Okay, how come every single time I end up talking about Dun Morogh, it also ends up being some kind of kinky innuendo laced sex joke? What is it with dwarves anyway? They like putting some boom in the bedroom, dirty old priests hide out in their backyard, and now I find a mild mannered dwarven hovel that has a basement ripped straight from a trashy harlequin novel!
Imagine it, you come home from the frozen and icy hills of Dun Morogh, just getting off patrol and stopping some random Horde warlock punk from blitzing Kharanos with a rain of fire from atop the roof of the tavern, and the first thing that hits you is the immense warmth of a roaring fireplace. You follow the stairs down around the edge of the interior to find rose petals strewn across the bear skin rug. Following the fragrant path of rose petals, you find they lead you right into a warm cozy bed full of hairy dwarf manliness! Strikes quite a picture right?
Speaking of pictures, there’s a downright creepy one right at the bottom of the stairs with big googley eyes. It almost looks like one of those pictures from Scooby Doo where the moment Shaggy and Scoob wander off, the eyes start following them because they’re actually just the bad guy hiding behind… the… portrait… HEY WAIT! You don’t think that’s what is going on here, do you? Some decked out trashy romance scene set to lure in unsuspecting dwarves into a moment of sweaty dwarf banging while whoever is secretly behind this painting is watching?! Oh god! I knew there were some messed up people in Azeroth, but they usually are fairly identifiable by wearing dark colors or overly dramatic monologues. This is… this is just disturbing. Who do you think is hiding behind that picture? Has to be a dwarf. A gnome would rig up a more elaborate system of self-editing video cameras, and humans… well, they have Goldshire now don’t they?
I can only imagine that this elaborate set up was put together by a fairly lonely dwarf. I mean, in a society that is built on a total of two principles: Studying the past and getting #$%&-faced, you can only imagine that dwarves would be going at it like bunnies whenever they found the chance (Perhaps that explains all the actual bunnies as well.) So what kind of dwarf would want to build this love bungalow just for the purpose of spying on OTHER dwarves getting lucky? Must lead a sad, sad life. I can only imagine this degree of voyeurism is probably illegal too. Which would explain the four guards standing outside to guard this little house. They’re waiting to catch this depraved and disgusting dwarf! That or their taking turns using the umm… “facilities.”
Just in time for Noblegarden, I present you with DEHTA’s newest ad campaign:
You would think it’d be enough for me to mock DEHTA about their shortcomings with Noblegarden last year, but I’ve had them slated for a good mocking for this item in particular for some time. I used to actually wear them around so I could claim that anything I did was ethical – including slaughtering herds of wandering rhinos for their deliciously juicy meats.
His name is Steven Lohan. He works and operates a small tavern in the mage district of Stormwind. He has a brother, he has employees, and he seems to have a good life. But Steven Lohan is a lie. Because in the chaos and panic of the Shattering, as Deathwing destroyed the Park for the sake of plot convenience for when Chris Metzen had no real answer as to why the worgen had go to Darnassus, the man who was once named Steven Lohan was silenced, and without a single soul noticing, vanished from the world in a flash of claws and a small splash of blood on cloth.
Why do I say this? What right do I have to claim that this “man” is not Steven Lohan? Because during Patch 4.0.3a, something happened to good old Steve. He started saying funny things. With an accent he previously never had before. He began barking, “Get gabbin’ or get goin’!” at patrons. No one knew what to make of it – it was such an odd thing for him to say. However, if you asked a night elf about it, they’d know instantly that this new Steven Lohan is not a Stormwind resident at all… BUT A GILNEAN INFILTRATOR! (Dun dun Duuuuun)
No joke, for some reason when Cataclysm hit the live servers, this random guy who no one really had any reason to interact with in the game (I don’t think he even had any dialogue besides the normal click-on-them responses) just suddenly and without reasoning decided to become a Gilnean. This is an excellent argument for the people who want to claim that there are worgen in Stormwind just hiding out in human guise, because well… here’s one.
Granted, there’s the chance that Stevie was a defected Gilnean that struggled against the odds to climb past the Greymane Wall, survived the harsh trek across the haunted vales of Silverpine, the warzones of Hillsbrad, the beastie infested swamps of the Wetlands, and the Dwarf riddled lands of Dun Morogh until he eventually made it to Stormwind where he learned to suppress his accent and worked as a shoe shiner until he had enough money to open up his own tavern. However, things turned for the worse and a warlock bar opened up just up the street, and thus began a life long rivalry as Steven fought and struggled with his family, his alcoholism, his stressful marriage to a Kirin Tor woman (they are very strict) in the Lifetime Original Movie… Howling for Home: The Steven Lohan Story.
That or he was a worgen that showed up and killed the original Steven and took his place. You tell me which sounds more likely.
WARNING: This post contains some spoilers and speculation for the show ‘Adventure Time’.
