Pete at Dragonchasers and Spinks at Spinksville have been debating the pros and cons of WoW’s new leveling experience. Is it too fast? Is it too simple? Does it hold your hands and promise you long walks on a moonlit beach?

In my experience, the leveling seems to be going by fairly quickly. However, I don’t think that the leveling itself is going that much faster than it used to, as much as the new story and the new quests are making it SEEM like it’s going by faster.

Back in the day, when every quest was “go kill 10 kobolds” or “go collect 10 boar gizzards, 5 bear lungs, and 5 eagle beaks”, leveling was tedious. Only 1 in 4 boars would drop a gizzard, which meant you were spending 4 times as much time grinding out those boars to finish the quest. Plus you had FedEx quests that would take you from Westfall to Stormwind to Darnassus and back. Again, it was a time-sink, and it took longer to level. To be very honest, I struggled with boredom in many zones due to this. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the leveling process, but sometimes my short attention span would kick in and I would find myself tabbed-out of the game, looking up reruns of Kids Incorporated on YouTube.

These days, every boar drops a gizzard, the FedEx quests have been removed completely, and the quests themselves are so much more interesting and fun that I’m not constantly checking my xp bar to see how long it is until the next level. I’ll just be playing, having a blast, and suddenly realize that I’m 4 levels higher and need to go train. Am I leveling faster? Well yes, because I’m not distracted or spending my time puttering around at the Auction House. I’m playing through the quests and having such a good time doing it that I forget what time it is or how long I’ve been playing.

All that said, does the new player experience hold your hands a bit too tightly? WoW was due for a “new player experience” revamp. I think they’re counting on folks getting friends/family to play, particularly the social gamers coming from Facebook (just look at the cross-Facebook marketing with the Darkmoon Faire website). Those folks will likely need those extra tool-tips and hand-holding, at least starting out. For WoW and MMO veterans, it does seem like overkill, particularly if you get the “Beginner’s Tool-tips” option turned on (you can turn it off in the Options menu).

The one aspect of the NLE that I’m not very happy with is the simplicity of the low-level dungeons. I ran Deadmines on-level at around level 16 or so, and even with a Dungeon Finder PUG it seemed ridiculously easy. We blew through it in about 20 minutes. Compare that to running it on-level 6 years ago, when you’d likely be in there for 1-2 hours and had to methodically take out every patrol and use heavy CC. That bothers me a bit, because as a new player (particularly one with no previous MMO experience), it’s deceptive in regards to what exactly a dungeon IS. It doesn’t do a lot to teach those new players how to best perform their role in a group or to improve their skills. I would rather see the low-level dungeons at the same difficulty as the old versions, but with tool-tips to walk players through such concepts as crowd control, aggro, and watching for patrols. It’ll be interesting to see how the “Cataclysm Generation” transitions from the 1-60 content to Outlands, Northrend, and beyond.

This past week there have been many, many posts on the WoW official forums regarding reactions to patch 4.0.1 and the new direction of World of Warcraft. It seems to be a very love it or hate it situation; you have players threatening to quit, and others who are absolutely ecstatic over the changes. There is always a middle ground, but typically you only hear from the very vocal and passionate players on the extreme end of both sides.

I do want to say that I understand the feelings that the unhappy players have to a certain extent. After playing a single game for a long span of time, years for most of us, you get attached to it. It’s comfortable. It feels homey. You enjoy playing it, you get attached to your characters, and you have fond memories of all the people you’ve met and fun times you’ve had.

So when that game changes, especially in a big way, it’s disorienting. It feels different, strange, not-so-comfy. Sometimes it can feel downright scary and disturbing.

I’ll admit that I’m a Warcraft fangirl. Note, that’s not the same as a Blizzard fangirl… I don’t really give a whit about Starcraft or Diablo, but I do love the Warcraft universe. Blizzard has done a lot of really good things with WoW. They’ve also done a lot of really stupid things with it. I’ve been burned out, I’ve been frustrated, I’ve declared “that’s it, I’m done with this game!” more times than I care to admit. So when I see people declaring that Patch 4.0.1 is the End of WoW™, I understand those frustrations, even though I don’t agree with them.

There’s two popular sentiments that I’ve been seeing.

This patch is dumbing the game down and making it too easy! Even a six-year-old could play it now! The talent trees are too simple, the builds are all cookie cutter, and some of my old abilities are missing! It feels like WoW Lite!

And…

This patch has made things too hard! My class isn’t the same! I’m a tank and can’t hold aggro any more! I’m a healer and keep going OOM! I’m a DPS and keep pulling aggro off the tank! Change it back or I’m quitting!

Think about those two complaints for a moment.

Honestly, if half the complaints are that it’s too easy and half the complaints are that it’s too hard… maybe the reality is that Blizzard struck the right balance, for once. Fear of change is probably the real culprit here, because there’s no one overwhelming issue that everyone can agree on.

