SYTYCB

Salutations, well-wishes, and thank-yous

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 Hello everyone! Most of you have probably been following Matticus’s “So You Think You Can Blog” contest. I’ve been lucky enough to have been chosen for the spot, and I’d just like to say how thrilled I am to be joining the staff of this fine publication. Writing is my passion, and I am intrigued by the challenges of learning to write in a new medium.

I look forward to sharing my opinions here and to responding to feedback from YOU, dear readers. The comments have been the most fun part of this whole experience, and it is very cool to be putting down roots, so to speak, in such an interactive medium.

What can you expect from me in the future?

I’ll be writing articles that chronicle my in-game passions–expect to see lots about healing strategy, group and guild management, and of course, healing of the druidic variety! This is a very exciting time to begin blogging. We have an expansion on the horizon, and I’ve got a beta key clutched in my grubby little tree fist. I’ll be giving you my own special perspective (full of puns about foliage, of course) on all the new changes that arise as we get closer to Wrath of the Lich King.

In the meantime, I owe a big thank you to Matt and Wyn for their help and support and also to the other contest entrants, whose posts have all inspired me. I would also like to give a shout out to Briolante, without whom all my tables would look like crap, and to my guildmates at Collateral Damage-Vek’nilash, who have been enthusiastically following along with my progress in the contest.

I’ve Chosen the Third Blogger

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Sydera is the third blogger! She’ll be co-blogging alongside Wyn and myself from here on out. Unlike Wyn and I, she is not a Priest and will be blogging from the perspective of a… tree.

So let’s all extend a welcome branch to Syd (I can hear the groans over the pun already)! I’m sure she’ll come along later and say something.

Joveta, you did really well. It was an extremely tight race between the two of you. I was on the fence at times where I’d go one way then change my mind and go the other. Pleeeeeease don’t be discouraged. If you decide to pursue blogging, I will do what I can to help you set up.

Week 3 – Critiques by Matt and a Special Guest Judge…

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This is it. This is the final week. After this, SYTYCB will end. Despite how brilliant everyone’s been, I only have room at the moment for one additional writer. Who will it be?

In addition to the critiques from Wyn and I, there will be a special guest judge adding their 2 cents. The guest judge is a fairly prominent member of the blogging community but I will be withholding their identity. Think of them as the Simon Cowell of blogging.

PS, Wyn’s remarks will come later (depending on level of busy-ness).

Both bloggers have performed exceptionally well to get into the final week.

In any case, on with the show!

Sydera: Troubleshooting Gurtogg Bloodboil: A Healer’s Perspective and Future Overachievers Anonymous: How Achievements Will Rock the Social World of Wrath of the Lich King

Although blogging can be about virtually anything, I’ve tried to set the standard for my blog to be about virtually anything beneficial. It’s a strong principle of mine that a post should contain value and this one post about Bloodboil certainly does that and it does that really well. While it may not be as specific as Bosskillers or a WoWWiki, that’s not really what I’m looking for. The intent here was to see if you could write a piece about something educational that players could potentially benefit form. With Wrath on the eve of debuting, you’ve done that here even though it’s on a boss that most people are getting to or that most people will not be able to get to. You’ve used tables, block quotes, emphasis, and other formatting techniques flawlessly. Both skimmers and readers will be able to read through it and find out what they need. I love the creative use of images and the way this post has been structured.

Your second post I found quite wall of texty. Again, very glad you included emphasis throughout so I could speed read it (lecture and note taking and all). Outgoing links are a plus. All of us should make more of an effort to link outward. You’ve supplied strong arguments on all 4 of your points.

Biggest weakness: Tree.