Somehow, until just a few months ago, the most epic show ever had escaped my field of vision. This coming from a guy who spends no less than 15 hours a week watching animation of some kind. Yet somehow I totally missed Adventure Time! An awesome show from Pendleton Ward (who previously worked on the Misadventures of Flapjack, a show that was very hit and miss with me) that I would simply summarize as a 10 year olds D&D game brought to life through animation, as the adventures of Finn the Human and Jake the Dog quest for glory amongst the strange and delightful Land of Ooo meeting characters like Princess Bubblegum, Marceline the Vampire Queen, and squaring off with their nemesis the Ice King. If that doesn’t pique your interest, don’t be dissuaded – these primitive constructs known as words can do little to properly contain the sheer amount of win that this show possesses.
At first I really just enjoyed the show, it was clever, fun and probably the most energetic thing since I replaced my hamsters water bottle with a can of Red Bull (his wheel is now powering my xbox 360) but then I learned something while surfing around the net. Something that would change my perspective on the entire show and propel it from cool show to a level of awesome not witnessed since ninjas first lifted guitars and unleashed a lick powerful enough to shatter Pangea: Adventure Time is set in a post apocalyptic world.
Did that just blow your mind? This cutesy, crazy and colorful cartoon world that bursts forth with rich childlike wonder actually takes place in a post apocalyptic Earth. Granted, this is never directly addressed in the cartoon thus far. I can only imagine it’s something that Cartoon Network would be hesitant in bringing up (I’ll admit that they have loosened their standards. We’ve gone from Duo being ‘The Great Destroyer’ instead of ‘The God of Death’ in Gundam Wing to Jedi being killed outright in Clone Wars – Granted it’s usually offscreen, but still.) The Word of God still has insisted that The Land of Ooo is very much a post apocalyptic Earth and there are quite a few hints of this throughout the show that reference back to the end of the world and the so called “Mushroom War.”
The Title Card for "Ocean of Fear" shows traces of just some of the strange things dwelling at the bottom of the oceans in the Land of Ooo
Some of the clearest examples is when the main characters, Finn the Human and Jake the Dog, encounter strange things that don’t seem to belong in their world. Stuff like tanks, airplanes, or in the case of the episode ‘The Ocean of Fear’ they find an entire submerged and ruined modern day metropolis at the bottom of the ocean. Finn and Jake never call attention to it, heck they don’t even seem to notice it – it’s a tease for the audience. The fact that a major city that resembles something like New York or Los Angeles is sitting at the bottom of the ocean is probably the most direct they ever came to referencing Earth that was.
Subtler hints to how this could have happened have been tucked in places as well, like in the episode ‘Susan Strong’ Finn finds a tribe of hyoomans (which he mistakes for humans, a shocking development because as of up to this point in the show Finn had been the only human, hence the name ‘Finn the Human’) however it turns out that the hyoomans are… well, let’s just say they don’t turn out to be humans. However, in earlier edits of the episode, on the metal pipe that led down the hyooman tribe’s land, there originally was a radioactive hazard symbol. A possible hint that nuclear radiation is responsible for the creation of the Land of Ooo? Never been confirmed. Yet. But the fact that the world of Adventure Time is simply a silly and strange take on the same concept that brought us the Fallout series fills me with demented glee and horrifically wicked laughter.
A subtle tease from the episode 'The Real You' shows the world missing a large chunk from it. They blew it up! Those maniacs!
The sheer possibilities of this underlying concept makes my mind boggle with possibilities. Every hint, every tease and every murmur from the show’s creative team about it drives me more into the lore of this nonsensical world. Because it’s not nonsensical. It’s our world. Just something happened to make it that way. Talk about a tantalizing tidbit of toon teasery! If there is only one word to describe how much this show’s dark underlying secret, I would have to borrow from Finn’s lexicon and say it’s “algebraic” (which I suppose is slightly more complicated than Reboot’s “alphanumeric”?) If you haven’t already taken a look at this show, I think it is totally worth it for this reason alone (the amounts of insane humor and ‘I can’t believe they got that past the censors’ moments always helps too. Reminds me of the stuff they got away with on Animaniacs sometimes.)
Adventure Time with Finn & Jake is currently premiering new episodes on Cartoon Networks Monday Comedy block at 8pm, with reruns throughout the week.
When you think of infamous liars in history a few notable examples come to mind: Chicken Little, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, actually most politicians – but there’s one name that gets uttered in gaming circles with such utter contempt and cold cutting bitterness that only begins to hint at the deep and tramautizing scars that penetrate our broken gamer hearts: PETER @#$%ING MOLYNEUX. When the British coined the term “wanker” I can only assume it’s inspiration was to epitomize Molyneux’s callous soul. People are so cynical when it comes to Peter’s sugar coated monstrosities that he calls ‘words’ that every time he is interviewed on a gaming site like 1up or Kotaku, the comment thread is spontaneously populated with pixelated cries of ‘Liar!’
And yet oddly enough, this man who has not once delivered on his boasts in full, is responsible for a number of games that I absolutely adore. Black & White was one of the first games I owned for OS X, I spent hours attempting to train my demented God Monkey to pluck devout worshippers from the village and sacrifice them on a mighty blood altar to me (I was in high school and had no friends, I needed to get self esteem from somewhere.) In college, I finally purchased an used original Xbox (a whole week and a half before the 360 launch), and after quickly growing bored with the cultural phenomenon known as the Halo series, I stumbled upon another one of Molyneux’s extremely truncated visions: Fable.
