Warcraft server transfers; let's make a guild
I don't know why I play World of Warcraf (it's such a silly, backwards game) but apparently I do play it. Looks like server transfers will be available soon. For the last two months, I've gone back to Kilrogg (horde, pve) server, where I play battlegrounds 99% of the time. I'm pvp rank 8 now, as if that meant anything at all.
I'm skeptical about the existing guilds there, and it would be nice if people like you would join up so we could smash some faces. Mostly pvp, but we could fight some monsters, too, sure. If you are looking for a guild with lots of rules and a raiding schedule that affects your real-life schedule, then please don't respond.
Here's the requirements:
1) Do not advocate "just hold these 3" in Arathi Basin. This is the main reason my guild would exist in the first place: so I never have to hear that strategy advocated again. If you think you might ever say that line, then please stay away and do not talk to me.
2) Don't be a retard. Normally this would be the #1 requirement, but I guess a retard would be better than someone who advocates counter-productive strategies.
3) Speak normal English. Type out all the words and everything. Don't call things "gay" and don't be racist.
4) Don't be concerned with trivial things like your guild rank.
5) Don't be concerned with obeying or enforcing Blizzard's Terms of Service. I don't care what it says, and I'm just waiting for the courts to prove that they don't either. I don't care if you buy gold, use terrain exploits, use bugs to your advantage, or trade wins with the alliance. You shouldn't care if other people do those things either. Gold buying will be decided by the courts, not by Blizzard. Terrain glitches and bug exploits are what any competitive gamer worth his salt would use if they are available. Trading wins with the alliance is what the current honor system forces you to do. Blame Blizzard for the poorly designed system, not the players for doing what the system forces them to do to be Rank 14. FYI, no I haven't done any of those things myself.
6) Oh, and don't be of the mind "world pvp > battlegrounds."
So if anyone wants to get a decent game of AB going, maybe with a few instance runs on the side, then say so here, and maybe we can join up on Kilrogg or something, and put a guild together.
--Sirlin
I'm skeptical about the existing guilds there, and it would be nice if people like you would join up so we could smash some faces. Mostly pvp, but we could fight some monsters, too, sure. If you are looking for a guild with lots of rules and a raiding schedule that affects your real-life schedule, then please don't respond.
Here's the requirements:
1) Do not advocate "just hold these 3" in Arathi Basin. This is the main reason my guild would exist in the first place: so I never have to hear that strategy advocated again. If you think you might ever say that line, then please stay away and do not talk to me.
2) Don't be a retard. Normally this would be the #1 requirement, but I guess a retard would be better than someone who advocates counter-productive strategies.
3) Speak normal English. Type out all the words and everything. Don't call things "gay" and don't be racist.
4) Don't be concerned with trivial things like your guild rank.
5) Don't be concerned with obeying or enforcing Blizzard's Terms of Service. I don't care what it says, and I'm just waiting for the courts to prove that they don't either. I don't care if you buy gold, use terrain exploits, use bugs to your advantage, or trade wins with the alliance. You shouldn't care if other people do those things either. Gold buying will be decided by the courts, not by Blizzard. Terrain glitches and bug exploits are what any competitive gamer worth his salt would use if they are available. Trading wins with the alliance is what the current honor system forces you to do. Blame Blizzard for the poorly designed system, not the players for doing what the system forces them to do to be Rank 14. FYI, no I haven't done any of those things myself.
6) Oh, and don't be of the mind "world pvp > battlegrounds."
So if anyone wants to get a decent game of AB going, maybe with a few instance runs on the side, then say so here, and maybe we can join up on Kilrogg or something, and put a guild together.
--Sirlin
21 Comments:
At 12:03 PM, Anonymous said…
Honestly, I'd roll a new character to do everything you just said. I've played a priest up to 60, and am in a high end raiding guild currently. And to be honest with you, that character is dead to me now. It changes once every 4 or 5 weeks, and the spec I need to have to raid isn't condusive to PvP. So if my grammar is good enough, please, give me the info. :)
At 12:15 PM, Dan said…
That was me above. If it posts. It's not showing up. ANYWAYS, yes. That sounds fantastic. I'd have to roll a new character, but 60 doesn't take too entirely long to get to. I'd do it, because raiding gets boring. And my holy-spec priest isn't too much fun to play in BGs.
