What I've Been Up To And Why I Might Start Posting Again

...It's been over 5 years since I stopped posting here.

Because this blog was primarily about WoW stuff, the fact that I stopped playing right before the Shadowlands expansion dropped guaranteed that I wouldn't be posting as much as I used to. In fact, I ended up posting only a couple more lengthy articles before moving on.

 

Now that I'm (tentatively) back, I should at least answer the following questions: 

1. What have I been up to since I stopped posting?

 

2. Why am I posting here again after over 5 years? 

 

3. What's the future of this blog going to be?

My Thoughts on Blizzard Punishing Blitzchung

6/24/25 Update: It's been nearly 6 years and first of all, yes I am still alive. In addition, my views have changed a bit, especially on geopolitics. This article in particular poorly reflects those views to the point I made some revisions to reflect the changes in my views (it seriously reeked of American exceptionalism). I still think Blizzard's punishment was disagreeable because it was excessive punishment and a blatant marketing power move, among other reasons.

10/12 Update: Blizzard has issued an official statement on the matter. Here are my updated thoughts on the situation, which might save reading through the paragraphs of text below:

• I do not think the punishment on Blitzchung and the casters were fair to begin with and believe the revised punishments are still too harsh. I can respect Blizzard trying to keep politics out of their broadcasts, however.
• Like various past outrages, there is a lot of misinformation going around and a lot of malformed assumptions being made based on circumstantial evidence and the like. For example, a statement from NetEase, while concerning because of their partnership with Blizzard, does not necessarily represent the Blizzard official opinion.
• Needless to say, harassment, especially of Blizzard employees who may be in support of opposing Blizzard's official actions, is also unacceptable. Insulting people for what sounds like a dissenting opinion is also unacceptable.
• Based on the above two points among other observations, I am having increasing difficulty believing that some of the people participating in the outrage care about what's happening in Hong Kong and instead want an excuse to be angry with Blizzard or spread bigotry. Spreading misinformation and harassing people is detrimental to winning support for the protests.
• The latest WAN Show is a good example of this problem in action as the hosts Linus and Luke end up arguing with those participating in the outrage in their stream chat, some of whom claim the two are pro-China for the opinions they expressed. Incidentally, I largely agree with what the two of them said. In particular, "Lawful Evil" is a good way to describe what Blizzard did.

---

Less than a year ago, Blizzard made an announcement that was considered to be highly controversial and sparked major outrage within the gaming community. At that time, I personally considered the outrage to be understandable but also extreme in its negativity and lack of reasoning. Since then, I was expecting any sort of major controversy relating to Blizzard to happen about a month from now at the next Blizzcon assuming they failed to meet customer expectations again despite the optimism in their recent earnings report. However, recent actions by Blizzard against Blitzchung, a pro Hearthstone player who expressed opinions in favor of the protests in Hong Kong (which is an opinion I share, for the record) have caused another immense outrage among many people even outside of the gaming community and this time, I find myself in agreement with decrying Blizzard's actions. In this article, I will briefly explain my thoughts on the situation as it's unfolded so far.

One of the first things that I noticed when I read through initial news articles is that not everyone at Blizzard supports this action. This is not only something that's great to hear but some seem to be well aware of this internal conflict. However, others have once again lost themselves to their outrage and are lashing out against anyone who remotely involved with Blizzard's actions, whether they are fellow forum users, Blizzard employees, or the like. I do not approve of this incivility because it willfully harms other people and in my opinion makes the message of decrying Blizzard's actions easier to dismiss as toxic commentary from a vocal minority.

What I considered next was how Blizzard could have handled the situation. While I may be a critic of how they enforce the rules and empower their customers to do so, I can understand that Blitzchung did indeed break the rule that was cited in Blizzard's official statement. However, I am entirely in agreement with comments like this and remarks from Brian Kibler stating that the punishment issued to Blitzchung was far too heavy-handed. Furthermore, I do not believe Blizzard is utilizing some highly intelligent strategy by drawing more attention to the Hong Kong protests while sacrificing their reputation. This is because while their earnings from the Asia Pacific region are only 12% of their total as of last quarter, of which a fraction is actually China (because of countries such as South Korea and Australia contributing substantially to those earnings), there is great potential to grow that and Blizzard would almost certainly want to beyond supposedly releasing mobile games. Therefore, Blizzard has a motive for not ruining their chances to expand the Chinese market.