I got to play Fable without knowing the name or the reputation of ‘Peter Molyneux.’ I wouldn’t learn until later that he was responsible for Fable, Black & White and Populous (a game I rented once for the SNES, never figured out how to play, and quickly regretted spending my hard earned once-a-month rental on.) In other words, I was not familiar with how far the game had fallen from the proposed proverbial tree. I didn’t know that there were once machinations of gangs seizing abandoned territories or flourishing villages in areas you claimed from the hands of evil and I had never heard claims of every choice having a consequence. I simply found a fun adventure game that had some twists to it. It was essentially a slightly varied take on the Zelda formula in my eyes and I ate it up. Gathering armor, beating up bad guys, completing quests, and learning to woo a noble woman for the sole purpose of jacking a sword from her bedroom (Morals mean nothing when there are Legendary weapons to be had!) Overall the game was fun. Pure fun. But at the time it was beaten and bruised by gamers who had been promised some Valhalla of a sandbox by Molyneux. People disliked the game so much that they verged on spitting whenever an utterance of its name was heard. That is, until Fable 2 came out.
If you’re familiar with the concept of TV Tropes, you might have stumbled upon this one a few times: “They changed it, now it sucks.” But how can it suck more than the original that no one apparently liked? Well, now people LOVE the first one but only in comparison to the second one. I’m exaggerating some here naturally, there were plenty of fans of Fable 1 that didn’t like Fable 2, there were probably people who didn’t like Fable 1 and LOVED Fable 2, but a cursory glance across the forums would not deliver the message of these people – Fable 1 was amazing now, and Fable 2 destroyed all those dreams that Molyneux, being Molyneux, had foolishly promised once more. The story was short and ended badly, the mechanics are too streamlined, there’s not enough freedom, the emotion wheel is annoying, etc. etc. Heck, this time my voice rang with some of them. See this time I was subject the to Peter Molyneux gilded tongue of many sorrows, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit cheated as I fired a single shot of my revolver and saw the final “boss” plummet. I mean, yea, I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t what was promised.
Two mediocre DLC offerings later, news begins to trickle in about Fable 3. Oh, you become king this time. Oh, your decisions can shape the very face of Albion. Oh, you can pass judgement or interact directly with people’s lives! Oh! A context sensitive ‘touch’ system will allow you to take someone to safety and then allow you to either scold them or reassure them! OH! This is all so very, very simplified in the actual game. Yea, everything Peter promised made it in, in some grotesque Nick Jr. simplified form. The much toted context sensitive touch system become “hold their hand.” The UI became what some would call an ‘overly simplified’ version of Fable 2’s. Then the cries of the internet formed as one cohesive amalgam, opened its vast toothless maw and shouted “Fable 2 was amazing and Fable 3 sucks!”
This is where I became jaded. Not with Peter Molyneux, but with the internet. So I sat down on my Xbox, popped in the Fable Trilogy once more and did the unthinkable – I learned to love all three. I think the epiphany came in the form of noticing something about the games I had never given much thought to – the title. The name “Fable” became a moment of deep contemplation. There was more behind that one word than some other games I had played. “Mass Effect” and “Dragon Age” represent times and events in the narrative’s history, and don’t actually hold a lot of meaning in the actual games story – other than defining something that may have set all these things in motion. Fable on the other hand, gave the games context. Each game actually was a fable. The narrative is told in a way that you could actually see being distilled into a bed time story for the youth of Albion. Of heroes and villains in the long ago, who fought and did battle, and saved the land! That was how it went into playing the games this time. Not thinking about Molyneux’s promised vs. product delivered, not thinking about the game I personally would have made, but just the game for what it is – a game that embodies the sense of Robin Hood or a Grimm Fairy Tale.
Try telling me that if you saw this picture in a children's book you wouldn't buy it.
Oddly enough, the games became very fun at that point. I stopped worrying about bosses, and min/maxing my characters. I explored and got lost in the world, the little details here or there, and of course, the story itself. You didn’t need an epic boss fight at the end of Fable 2 – the trials were in reaching that point. The loss of friends, the gathering of new ones, and all the sacrifices you made to get there. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz didn’t have an epic battle with the Wicked Witch of the West – her trial was in gathering the courage to get there, the brains to figure out to solve the obstacles before her, and the heart to help others instead of simply judging them. What exactly you learned along that road is more so up to you: Vengeance? Redemption? Friends over power? That sometimes you need to use people for the betterment of all? There are a lot of things that can be taken away from Fable 2 depending on how you played through that game. But in the end, the big baddy is nothing but the Wicked Witch. A splash of water in the form of a bullet to the head (or the crotch if your a vindictive little punk like me) and you have fulfilled your destiny. That’s right. Destiny. This whole thing was set in stone by the wheels of fate the moment you survived the prologue, and foretold far before that. For all your choices, for all your actions, this much was true: You were going to kill the villain.