– Matt

Troubleshooting Gurtogg…

  • Boss strategy overview presented nothing that couldn’t be found just as easily on Bosskillers or other boss strategy resources
  • By the time I got to reading phase 2, I was already snoring
  • Healing tips present no information that a conscientious healer raiding at that level wouldn’t already know
  • Healers that don’t already know the information presented are probably the type to be too lazy to go looking for it anyway
  • Article should’ve presented NEW information: that’s the entire point of a “teaching” post, to show the reader something they didn’t know or hadn’t thought of
  • Should have covered information like: when to pop certain trinkets, when using innervate/shadow fiend would be most appropriate, etc

Future Overachievers…

  • The second article doesn’t present any new information
  • Article appears to simply be an amalgamation of all the viewpoints expressed elsewhere about the new achievement system
  • No new spin or opinion was presented about the new system, and no fresh insight was added to the discussion
  • Article lacked a “summary” for skimmers to get the gist of the article without reading it in it’s entirety and the headings didn’t provide any insight into what stance the article took on the subjects discussed

– The GJ

The Utility of Utility and Death and the Priest

Your post here was aimed at outlining the differences and the benefits that IDS and COH bring to a raid. Your arguments were sound and perfect. You went out of the way providing an example table with numbers that helped underscore the point that you were making. The rule of thumb you wrote at the bottom of the post about which raid makeup would benefit the most is a real eye opener to some Guilds, I would imagine.

The second post consisted of something that I wish I would see happen more often. You publicly disagreed with a blogger. Not only that, you backed up your disagreement with opinion and sound logical reasoning. As a crim student, how can I possibly not admire that? In both posts, excellent use of bolding to emphasize your main point. You did a great job at the bottom summarizing and adding on more ways for readers to participate. A skill that I’ve noticed a few bloggers not having acquired yet is that of reader participation. Give them some room to chime in. If you intentionally cover all the bases, opinions, viewpoints, what else is there left to say? I even gave a lecture about that to Auzara once (and she listened). The points you made, I think, helped encourage that.

Utility of Utility

  • Biggest complaint: The article focuses partly on talents found in the Disc tree, but makes no actual mention of Disc priests (as if they don’t exist)
  • It should be mentioned within the article that, if your guild/raid group has reliable Disc priests, or at least 1 Disc priest that shows up habitually, then the argument is moot: Holy priests can spec out of IDS if they so choose
  • When discussing the effectiveness/usefulness of IDS, stats were mentioned for Holy priests, Resto druids, etc, but again no mention was made of Disc priests (how much more effective would a Disc priest’s heals be with IDS + Power Infusion, for example?)

Death and the Priest

  • Instant bonus points for totally disagreeing with your “boss” so blatantly
  • Images or screenshots within the body of the article would’ve enhanced the points being made
  • The article takes an interesting stance on a subject many can relate to, and forms an emotional connection with the reader (enticing them to comment)
  • The article encourages longer “visits” by referencing an article already on the site (increasing the likelihood that the user will continue reading other articles and/or subscribe via RSS)
  • The article is “skimmer friendly”
  • The article presents a good opportunity for a follow up that expands on other moments players encounter while raiding

– The GJ

Death and the Priest

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bad-title

This week, we were given the option of a freestyle post.  I’m sticking with that, though I am using one of the topics presented in the competition to do it.  Matt, I’m sorry but I totally disagree with you when you advocate letting your dark side out and forcing a wipe. 

So Who Calls It?

Wipes happen, every group has been there.  It may be due to a bad pull, lack of focus, or simply the process of learning a fight.  It sucks, and can feel like a waste of time.  However, it is not the job of anyone other than the raid leader to determine when it is time to throw in the towel.  The raid leader is the person you agreed to listen to in raid, they are the person you hopefully trust to tell you what to do.  I’m not advocating a blind following of everything said to where you forget your own common sense, but the authority of the raid leader is totally undermined if one of the 24 other people in the group go over his head and make these decisions without him.  If you think it’s hopeless, poke the raid leader to call it, don’t make that decision yourself.  If you are making that decision, you need to ask yourself why, if you’re not going to let him lead, is he the raid leader at all?

Why not call it?

There are really only two kinds of wipes out there; the wipes that happen on farm content because of fluke or lack of attention, and the wipes that happen while you’re in some stage of learning a fight.  In neither of those instances are early problems reason to give up immediately. 

