The Week That Was

(Not to be confused with the Week That Will Be, or The Week That Is)

PvP is, I must admit, a lot more fun when you’re doing it with a group of guildmates who know what they’re doing – random battleground pugs (at least the Alliance-side ones) are awful at least 50% of the time by my calculations (although perception bias may have some small effect on that number).  All the same, I’ve managed to get Fingle off to a good start with her PvP gear (which I’ll probably post about before too long), and I’ve picked up a little how-to about disc priest healing from both my desperate efforts to keep teammates alive in battlegrounds, and the couple of PvE instances I’ve healed since starting to gear her up.

I’ve made some changes to Mingle’s UI based on what I’ve learnt from PvPing on Fingle (and setting up Vuhdo), which helped last night when our main dispeller died early on Yogg-Saron last night, and I had to help make up for her absence.  Also, after last nights raid I splashed out and made both the Ulduar crafted belt and boots for Mingle (the latter using discounted orbs from the guild bank, but the former completely on my own coin) – I’ve been regularly selling the crafted items I’ve been putting on the AH, so I have enough gold to treat myself to something nice every now and then.

I’m beginning to consider dual-speccing Mingle to shadow/disc after my pleasant experiences with Fingle (which is to say healing as disc has been fun, but it’s no comment on battleground pugs).  I’ve been juggling gear to try put together a set to try healing with – admittedly that mostly means trying to find pieces without hit rating, at this stage.  She will have two pieces of t7.5 to start with, and a badge trinket, so she’s not starting off too shabbily.

I’ve been enjoying the “New Races in the Expansion!” rumour that surfaced after someone found new Halloween masks in the PTR data that have been interpreted as evidence that we’ll be playing Goblins and Worgen when we enter the Maelstrom.  My take on it?  I like the thought of Alliance finally gaining a bestial race, and the goblins have been a loooong time coming to the horde.

I’m not sure if I’d roll a goblin to level to 80 (or 90, considering expansions raise the level cap), but I might give a worgen a try (depending on what classes are available – I’m still hanging out for a new dwarf class, of course).  Certainly a goblin would be the ultimate bank alt, but considering all my active toons are on the alliance side, it’d be kind of ineffectual if it’s a horde-only character (which I expect will be the case).  In any case, the idea is covered pretty thoroughly over on Random Ravings of Warcraft, which I recommend checking out.

Finally, this weeks glyph industry report.  The changes I made to my undercut value pushed my average sale price up by over 1g, and while my gross volume of sales was down, the total was up slightly from last week.

For the seven days from 13th July – 19th July:
Total glyphs sold: 612
Average price per glyph: 10.51g
Average sales per day: 918.814g
Total income from the AH: 6431.7g

This would have been better, but there was a huge drop in sales on the last day of the week – weekdays seem to be much more reliable for glyph sales than the weekend, quite possibly due to casual players doing their undercutting thing.  I’ve also trimmed my stock based on what hasn’t sold over the last three weeks, so I’ll see if that makes any difference over the coming week’s sales.

Anyway, time to get my chores done (I’m doing the dalaran fishing daily on all my 80s, cooking daily on Pringle, Kringle and Fingle, and the JC daily on Pringle) so I can decide what I want to do with the rest of my day.

/wave

Time Flies When You’re Having Wipes

Well, after our first week raiding Ulduar, we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and last night we (finally) got down XT-002 Deconstructor.  The night was finished off with Emalon in 25-man Vault of Archavon, to give some people a piece of T8.5.  In 10-man progression we also managed to kill Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Freya, Thorim and Hodir.  A pretty full-on week for everyone involved.

Oh, and we might not have a screenshot of our XT-002 kill, due to an over-zealous engineer mining his body.  Whoops.

I have to say, the adjustment in 25-mans from Naxx to Ulduar is proving pretty painful.  This is especially evident after spending time in Ulduar in both 10-man and 25-man, as demonstrated by the differing progressions listed above.  I’m really hoping we get it together for 25-man a bit more when we start again next week, but I’m a bit ambivalent about it for now.