Fable 3 was a very different kind of story, but it was a story. It reminded me a bit of the Man in the Iron Mask actually. The brother of the King is whisked away in the middle of the night to ultimately lead a rebellion and take his brothers place as the new king. The twist is then you find out WHY your brother was so cruel and merciless, and what will you do now that you have inherited that burden? Will you be just as cruel and break the promises made in order to serve the greater good? Will you strive and work to pull of a miracle to keep your promises and save the kingdom? If this were an actual bed time story, I can assure you that I would have the covers drawn tight around me, eyes wide to see if the young hero now king would be able to save his people! Would he be cruel and this becomes a parable? Would be amass the power and wealth to make that miracle true and the story ends a heroic tale? Well, that parts up to us now isn’t it? That’s the fun. Not the boss fights, not the “touch system”, and not which weapons does 3 points of more damage during while in direct sunlight.
I may very well be completely alone on this one, but in the end with a simple change of perspective I went from agonizing over the smallest details and nit picking with “I would have done this” or “They should have done this” to simply sitting down and having fun with a game on its terms and its story (Also, Fable 3 has Simon Pegg. SIMON. PEGG.) Just thought I’d share that little bit of a revelation with you all – and I’ve just gotten started. Heck, I might just have to bust out the old video camera and do some retrospectives on some of the old games on my shelf. If anything, I can deliver a mean rant on the Metal Gear Solid tetralogy. 🙂
Recently I had a new Dungeons & Dragons 4e campaign start, my first in over 6 months that I was DMing and the first time I had DMed a game since actually getting to sit on the player side of the screen. Needless to say it made a big difference. One thing I really wanted to do was patch up some of the holes that my last campaign had as well as some that observed in my gaming experiences.
A big one was going unconscious mid-battle should be a bigger deal than “Oh, I have to start making Death Saves” So I got to searching for a good way to raise the stakes. That’s when I stumbled upon this article on RoleplayingTips.com. It describes a system in which a player sustains an injury when they get knocked out in battle, mostly taken from Dragon Age. This was my starting point for coming up with my system and it doesn’t change too much from this except for a few minor things.
First of all, I’m not a big fan of unnecesary book keeping and taking a straight minus to an ability score creates just that. Every skill associated with that ability score gets temporarily changed, the attacks and damage have to be altered, and if you want to be really mean it can alter your hit point total and number of healing surges as well. Ultimately it just sounded like a big hassle and I wanted to really make it easy. So I built a system around taking a loss that get tacked on to the end of roll instead of the beginning and having to rework a lot because of it.
My second change was I shortened up the list, but doubled up the results. Essentially the list got halved and each injury gives minuses to two things. Some are worse injuries to have than others to be sure, and to get some reprieve I inserted a chance that you would not receive an injury at all. Also, a player can only suffer a maximum of three injuries at a time. I ended up with this chart:
Roll 1d6.
1
Injured Arm
-1 to Attack and Damage Rolls
2
Injured Leg
-1 to Speed and Initiative Rolls
3
Sore Skull
-1 to Perception and Saving Throws
4
Bruised Rib
Gain Vulnerable 2 to all damage
5
Stomach Wound
Healing Surge Value is Reduced by 1/4
6
No Injury Sustained
Granted, that’s just for the Heroic tier. I haven’t decided if it will scale in the other tiers of play but I have a good while to decide that. The next task was to figure out how they can cure their injuries. The easiest answer was that the next time they are in a non-hostile town (I call them Points of Civilization, which I explain to my players as “Somewhere that has a warm bed, a fluffy pillow, and they aren’t trying to kill you.”) however I wanted to get them a quicker solution. So I came up with two ways to cure the injury: Rest at a point of civilization or make a Hard DC heal check.
The Hard DC heal check was in hopes that only someone trained in healing would be able to fix the injuries, but even those who aren’t can stand a chance. The downside to the immediate gratification of healing it through a check is that there is a chance to flub it and make it worse. A failed check will complicate the injury and make it worse, causing the effects to double (or in the case of a ‘Complicated Bruised Rib’ Vulnerable 5 instead of 2) and a complicated injury can ONLY be healed a point of a civilization. Still not a complete show stopper, but it does give it a bit of gamble.
So that’s my current system that I’m using to handle injuries when they go unconscious. It’s a quick and easy system that gives players a few options and still encourages them to not shrug off going unconscious. Thanks for reading!
Film Noir meets Children's Edutainment… What is not to like?
She’s probably one of the longest running gags in edutainment. She’s spawned boards games, a game show, a great cartoon, and one of the world’s most popular a capella songs. She’s the ever elusive klepto queen that is recognized by everyone and yet not a single soul could tell you where’s she is going. Carmen Isabella Sandiego is a staple of almost every 90’s kid out there, and yet I find that she’s probably one of the most taken for granted characters out there. Mostly because no one exactly seems to recognize how much there is to the character beyond a catchy song and that steals things.