At 12:36 PM, Anonymous said…
Sorry, don't play WoW. I've found that the couple of tiems that I did play it I got really addicted and had trouble stopping, so I kicked the habit. Sounds like a good idea though.
At 3:14 AM, Rhaka said…
While I'm interested, Blizzard's complete and total lack of delivering on their EU - NA server transfers promise they made at launch prevents me from doing so.
At 2:13 PM, Anonymous said…
Maybe I'm retarded, but what is the huge flaw in the "hold 3" strategy?
At 5:21 AM, Unknown said…
So is this going to be a Horde guild?
I would love to join your guild, but sadly I'm Alliance.
-Joel
At 9:24 AM, Dan said…
It's not that there's a flaw in it so much as that's boring. Reaaally boring. He would rather smash people with a five-cap wherever possible than get three and sit there.
Another problem with that strategy is, you have divided your force for the opposing side. Once they figure out that you're just holding, all they have to do is send all of their force at one point. Or try and draw your forces away from one. It's a damn hard strat to pull off.
At 4:22 PM, Sirlin said…
Yes, it would be a horde guild.
I don't know when server transfers are actually starting, but since Blizzard sent out an e-mail poll asking people what price they would pay, I'm pretty sure it's close.
"Just hold these 3" is bad on so many levels:
1) If you execute the stratgy well, you only have a small margin (of points) over the opponent. If anything goes wrong, it's easy to lose the lead.
2) If you execute the strategy well, it will take almost 30 minutes to win, even against a very bad team. Holding 4 usually wins twice as fast (less than 15 minutes). Holding 5 will win in one minute from when the 5th node totally caps, if you can swing it.
3) "Just hold 3" doesn't even keep the enemy honest. Why should they have any defenders at all if you are comitting to never attack them?
4) Perhaps worst of all, "just hold 3" puts you on the defensive. It puts all the cards in the enemy's hands. They can choose when to attack, they can choose where to attack, they can choose how many to attack with. In fact, they could attack with 10, or even 15 players at one node. How will you stop that?
I'll tell you how to stop it, it's very easy. You never create a situation where they could attack with 10 or 15 in the first place. If you constantly harass one of their two bases, they will be forced to defend. Try to make them spend more defenders than you have attackers. I have actually forced enemy teams to defend with as many as 6 or 7 when we sent only two good attackers! If they have 7 at one of their only 2 nodes, they can't attack you effectively anywhere else. With enough harassing, you have a good shot at eventually taking 4 nodes. From this point, the enemy is in total chaos pressing their 5th node can work.
So yeah, "just hold 3" is totally terrible for lots of reasons. People think it's "safe" but actually it's quite risky. The smallest mistake and you are behind, and you give the enemy the choice of when/where/how many to attack with. That's a crazy advantage to give the enemy for no real reason.
--Sirlin
At 4:26 PM, Sirlin said…
Oh yeah, one person mentioned they would actually start a new character on kilrogg. You're better off transfering a level 60, but if you want to start a level 1, look me up as Unholysirlin.
--Sirlin
At 5:15 PM, Anonymous said…
Since I have no horde character, I have made an Orc Warrior on Kilrogg names Jolagh.
I'll be in touch.
At 3:07 PM, Anonymous said…
This isn't related to WoW, but for competitive gaming, Mario Kart DS is gaining some ground. It has scrubs, advanced techniques, and pretty much everything your site covers.
At 11:40 AM, Unknown said…
Because we all know every good game needs scrubs. :P
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At 8:48 AM, Anonymous said…
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-Dawolffman
At 8:31 PM, Anonymous said…
I've been reading your book on PTW, and I'm really enjoying it. That said, I think you miss a good thing about banning certain tactics, namely that of variety. In Guild Wars, for example, a tactic called spirit spamming was the dominant tactic. There were a few other tactics around, for example, smiting. However after a few months of this people became a little too set in their ways, a little too complacent. It was nerfed, and although the tactic was not overpowering, the game was better for ir. Nerfing or banning something in this case can be a way to inject variety into the game, Whether the ban was warranted (and under your criterion, the ban of spirit spam was certainly not). It gives the players a new set of rules to play with. Indeed, just simple little tweaks to a game can inject as much life into a game as an expansion pack can.