I conclude by saying that I wholly disapprove of Blizzard's actions here because it seems excessive for a first time violation, among other reasons. Ending my support of them is as easy as not buying another 6 months of WoW subscription since I purchase game time manually. At the same time, I also disapprove of the more negative aspects of those who are outraged because while some may actually care about what's happening in Hong Kong as opposed to hate circlejerking, such individuals don't express themselves in anything resembling a civil or reasonable manner.

Despite my condemnation, I am patiently waiting for an official statement in response to the outrage. This is because I believe there are ways for Blizzard to redeem themselves in this situation, even if others casually dismiss it as a pathetic attempt at damage control. For example, issuing a humble public apology and revising Blitzchung's punishment to a slap on the wrist or removing it entirely would make me a little more content.

 
Finally, when it comes to this blog and its articles, many Blizzard-related articles I post tend to be critique or theoretical discussion that often take the form of a suggestion that I know is unlikely to be considered, so it's fairly likely I will continue to publish such articles. I have also considered branching out into articles on other games for a while and may pursue that path more strongly.

I Probably Won't Be Playing Classic WoW

Classic WoW is coming soon and there's a fair amount of hype going into it. Those eager to play may be doing so out of nostalgia, curiosity, community, because they believe the overall experience to be superior to live WoW, and so on. Among those looking forward to Classic WoW are a few of my friends who have also asked me if I was going to play. While I was tentative at first, I have thought more about why I would want to play Classic WoW by taking external factors and information regarding the release into account. This has led me to a more definitive answer in line with this article's title: It is highly unlikely I will play.

This doesn't necessarily I will never play Classic WoW ever, but I have come up with many reasons as to why I'm not that interested. If the game, by some slim chance, were to change like Old School Runescape has over the years, then my opinion may also change. At the same time, I may also question why such theoretical changes weren't applied to the live version of WoW since I stand by my stance that all versions of WoW are surprisingly similar to each other and, at the very least, not horrendously blemished by fundamental gameplay overhauls or detrimental pay-to-win microtransactions.

In any case, this article will at least serve as a way to respond to my friends looking to get me into Classic WoW by explaining why I personally won't find the game all that enjoyable. This article is not meant to drive other players away from Classic WoW.

My Thoughts on Diablo Immortal (and the Reactions to it)

The Diablo Immortal announcement at Blizzcon has caused a significant stir, mostly of ire, within the gaming community. Controversy of this magnitude compares to the ongoing discussion regarding loot boxes, which I weighed in on a while ago. After seeing what others have to say on the game's announcement and what came after, I thought I might weigh in a bit sooner this time especially since I would like to think I've learned a bit about mobile gaming since I last wrote articles regarding that medium in particular.

My Brief Thoughts on Battle For Azeroth

TL;DR version of this article: Perceptibly underwhelming != Bad

Several months ago, I took a hiatus from writing articles, citing reasons such as moving on to other projects and being critical of the state of World of Warcraft. Now that Battle for Azeroth is here and people have had plenty of time to form thoughts on the expansion, I can't say I'm surprised to see a lot of negativity. However, I'm also disappointed in how wildly negative some views and it doesn't help that there's meme phrases going around like "Beta for Azeroth" that convey such viewpoints. While I could go and address some of the longer posts, particularly on the subreddit, that's time I could be spending writing other articles or, more importantly, working on other projects. Therefore, I'll summarize my thoughts briefly in this article and follow up later with my thoughts on some of the game's content and suggestions regarding reward systems. Take it for what you will and for the double digit amount of viewers who read this article, feel free to ask me for more nuanced thoughts on various aspects of the state of the game.