I was actually pretty surprised to learn through the years that there is actually quite a bit of backstory to the fashionable and flirty filcher that a lot of people (or at least most people I know) never seem to see or notice. Now there’s actually several different iterations of Carmen’s backstory depending on what you’re watching and/or playing. My favorite is still the animated TV show ‘Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?’ simply because it seems to give the most substantial back story to explaining Carmen’s personality and development.
Probably the most profound analysis of Carmen EVAH (Source: ThreePanelSoul.com)
My favorite thing about Carmen was that she’s not an out and out villain. Far from it. She actually used to be an ACME agent (ACME, for those who don’t recall, was the name of the detective agency that the player in the games, and Zach and Ivy in the cartoon, belong to) and was actually their star agent. By the age of 17, Carmen had solved more cases than any other agent. There are also plenty of hints that since Carmen was originally an orphan before coming to ACME, she and The Chief (who in the cartoon is a giant floating head on a TV screen) had something of a father/daughter relationship during her tenure as an agent, to the point that at one point where Carmen fakes her own death, the Chief becomes severely depressed for a good part of the episode. No, I have no clue how that relationship worked. Especially since there’s a number of theories that the Chief doesn’t really exist and is just an in-universe avatar for The Player, a silhouetted child at a computer who we only see communicating with Carmen through text and voice over. Maybe it’s one of those ‘Can love exist between a man and an AI?’ kind of things. Asimov would approve.
The problem was Carmen was so good at solving crimes, she found them dull. It was because of that sheer boredom and lack of a challenge with stopping crimes, she realized what would be more challenging (and by her logic, more fun) would be to commit the crimes and try not to be caught. Thus Carmen Sandiego left the ACME Detective Agency and formed VILE (Villain’s International League of Evil). It should be of note that there is some dispute on this matter as there are several episodes of the show where she was seen alongside some of the other VILE villains and it is open to interpretation whether or not she could actual be considered the leader of this organization or simply a member of it. It’s also completely possible that VILE has no such hierarchy amongst its members (beyond that of Villains and Henchmen), creating an opposing structure to ACME which clearly had a chain of command. After the formation of VILE, Carmen begins her grand game. Needless to say, she demonstrates repeatedly through the TV show that she is no longer bored. Not even a little.
But she is still sentimental. As shown an episode where after a series of Oz related clues, the gumshoes eventually track Carmen to the orphanage in San Francisco where she grew up, she actually steals the entire orphanage the night before it was torn down. There’s also the show’s finale where Carmen mid-heist accidentally finds a portrait of a woman who matches the photo in a locket she has had since she was a child. The portrait is of the deceased wife of a wealthy man named Malcolm Avalon, and Carmen begins to wonder if these two may have actually been her biological parents. This revelation causes her to make mistakes, get caught by ACME (and quickly escaping again), and being blackmailed by a two-bit former ACME agent thief named Lee (He is stealing TVs when we first see him, not the Statue of Liberty like Carmen would.)
Get Bryan Singer to direct and I'm there opening day.
Carmen also operates to a set code of ethics, she will never steal something that would cause harm to people. She’s not going to jack your college fund, but a priceless painting in a museum? Why not. I suppose that’s a bit simplistic as it could be argued that EVERYTHING she steals will eventually hurt someone in some way. The curator of the museum would be fired, the ACME agents routinely risk life and limb trying to get the stuff back, etc. But I suppose if there is no immediate and apparent harm done by the Mona Lisa vanishing or the pyramids of Giza being airlifted to some unknown location, then it’s okay by Carmen’s standards. However, she does hold to this pretty rigidly, occasionally even assisting the ACME agents in catching criminals that would do direct harm with their heists, getting back to her roots as an agent and taking on the persona of a semi anti-hero for an episode or two of the show.
I was actually surprised how engaging she could be as a character after going back and watching a lot of the cartoon show. She is prideful and teasing to both the agents and the player. She is a fallen angel and temptress of agents, often attempting to goad them into helping her willingly or unwillingly by relying on them to chase false leads in order for her to make the big score. One thing she is not however is a simple female counterpart to Waldo. Waldo gets lost, Carmen hides. Waldo wants to be found, Carmen does not. Granted, they both had a cartoon, and they both are actively sought, but they are so not the same thing only gender bent. That is an insult to the complicated character that is Carmen Sandiego.
I’ve been having a hard time logging in to WoW as late. It’s not a technical problem as much as a motivational one. My Death Knight has become less fun to play, my desire to play a Paladin (which I find to be extremely fun, as I enjoy DPSing, tanking and healing) is at constant conflict with my desire to play a gnome (which I have an ‘unhealthy’ obsession with as some have told me) and most of all I’ve kind of hit a wall with Cataclysm. I’ve completed Loremaster of Cataclysm, I’ve run every dungeon on normal (which apparently does NOT give an achievement this time around), and yet I still feel unprepared for Heroics in terms of experience. It’s an old problem that dates back to Burning Crusade in which I only ran 2 heroics during the entire expansion because I constantly felt unprepared for the ‘incredibly difficult’ heroics (By the time I actually did one, I couldn’t tell you there was a difference in difficulty. Hows that for perception vs. reality.)