It seems that Blizzard is attempting to return the game to it’s roots with Cataclysm. Not just by returning the game to Azeroth, but by the changes they’ve made to the game’s mechanics. The shortened talent trees are reminiscent of what existed during WoW Classic. The new combat pace isn’t “new” at all… we were doing this during both Classic and TBC. Moving through dungeons slowly, marking mobs, using crowd control, and focusing on skull-x-square… this isn’t new to WoW and it certainly isn’t new to MMOs in general.

As a matter of fact, the WotLK heroic instances were an anomaly in the MMO world, and probably will end up being classified as one of the “stupid” things that Blizzard has done. Currently, heroics are of no use to anyone except to farm badges. They’re not fun, they’re not exciting, and they don’t prepare you with the skills you needed to begin raiding. You could easily go from 1-80 completely solo, then gear up entirely in the LFD tool, never talking to another player and certainly not learning any strategy or teamwork skills other than chain-pulling and AoEing everything.

That’s not good design, and it’s not fair to the players who then get to raids and don’t have basic raiding skills… like following directions or knowing when to get out of the purple glowy poo.

Cataclysm heroics are designed to be that training ground for raiding that we were missing in WotLK, and they’re going to be the “end-game” for those of us who don’t raid. They’re going to be hard. You’re going to have to mark stuff. You’re going to have to discuss strategy. You’re going to have to work with your teammates. You’re going to have to think about what you’re doing. You’re going to have to put the success of the group above your ego.

But I promise you, it’s doable, and it’s worth it. There is no better feeling than going into a dungeon where there is no guarantee of victory, where any number of things could go wrong and your group could wipe horribly, and coming out victorious on the other end. It feels epic, it feels fun, and it makes you a better player.

Those are the kind of moments that you’ll remember 5 and 10 years from now. Those are the kind of moments that old-school players talk about, not just from WoW, but from the original EverQuest and Ultima Online. Those moments helped shape the MMOs that we play today.

Certainly, Blizzard is moving the game forward. We’re finally seeing the world change in a very real and substantial way. We’re seeing the lore progress past the point of rehashing everything from the original three Warcraft games. We’re seeing classes change. We’re seeing the game UI change. At the same time, they’re moving it backward in regards to combat and mechanics, to go back to that old Classic feeling.

Ultimately, the players will benefit. They’ll spend less time perusing websites looking for that one cookie cutter build that will give them +.5% DPS, and more time actually playing the game. They’ll spend time meeting their fellow players, developing teamwork, building their player skills.

Change is here. It’s big and it’s very real. It may seem difficult at first, but give it a chance. Usually the best decisions we ever make in life are when we step out of our personal comfort zone and do things that seem hard.

Blizzard announced this week that they finally implemented the functionality that many had been asking for regarding RealID: A way to turn it off (that didn’t involve Parental Controls), a way to turn off the Friend of Friend feature, and a way to turn off the Facebook integration.

It’s certain that in regards to the WoW community, Blizzard has their job cut out for them. To be honest, the WoW forums are full of trolls, pot-stirrers, and people who can barely type a coherent sentence. It’s embarrassing, and the WoW community has developed a terrible reputation. Terms like “U mad bro?”, “lulz”, “QQ”, “bads” and other silliness is the equivalent of saying “kewl” back in the AOL days. It looks borderline illiterate.

So yes, it is in Blizzard’s best interest to do something about the situation, and it has been long overdue. The pros and cons of RealID have been debated at length elsewhere and that dead horse is glue at this point, but now that the RealID issue has settled down, what can Blizzard do to improve their forums going forward?

• Force people to use one unique identity. I would be perfectly happy if everyone was given a unique username, or barring that, people had to choose one specific character to be tied to. Take away the option to post on alts, and that will be the first step. This will force posters to be held accountable for what they say.

• Add in an ability to rate up/rate down posts, similar to WoWhead or WoWInsider.com.

• Add in a reputation system. Allow posters to give positive or negative reputation to other posters. People that make better, more helpful posts, should be recognized as an MVP. People that troll should be recognized as such.

• Add more community managers, and better enforce community standards. Posts that are well-written and present points and opinions in a constructive manner should be encouraged. Flamers should be warned and banned both from the forums and in-game on the third warning.

• While we’re at it, Blizzard could also use more in-game GMs. Any time that I’ve submitted a ticket or a report I’ve gotten a message that they are experiencing a heavy load. Blizzard could react more quickly and with harsher penalties on people who are spamming [anal] jokes in Trade Chat or who are harrassing other players.

I guarantee that if Blizzard were to implement at least unique identities and the rating of posts (and my understanding is that they are considering doing both), it will improve things drastically. Add in the rest of those ideas and it would be even better! Would Blizzard lose some players? Possibly. But considering the sheer volume of subscriptions that they have at the moment, I doubt that they would be missed. An improved community could likely even bring back many players who tried WoW, liked it, but left because they didn’t want to put up with such childishness.