Everyone has experienced the shaky pull, where you lose one healer and a dps or two fairly early on, and still manage to beat it.  We’ve had Bloodboil on farm for months, every week is a one-shot.  But last night, we were running with 7 healers (where we usually run with 8 ) and lost one early on to Fel Rage (he was picking through the healing crew) bringing us down to 6.  It was stressful and crazy.  Then one of our warlocks got double-boiled because someone else hadn’t been paying attention.  You guessed it, he was the next Fel Rage target and died.  Bloodboil turned and Acid Breathed the tanks, costing us two of them.  With our highest-aggro mages and warlocks “off-tanking,” we still brought him down from 20% to dead with only our pally tank up.  It was a slow kill, but it would have wasted more time to wipe, rez/run back, and start all over from the beginning.  Problems are not a guaranteed wipe. 

As for giving up early while learning content, well, why show up to begin with?  Most bosses are not the type which look at you and fall over, offering up their shiny loot because you scare them so much.  Learning a boss can be hard!  You can spend weeks, 5, 10, 15 wipes, just trying to get a boss down once.  My raid group is currently working on Kalecgos.  It’s going slow, it’s frustrating, and it’s mainly due to the expansionitis that most raid groups are facing.  We don’t call it when the first healer dies.  We don’t even call it when the first tank dies, when we know it’s a guaranteed wipe at that point.  We still need the practice on when to move, keeping our portal rotation, where to stand, how to manage the details of the fight.  There’s a lot of learning that can be accomplished by pushing forward, even if you know you’re not going to win.  If you give up at the first sign of trouble, you are never going to improve.

Things to remember

  1. Discreetly forcing a wipe just means you have something to hide.  If you have something to hide, why are you doing this in the first place?
  2. Playing this off as an innocent mistake means you know you’re in the wrong and are looking for plausible deniability.
  3. Communication is key, as is trust.  Forcing a wipe totally ignores both of these things.

In short, if you have a problem, or things look dire, talk to your raid leader, don’t take over his job yourself.

Future Overachievers Anonymous: How Achievements Will Rock the Social World of Wrath of the Lich King

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Ever since the first articles started coming out about the Wrath Alpha, I’ve been intrigued by the achievements interface. Most writers in the blogosphere are excited about the change–at the level of the individual player, the achievement system will enhance the fun factor of playing the game. Check out this article from Matticus to see what I mean. The achievement panel as it currently exists in the Beta is a detailed look at your character’s past, and it serves as a scrapbook or photo album of that character’s virtual life.

sydera best achievements

On a personal level, I could not be more excited about the achievements. Many of the cleverly-described feats on Sydera’s achievement screen took very real blood, sweat, and sleep deprivation from my entire guild to accomplish, and seeing them spelled out makes me feel quite proud. As for the personal achievements, I feel nostalgic when I see how many quests I did in certain areas or how many horde fires I extinguished during the Fire Festival.

While the achievement system may be new to the World of Warcraft, it’s not exactly an innovation in the gaming universe. The WoW achievement system is a descendant of the character progress-tracking systems in console games and single-player PC games. High score tables such as those found on old-school arcade machines like Ms. Pacman or Donkey Kong are among the earliest achievement systems. When video games first invaded the living room, Atari pioneered a system of clothing patches you could earn by mailing them a photograph of your TV screen. In more recent years, achievement systems have become a fully articulated means to track one’s virtual progress and experience. For example, in Neverwinter Nights, my heroine’s feats were described at length in a journal, to which I could add my own notes if I wished. I really enjoyed reading through that journal at the end of the game–while I’m not a roleplayer per se, I do delight in story and character.

The direct ancestor of achievements in Wrath, however, is the system developed by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 achievement system is unique in two ways: the console stores achievements independent of specific games, and all Xbox 360 games are designed to have achievements. The company also intends for players to view and react to others’ achievements through Xbox LIVE gamer profiles. As their website cheerily declares, “Half the fun comes in comparing your own achievements to those of your friends and competitors.”

In Wrath, players will similarly be able to “compare achievements” when they inspect each other, opening up a whole new avenue of uses for the system.

isidora compares achievements

The crucial difference between Wrath and Xbox LIVE is that Warcraft is a fully-fledged social universe with millions of citizens who constantly interact in profound and diverse ways. The revolutionary aspects of the new WoW achievement system will thus be in the realm of player interaction. And now, I will break out my fuzzy pink [Future-Predicting Dice of the Monkey] and prophesy for you what will happen when the WoW community meets the achievement panel. Based on my observations of the current social customs of WoW players, sweeping changes will occur in the following four areas.