On a more positive note, today should be the day that Mingle and Dingle become my first champions of the Tournament, which means acquiring squires and starting to collect the Champion badges for fun and profit.  Well, for profit anyway.  (The pets are BoE, and I suspect the AH will be a popular destination for them)

But it’s time to get dailying, and Kringle won’t level himself (unfortunately).

/wave

Perception of Class Imbalance and Social Status: Another Perspective on PvE vs. PvP

I was reading a blue post about class balance, and I realised something: There’s not only two games in WoW (the larger social game of Player vs. Mobs and the smaller, tribal game of Player vs. Player), there’s also two very different mindsets applied to each one.

(A little disclaimer before I start: This isn’t really an opinion piece, more a stream-of-(un?)conciousness, so don’t read too much into it. I’m just trying to get a handle on the differences between how the two games not only affect the game, but also how they affect the players.)

(Beware incoming wall of text – You’ve been warned!)

In PvE, it’s all about a group of players (5, 10 or 25) trying to kill a group of mobs. Each class and talent build has it’s own strengths and weakness, but it comes down to damage done for dps, healing done for healers, and survivability for tanks. Any cries of imbalance are (usually) around imbalance of a class or spec compared to other classes or specs of the same role.

I’d argue that apart from situations where a spec is wildly overpowered (Ret paladin dps immediately after 3.0, for example, or Fury warrior dps currently), differences are more down to play style and player skill. While there are always calls on the forums to buff class/spec X and nerf Y, I believe it’s mostly jockeying for social position, in a manner of speaking – PvE is all about ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them,’ with ‘Them’ in this case being Blizzard as represented by their various NPCs. Buffing your class means you have a better chance to help defeat ‘Them.’

While you may frequently be beaten on the meters by other players, the fact that everyone is working towards the singular goal of Defeat ‘Them’ is by its’ nature inclusive. Certainly, conflict sometimes arises within the group where certain classes are perceived to be underperforming, but this can be due as much to player skill as an under-tuned class or spec, or even unavoidable factors such as a player’s internet connection or computer.

But at the end, everything still comes down to the group combining forces to overcome the challenge set before them in the raid. The cries of nerf/buff are groups trying to ensure that they aren’t being marginalised by other cliques (classes or specs) who would end up replacing their positions in their raid.

However, this effect is really currently seen only at the very highest level of play, especially in the current Wrath endgame where the substantially lower level of difficulty (compared to Sunwell pre-3.0, for example) means that the idea of “Bring the Player, Not the Class” has been able to gain significant traction.

So PvE is about your position in the raid. PvP, however, is where it gets personal.

With PvE, it’s really a game where everyone participating wins (we kill the boss) or everyone loses (the boss kills us). PvP, however, is a game where half the participants will lose, every time. It’s hard to be objective about that, especially if you’re on the losing side a lot.

I think of PvP as being a very tribal sport, as it’s usually based around a core group of 2, 3 or 5 players. (I’m thinking of arena and WSG here; other battlegrounds are far more organic, and while they have a larger population as a whole, successful play usually still comes down to groups forming and reforming during the duration of the game in order to achieve goals – defend a location, assault a location, retrieve the flag and defend the carrier, for example)

PvP is also about ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them,’ but in this case ‘Us’ is a much smaller group, and ‘Them’ is everyone you’re competing with (which is often everyone else in the battlegroup).

Cries of ‘Nerf DKs’ (for example) usually come from players who are directly affected by the comparative power of the class, as opposed to the indirect competition in PvE content. A dps-class whose raid position is replaced by a DK, for example, can simply raid with another group in order to experience progression. In PvP, however, that same warlock may be effectively removed from play by the disparity – the level of player skill and gear required to compensate for a large difference in class/spec ability can be considerable, and difficult to achieve.

So I’d suggest that PvP class imbalances are perceived by players (possibly quite accurately) as something that directly affects their play experience, and their characters’ ability to progress in PvP.

PvE imbalances, by comparison, are perceived more as influences that can undermine your position within the raid, possibly leading to the player needing to change their social group (raid outside the guild, or even change guilds) in order to progress in PvE.

Now I’m not drawing any conclusions with this, nor do I make any claims of accuracy or insight (or even of relevance); I’m just trying to come up with a mental framework for myself to place the two game-types in.

I wonder how other people perceive the two?