It’s been a big topic for a lot of people. Heck, back when talk was first starting about Cataclysm Heroics, I even postulated my own theories which were quickly debunked in the comments thread as my previous experiences with heroics had come at a time when I was playing on the “Worst Server in the Game” (We were dead last for progression of any WoW server for quite some time and our multitude of forum and trade chat trolls were quick to shred apart any and all who dared to roll on that particular realm), so my point of view may have been skewed when I said it was the standard that one did Karazhan to gear up for Heroics.
Ultimately, there has something that has been bothering me since Cataclysm came out with the ‘heroic Heroics’ that has been itching just under the surface and I wasn’t able to put my finger exactly on it. The ‘Heroic Wall,’ as I’ve come to call it, is apparently quite the roadblock for some, and a simple distraction for others. I was wondering why this was and I found myself recalling some of the tips I was given back when I first starting running a Dungeons & Dragons game.
Granted, maybe D&D is not the best mindset to have when talking about the biggest MMO of all time. Still, there is an intent to balance there. A desire to make fights hard, but winnable. An overwhelming desire for things to not be ‘EZ Mode.’ So it’s a jumping off point really. But there was always two golden rules I learned during my time spent as a Dungeon Master: 1. Never punish players for performing simple tasks. (Ex: “I open the door.” “The handle of the door is poisoned, you lose half your health and must make an endurance check every time you do something and if you fail you die.”) and 2. Never take away something your players. (Ex: Rust Monsters need to DIAF.)
That second point is where the catch comes. Wrath of the Lich King was easy for many. Too easy for some. From being able to grind rep without stepping into a dungeon, to being able to buy tier 9 and sweep through heroics like a hurricane decimating a tent that was put on a Florida beach for some psuedo-ironic picture of “roughing it in the wild.” So the step taken for Cataclysm was to invert that, make it hard for many. Too hard for some. But the simple fact remains, if you’ve tasted paradise, it’s gonna suck hard when you get keister knocked back to wandering Nöd. That’s the biggest fault of Cataclysm that I can see. The sheer shock of things being flipped on their head for people.
Of course this has given to dissent amongst the gaming populous, those who enjoy the new difficulty have risen to its defense calling those who have succumb to the shock as being ‘Wrath Babies’ – a term that I have grown to dislike more and more with each time I see it used. Like the string of words ‘Welfare Epics’ or ‘Two Girls and a Cup’ I imagine it will almost instantly invoke a guttural reaction in people in some form or another. The stigma mostly comes as a result of this shock effect.
Imagine waking up to find a fresh great tasting cup of coffee ready for you every morning for two years. Then one day, it stops. It’s gonna take you a bit to get back on track and work out how this is going to affect things. Now you have to allocate time and effort in the mornings to make or get some coffee when you previously didn’t have to. That’s gonna alter your schedule a bit I imagine. Sure, lots of people will just say ‘l2Starbux n00b’ and move on without paying you a second thought (or expending that second thought in an effort to rub in the fact that they can easily rework their schedules to get coffee). Even worse, imagine this is the only way you’ve EVER gotten your coffee. You don’t know where there is a Starbucks, or how to incant the eldritch words to the barrista to summon a fresh coffee from the void (It’s a $%&#ing LARGE and start carrying soda, ya coffee sniffing freaks.) There is no sympathy out there for the ‘Instant Free Delicious Coffee Babies.’
The same thought goes for WoW though. It’s a question of how quick people can adapt to change. For two years, we were accustomed to- Nay, CONDITIONED to – respond to the content with a strictly Wrath view point. Now, all that is wrong. Those who can’t adapt as quick as others are mocked and laughed at, or scornfully thrust out of groups for being ‘bads’ and ‘Wrath Babies.’ Would some degree of transitionary phase hurt? You can’t even say questing is enough of a preparation because unlike Wrath, where quests ranged in difficulty (Yes, some group quests were soloable by a number of classes, others would rip you apart), questing in Cataclysm is disproportionally easy compared to the content you’ll witness at 85. The only group quest I could actually find was the Crucible of Carnage, and wouldn’t you know it, THAT quest is actually a pretty good prep course for dungeon bosses. I never thought I’d say this, but we needed more group quests like that.
While I wish I could say this all just mean spirited trolls and frustrated souls trying to fit in to the new pecking order, in the end it’s all in Blizzard’s hands. This is how they designed the game, this is how they want you to play the game. They’ve been very clear that they like to maintain a very firm hand on the reigns of how things unfold (their success in this matter is up for debate. Lest we recall Chill of the Throne and its predecessor, Sunwell Radiance.) They’ll design the game as they see fit, and those who continue to play will continue to play, those who want to leave will either stick around and complain or move on to greener pastures, and some of us like yours truly will probably find their own ways to have fun.