After Monday’s post with my rants about WoW and LotRO, I really started thinking more about the WoW community in itself, and I think the subject deserves it’s own post.

When you look at the WoW community, the easiest thing to do (and I admit that I’m guilty of this) is to look at trade chat and the WoW forums and draw conclusions from that. While trade chat and the forums are certainly representative of a certain part of the community, it’s definitely not the entire community. To be fair, there’s a huge number of players that don’t participate in the forums or in trade chat, and there are pockets of good communities tucked away in corners of the internet:

• Guilds: Easily the biggest subset, but it seems like most guilds keep to themselves and there’s little interaction between them, unless it’s for raiding alliances.

• Class Websites: Sites like shadowpriest.com tend to have very strong communities and offer a place for players to discuss their classes without the “Ghostcrawler nerfed my class to the ground!” hyperbole… which usually is done to try to bait the devs into talking to that particular post. On class websites, there’s no reason to assume that the devs are watching, so the discussion tends to be more productive.

• Blogs: There’s a WoW blog out there for just about every specific interest, from leveling to making gold to collecting pets. Plus there’s a slew of general interest blogs by players and communities like Blog Azeroth and Azeroth United that serve to put bloggers in touch with each other and encourage group collaboration.

• Special Interest Groups: These groups are all over the place, from the WoW_Ladies on LiveJournal to the World of Warcrafters on Ravelry.com to the folks at Christian Gamers Alliance.

A while back Gordon at We Fly Spitfires wrote a post about the WoW community, and in one of the comments MMOGamerChick wrote that:

WoW is like a big city. Everyone sort of minds their own business, people are rude because the chances of ever running into each other again are slim to nil, and as with any big population you’ll have your share of jerks and crazies.

And as an inhabitant of a big city myself, I think this is a great analogy. When you look at the overall population as a whole, it’s very impersonal and stand-offish, particularly when compared to smaller “cities” like Lord of the Rings Online. Those communities are better because they’re small enough (and well moderated enough) that your reputation matters. You can’t run from a bad reputation because there’s nowhere to hide, so it pays to be a constructive member of the community.

But in big cities there are small pockets of community, usually focused around schools, places of worship, clubs, sports leagues, and so on. It’s unfair to write off the entire city based upon a top-level view. To really get the true picture you need to get to know the inhabitants in their smaller communities and see how they interact with each other and what kind of things they’re doing.

So after thinking about it some more… the sky isn’t falling. Sure, Blizzard has some serious street-cleaning to do on their forums and in trade chat, and there are a lot of unsavory types of WoW players out there. But there are also a lot of really friendly, fun, and kind WoW players out there. It’s just a matter of finding them.

So the new hotness in Patch 3.3 is the new Dungeon Finder system. Level 80’s are running instances like crazy right now to get prepared to beat the living daylights out of Arthas. Even lowbies and alts benefitted to this change, as it’s now easier to get at-level groups for early dungeons, thus rejuvenating the leveling experience.

I’ve been having some interesting discussions regarding how DF will impact guilds, especially smaller social guilds. There seem to be two points of view. Some are very concerned and feel that the DF will trivialize guild groups. After all, you get extra badges, extra gold, and extra loot if you use the DF to find random PUGS, whereas you don’t get those same benefits with guild groups. It’s now incredibly easy to get online and jump straight into a PUG heroic, so why wait on guildies? Now you don’t need a guild to run instances… anybody can do them on their own with no fuss.

The other viewpoint is that the DF tool is actually very beneficial. Most players in smaller guilds stay there for the low-key atmosphere and the close relationships they develop with their guildmates. These players enjoy grouping with their guildies, and will nearly always prefer a guild run over a PUG group. But, on those occasions that there are more than enough guildies online for one group, but not enough for a second (or third) group, this offers a better, more improved system for those odd folks out. Missing 2 or 3 people to fill out your team? Jump in the queue, grab a couple of puggers, and go get some badges. Everybody who wants to instance, gets to instance, but within the guild they keep that same homey atmosphere that they enjoy.

Another interesting idea that I’ve been mulling over is how this will affect gear-progression and raiding. Right now the Dungeon Finder is designed only for 5-man content, but it wouldn’t be a huge stretch for Blizzard to add raiding content as well at some point in the future. If that were to happen, it could reduce the number of players from smaller guilds that “trade up” to large guilds for gear progression and raiding. The guild would be for the social aspect, and Dungeon Finder for the progression aspect. Who said that successful raids can only be run by guilds?

Of course, this is all speculation and we’ll have to see how things work out over the next few months. The Dungeon Finder could be one of the best things to happen to the game… or it could be detrimental to developing camaraderie within guilds. Only time will tell, but at this point I think it will be far more beneficial than anything else.