At 11:45 PM, jms said…
Good point! Sirlin sort of covered that with his analogy regarding ST--Japan softbanning O.Sagat (widely agreed upon as one of the top three characters in the game, if not THE top character, aside from Akuma) has led to a larger variety of characters being played in tournaments over there, as opposed to here in the US (where he is legal).
Given Anet's aggressive nerfing policy, it's unsurprising that ANY tactic that invalidates numerous other strategies from a PvP standpoint in GW will get the axe.
I like Anet's policy, precisely because I feel that any tactic that tightly constrains the number of other viable strategies in a game deserves a ban. (The difficulty, of course, is knowing WHEN this is necessary.) Again, Sirlin addresses this, claiming that such a policy can lead to a lack of desire to discover the next big strat, as it will be "patched into obsolesence anyway." It would take more words than I care to type here (my own blog perhaps?) to explain my contention with this reaction. But to jump to the conclusion, and steal some more of Sirlin's material: the goal of continuous improvement is handicapped by simply playing to win. The one true style is not ultimately playing to win, but playing to play!
btw, spirit spam, oath shot, spirit spam, x infinity was disgusting, and should have been banned sooner ;)
At 11:51 PM, Sirlin said…
To the poster a few above, a developer "nerfing" something is a world apart from players banning it. They are totally different things. If a developer wants to change the rules of the game, that's fine. That is completely beyond the scope of everything I'm talking about in my book. When a developer presents you with a certain game, and your reaction is "tactic x is too good, let's get the entire community to agree to ban it from tournaments," then that's a different story. That's the kind of situation where it's almost never warranted to ban the thing when you weigh the cost of managing the community, getting everyone to agree, and being right in the first place.
--Sirlin
At 9:33 AM, Anonymous said…
I think Siriln has an excellent point about lack of motivation when nerfs are common, but I also think A-net deftly side-steps this problem.
See, guild wars is divided into 3-month seasons. At the end of the season, the top guilds on the ladder fight each other in a tournament. After this tournament, the entire ladder is wiped, giving everyone a blank slate. Arenanet has said that, aside from glitches, there will be no skill rebalancing until inbetween seasons. You have the motivation for discovering an overpowered tactic because you're guaranteed to be able to use it until the end of the championship. When it is nerfed, everyone else is already on even ground again anyway.
At 1:16 PM, Anonymous said…
funny thing is, that guild wars thing sounds quite a bit like the game "Legend Arena" that I used to play. They made massive changes between rounds, but aside from something being completely and totally unbalanced they left things well enough alone during the round. The problem is, that sort of game tends to experience a LOT of dropoff as the round dwindles and after a round ends. You will never be a top player unless you've been there the whole round from start to finish. You will never be a top player unless you're in one of the top groups. You won't be able to do all that much unless a lot of things line up correctly. If you can't be a top player this round, why play in it? If its clear you have no hope of doing well this round, why not quit? And if you quit, why get back into it next round?
My guild ended up being in a 3 way tie for first, with myself individually being tied for first in individuals in one round. The next round, we fell into obscuirty almost instantly - other guilds got big fast, and slippery slope took effect. Soon after, I (and nearly everyone else from my guild) quit... and I don't think any of us have gone back. Yes, it was a free game, but all games have to retain their good players to improve... and this one lost a big chunk of us.
That wiped ladder system has its advantages, but I'm not sure that too many games can REALLY deal with the loss of players its bound to create. Guild wars is unique in that it is a one time pay and then you're done, but games that thrive on subscription fees can't afford to lose players throughout rounds and at the beginning of new rounds.
But now I've gone WAY off the topic of this thread. But without a copy of WOW, I won't be able to join this guild.
-x1372
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At 5:47 PM, Anonymous said…
Take these two scenarios:
1. In MMO XYZ, there is a certain tactic that is overpowering, and game design as such doesn't quite work with it. For the game to be continued, the tactic needs to be modified to some extent. The development team decides that they'll nerf this tactic into obscurity without asking the permission of the players, sinc ethis situation is similart to waht Sirlin has described in a previous comment.
2. In an almost exactly similar game ABC, the development team decides to ask the community before banning the tactic outright. Of course, some players who (ab)use the tactic will be against it, but the majority want to get rid of it to make it competitive with other, less intense (narrow-minded?) play styles.
What's really the difference between these two? As far as I can see, as long as the ban in the second example is enforceable without too many shades of gray, the second example is much better, since the development team has asked the players what they really want.
Thoughts?
-Dawolffman
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