However, that transitionary phase I sought is coming. Getting some justice points in normals is a great step toward it. It gives incentive to many who are conditioned still to the WotLK POV to run normals and get used to how the dungeons and fights work before jumping straight to Heroics, without sacrificing a chance to build up the necessary currency to get the better gear. In the end, I expect things to ultimately even out. Heroics will become easier as content moves forward. I wouldn’t be surprised that we’ll be AOEing everything down again in heroics when the final raid for the expansion comes round.
Then again, I’ve proven time and time again that I’m terrible at guessing these things.
Back when The Shattering was just beginning to peek in the door, and people who never got a beta invite (Curse you, Blizz. CUUURSEEE YOOOUUU!) were getting their first look at what changes were about to hit the world, a very interesting discussion arose. Amidst the chaos of “Fix this bug Blizz, U lAzy!” and “OMG my class is horrible nao!” many of the lore orientated players (and it never ceases to amaze me exactly how many are out there) took to the task of figuring out exactly how many years had passed since Wrath of the Lich King, or just from the original vanilla WoW (as opposed to Cataclysm Vanilla WoW… Catanilla?)
Oh there were discussions upon discussions about it. Anduin was this age and now he looks this age, how can Van Cleef have died five years ago instead of the three we thought had passed? I simply chopped it up to represent that each expansion was about one year and the original Vanilla WoW was probably 2-3 years from level 1-60. Van Cleef died at level 18 or so, so he would have died as part of the earlier years of Vanilla, where as the assault on Ahn’Qiraj or the beheading of Nefarian would be later on. That’s just me, and I don’t think there’s any official word on exactly how much time passed and in which expansion that extra time fell in. Heck, maybe the Northrend campaign took a couple of years. It’s not like the Lich King’s forces just let the Alliance and Horde walk in.
But after the Shattering and questing around some in the lower level zones I quickly forgot the question of how many years had passed leading up to the Shattering and became more interested in the time span of how much time had passed SINCE the Shattering. There a number of instances that suggested that some manner of time had passed from the Shattering to start of the player experience at level 1. I’m sure you’ll see me bring it up in my Adventures of Vrykerion series as I look at each of the zones but the two most immediate examples of this I can point to are the Goblin starter experience and the Tauren start zone at Camp Narache.
After the Shattering, Camp Narache has gone from a training ground for young tauren to the frontline defense against a potential quillboar invasion. So when did the quillboar decide to hop out of their little valley and began a full assault on Mulgore? Why after the Shattering, of course! But this isn’t a mere “The Shattering happened and now here comes an invasion” oh no. The invasion is over. Most of Red Cloud Mesa is now under quillboar control and they’ve already raised several of their giant razorthorn plants and converted the region into their charred, grey territory. They also killed the elder of Camp Narache, Unaya Hawkwind. So when exactly did all this happen? How fast do the razorthorn plants grow? Has it been weeks or months since the Shattering?
The Goblins probably would have put a nail into this entire mystery if it wasn’t for the fact that we don’t know how long it takes a raptor to reach adulthood. Yes, I’m talking about Subject Nine. She is really the heart of this entire thing. We know that Subject Nine was a baby when the Shattering occurred, Deathwing appeared and Kezan was destroyed. We know that she is a full-grown adult with children by the time we meet her in Azshara. So how much time is that? However long it was, it was also when the goblins were able to establish the Bilgewater Harbor and all the other buildings and structures in the region.
We also know that the Lost Isles takes place at some point after Thrall has returned from Outland but just before he has reached the Maelstrom. So the goblins couldn’t have spent that much time on Gallywix’s slave ship/yacht (or the Earthen Ring took their sweet time in getting to the Maelstrom), so the time jump had to have either been on their way to Orgrimmar or after they arrived there. Honestly, I don’t have a clue on this one. If I had to take guess on the time span between the Shattering and the majority of the game play experience, I’d say it would be at least a couple of months if not more. Maybe it ties in to how long it has been from the original vanilla to catanilla. (Vanillysm?)
Unless somehow time has been shaken loose and not operating in the sense of minutes or hours now that the world has moved on, this is probably going to a reoccurring WTF moment for me going forward from here. Because until I figure this out, I’m going to be trying to piece it together with every little bit of information I can scrounge up while leveling. So as I said, don’t be surprised if you hear me mention this again while writing, because honestly – this is driving me nuts.
You do know that chaining the wagon to the ground doesn't stop anyone from STEALING THE SUPPLIES INSIDE THE WAGON, right?!
Where? The Crossroads, Northern Barrens
Who in Azeroth steals a wagon? No, I’m serious. We’re talking about a fantasy world where zeppelins and helicopters exist, everyone rides around on wolves, dinosaurs, big goats or something, and you can instantaneously receive a full-sized war bear from a mailbox (Behold the power of SCIENCE!). Why would anyone in their right mind actually bother to steal a wagon? I mean, sure I can see the merits in having a wagon. You get to ride one a couple of times in the early horde quests in Kalimdor. But I don’t think the benefits of having a wagon justify the effort to attack a settlement to steal them. So why I ask you would anyone at the Crossroads bother to chain the wagons to the ground? Well, let’s explore this one a bit shall we?