1. Guild recruiting

This is the potential change that interests me the most, as I really enjoy interviewing new players for my guild. With the achievement system in place, my interview criteria are going to change. In addition to a chat over vent, I will start requiring a character-to-character interview. The recruit and I will have a seat in the Pig-n-Whistle, and we will mutually check each other out. One of my main goals will be to read the character’s achievement panel and ask interview questions based on what I learn. Even if the achievement panel ends up as part of the armory, it will still be useful to go through the achievements in “person,” if you will.

At the most basic level, the achievement system will allow a guild recruiter to verify the information that a potential new member shares about himself. Up until now, I have had to rely on very limited tools–mostly my own intuition–to decide whether someone could be trusted. The following questions always go through my mind: “Is this player who she says she is? Did she really clear Naxx back in Vanilla WoW?” The achievement system will effectively give me a way to do a background check. In addition, it will also let me get to know the recruit a little better than I might otherwise. Like a series of Twitter updates, individual achievements don’t say much on their own, but considered together, they reveal a lot about a player’s personality and how she chooses to spend her time. If I see that the recruit has many holiday-based achievements in addition to her string of boss kills, I might guess that she would enjoy the silly social aspects of my guild as well as the raids.

2. Bragging rights

As if trade chat weren’t bad enough now, just wait till hundreds of achievement points become available. Any time a new standard of comparison is created, the trolls come out from under their bridges to celebrate. Who’s got the most achievement points on your server? You’ll know soon enough. As an example of the chicanery that might result from the new system, consider the case of a certain infamous druid on Vek’nilash, who I’ll call Stinkleaf. This person was a highly ranked arena player, and he made sure everyone knew it! When Stinkleaf got Season 3 shoulders, he spammed Trade Channel for days calling himself “The Best in the World.” Every time I would run into him in Ironforge, he would harass me for my obvious adherence to PvE: “OMG wut is dat PvE crap, durids R for arena!” Let’s just say I was really, really happy when this person left the server for an easier battle group. We may see similar things arise in Wrath with achievement point griefing.

3. Alt discrimination

isidora and syd worry about discrimination

I have three characters at 70, all of whom took quite different paths to get there. Marfisa, a paladin, was my main all throughout Vanilla WoW. Sydera has been my main and my only raiding character in BC. Isidora, my delightfully evil affliction warlock, is my farming character. When I look through the achievement panels for all three, it’s really clear which characters have been alts and mains at different times. Any character who has been an alt during any phase of the game will look inexperienced. Sydera was only level 40 when BC hit, and of all the achievements in Classic WoW, she’s really only done the Deadmines. Marfi, however, has credit for most of the 5 man dungeons, all the world exploration, and many of the quest-based feats. Isidora, however, has practically nothing. Since the process of awarding credit for old instances is uneven, she doesn’t even have points for the few dungeons I did take her to. What would happen if I wanted to do what I did when BC came out and switch mains? Isidora has no titles–she hasn’t even been to Karazhan. She would look like a colossal n00b, even though the player behind her has a great deal of raiding experience. The achievement system might, for the upper tier of raiders, lock players into sticking with their longtime mains instead of branching out to try something new. That would sadden me, because alternating among my characters is one of the things that keeps the game new and fresh for me.

4. Roleplaying

I’m no RP expert, but I’m fairly confident that the achievement system will offer RP-ers new conversation-starting tools. In order to start a roleplaying style conversation with a stranger, you have to have something to talk about. Players will learn to inspect the folks they encounter and quickly compare achievements. Anything might spark a conversation; for example, you could say: “Hail, slayer of Van Cleef! What news from Westfall?” As you can see, I’d be a terrible roleplayer, but the potential is there. Any time new information is available about a character, the possibilities for story creation increase.

These are only four possible consequences of the new achievement system, and only time will tell if the changes have long-term good or ill effects. Personally, I can’t wait to see them implemented–for me, the good outweighs the bad. However, if I ever want to raid with a new guild as Isidora, I think I’ll have to bring Syd along for the interview too.