My grandmother broke her hip on December 21st, was hospitalized and only returned home two months later. I started my final semester of university in January. My father was hospitalized in April. I had two killer exams on the same day. I took a couple of raids off with Apotheosis and didn’t raid with Choice on my baby pally for about two weeks in there. The time off did me good and I haven’t spent a ton of time in-game since my exams ended. The time I’ve spent playing WoW has generally been raiding and the rest of my WoW-related time has been spent either podcasting or planning out raid stuff or recruiting. (Apply now!) Obviously, I haven’t been blogging and I’ve barely touched beta (though I really ought to) and I won’t be spending a lot of time playing Diablo III, although I did start a character this morning.

The good news is that my father’s out of the hospital and doing pretty well.

My grandmother’s hip isn’t what it used to be and she’s still struggling at home, but she’s applied to a senior’s residence that is pretty swanky, so we’ll see when they have a spot available. Until then, I’m still playing errand-girl, since I live two floors down from her in the same building.

So real life is settling down a bit. I passed my exams and my classes so I should be graduating on June 18th.

Things are better. I hope to be able to sit down soon and spend more time on this blog with you all than I have over the last month. :)