The Alliance Might Take Them
It’s no secret that there is a long-standing tradition of the Alliance playing footsie with the Horde at the Crossroads. They show up, kill the quest givers and any lowbie they cross paths with, and then either a) get bored and leave or b) get their butts handed to them by high level horde. But I’ve never seen them take a wagon. Hell, they don’t even bother with the copious amounts of hookahs lying all over the Crossroads. I would think if anything the hookahs would be a higher priority item since they are smaller and I imagine a whole of a lot more useful on those dull Kalimdor nights (Ask the Night Elves. They know what I’m talking about.)
Not to mention there’s the simple matter that taking a wagon, especially without a kodo or something of roughly equivalent strength to pull it (This ain’t no sissy Gilnean stage-coach! This is a Horde wagon, boy!) it would simply slow down the Alliance and impede their attempts to run away. It’s just not practical, especially since I never see a wagon leave the Crossroads. Oh I’ve seen them arrive, but never leave. So it’s not like it’d be some strategic victory for the Alliance to steal the never-moved-a-day-in-their-lives wagons.
The Raptors Might Take Them
Raptors are smart, I’ll give you that. Smarter than most people tend to give them credit for. But I already discussed the matters of Raptor intelligence in my post about Subject Nine. The simple fact here is that raptors don’t need wagons. At all. They are quick and agile on their own clawed feet. Heck, they could have taken a wagon already, but they just destroyed it in order to get to the silver in the wagon to fund their nefarious doomsday machines. While there may come a day when the raptors find a need for a wagon (Earth mother help us all), it surely isn’t now and rest assured that no manner of iron chain on a peg will be stopping them from taking the wagons. There won’t be a force on Azeroth prepared for what those raptors will unleash on that day.
They Might Just Up and Leave
This idea may be the most nonsensical or the most sensible one depending on how you look at it. On one hand, this may be suggesting that the wagons are somehow possessed, driven by forces beyond the nether to become some kind of twisted wooden Azerothian incarnation of Christine. Shackled to the earth for fear that the wagons’ blood lust would be let loose amongst the innocent souls that dwell within the walls of the Crossroads (and that forsaken that hangs out there too). Woe be to those who think of breaking the chains of bondage that keep these demonic wagons at bay! For the guilt of the HK’s that these wagons bring forth shall be laid at YOUR feet and weigh on your conscience for all time!
The other possibility is that they just might roll away. Because the Barrens is kinda hill-y in spots. However, that seems to be unlikely as the furthest a wagon will roll either forward and stop when they bump into the inn or backwards and bump into the wall. There’s not enough room for the wagons to gain enough velocity from a fully stopped position to do any serious damage to either the wall or the inn, so maybe just a rock underneath the wheel should be sufficient to make sure they don’t roll into the road at some point, but a chain seems unnecessary.
I would consider the demonic possessed wagon to be a stupid suggestion and no reason to chain them down, but that was before I had to help out with a certain possessed bulldozer in Azshara.
What About Marsupials With a Wagon Fetish?
Well, of course not. There’s not really an abundant marsupial population in the Barrens, at least not the type of militants that would be willing to attack the Crossroads in order to haul off one of the wagons. That’d probably take a good size group to do and certainly there can’t be THAT many marsupials in the Barrens that have a wagon fetish. Unless the centaur are marsupials. There might be centaur with wagon fetishes though. Actually that might explain a good deal about the centaur. Or not at all. Wait… what the heck is a marsupial?
Conclusion
I think we can safely say there’s only one real reason to tie these wagons down. The Crossroads is actually a prison for demonically possessed wagons. It’s the only logical explanation. So keep that in mind Alliance the next time you decide to start killing off the only people who are risking their lives to protect all of Azeroth from the evil wagon threat. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Imagine it, you come home from the frozen and icy hills of Dun Morogh, just getting off patrol and stopping some random Horde warlock punk from blitzing Kharanos with a rain of fire from atop the roof of the tavern, and the first thing that hits you is the immense warmth of a roaring fireplace. You follow the stairs down around the edge of the interior to find rose petals strewn across the bear skin rug. Following the fragrant path of rose petals, you find they lead you right into a warm cozy bed full of hairy dwarf manliness! Strikes quite a picture right?
Speaking of pictures, there’s a downright creepy one right at the bottom of the stairs with big googley eyes. It almost looks like one of those pictures from Scooby Doo where the moment Shaggy and Scoob wander off, the eyes start following them because they’re actually just the bad guy hiding behind… the… portrait… HEY WAIT! You don’t think that’s what is going on here, do you? Some decked out trashy romance scene set to lure in unsuspecting dwarves into a moment of sweaty dwarf banging while whoever is secretly behind this painting is watching?! Oh god! I knew there were some messed up people in Azeroth, but they usually are fairly identifiable by wearing dark colors or overly dramatic monologues. This is… this is just disturbing. Who do you think is hiding behind that picture? Has to be a dwarf. A gnome would rig up a more elaborate system of self-editing video cameras, and humans… well, they have Goldshire now don’t they?
VRYKERION 