To start, I largely stand by what I said regarding the expansion in the aforementioned article. I find myself in disagreement with some of Blizzard's design philosophy and believe they didn't address certain issues like the consequences of removing Legion's Artifacts or improving the game's leveling gameplay sufficiently. However, as I also anticipated, Battle for Azeroth turned out to not be a bad idea to play rather casually, which to me translates to focusing on solo content to make gold rather than doing group content.

Battle for Azeroth's start feels remarkably like Legion's in many ways, especially in terms of the content available. There's plenty of World Quests to do and as before they're fairly hit or miss. There's Mythic+ dungeons for players who want to do group content without the potential stress of raiding with many other players. There's a medium-sized raid with a new, larger raid on the horizon. There's a fairly lengthy, reputation-gated questline at level cap for players who wanted some story they can experience solo (and it's not as ridiculous as the Nightfallen questline in terms of reputation requirements or gated by missions, which are big plusses in my book). Other extraneous activities, such as Pet Battles and cosmetic hunting, also got some new content with this expansion, though it never hurts to have more.

In addition to this, there's some new things to do that were introduced with this expansion. Island Expeditions could use polish (shrine buffs seem kind of rare, etc) but are quick to group for and a nice way to blow off some steam. Warfronts can be fun and rewarding especially during the Battle Phase, but only when that phase is available. War Mode seems to have brought back a lot of world PvP and I also enjoy the risk-reward aspect because of the strength of many of the PvP Talents that would probably destroy competitive PvE. All of these activities are also rather extraneous and in the case of Island Expeditions and Warfronts, could use some improvement. I have plans to write articles on both of those features in the future.

However, much like in Legion, the reward systems need serious improvement. Titanforging and other random elements of gearing outside of getting gear to drop are still criticized heavily and I have suggested improvements to address player feedback. The currencies introduced in this expansion (War Resources and Seafarer's Dubloons) are about as useful as Legion's introductory currencies, making me wish once again the game had Justice Points. Character progression especially in later stages of the game could use improvement, not just in regards to the Azerite system, but I find myself in agreement with critique that players don't gain much character power outside of equipment after about level 90 or so. Furthermore, I find myself in strong want of more rewards that are eternally relevant, such as a Paragon Level system. If there's one thing of interest so far in this expansion though, it is Scrapping since it provides an alternative to vendoring useless gear since players can salvage raw materials instead.

To conclude, despite some treating Battle for Azeroth like it's a dumpster fire (un)worthy of comparing to expansions such as Warlords of Draenor or Cataclysm, I think the expansion is better than both and overall okay, but in need serious improvement. Patch 8.1 and 8.2 look fairly promising and assuming Blizzard doesn't do what they did in Cataclysm and cut content or downsize upcoming patch content (e.g. Abyssal Maw and War of the Ancient raids), what players are currently perceiving as an underwhelming start to an expansion may make the expansion more enjoyable.

...In the worst case, Classic WoW is coming soon and there's always similar options available (now if only Final Fantasy 14 actually had a WoW Token equivalent).

Demotivation and Future Articles

For several years, I've been publishing articles at a relatively consistent rate. While it's slowed over time in favor of attempting to improve quality, I've at least tried to get out something every week or two weeks. Given my view count and general lack of regular readers over the entire lifespan of this blog (feel free to comment and prove me wrong if you are a regular reader), I'm not sure if there's anyone who particularly cares that out of seeming nowhere, I haven't published anything for nearly a month. Despite that, I think I owe an explanation for the sudden, extreme decline and this article will provide that explanation.

Some Thoughts on (Blizzard) Selling Cosmetics for Charity

Depending on how well the charity uses the money it receives, supporting charities that have goals that align with your own can be a great thing. One such goal that can generally be agreed to be great is putting an end to cancer, even if it's a specific one such as breast cancer. Personally, I would like to think funding research for curing one type of cancer will ultimately contribute to curing them all. This is also why I think holding events to fundraise without being incredibly wasteful in the process can be great and one way to do so is to partner up and sell a product for charity.

Blizzard is a company that has done this many times over the years such as when they sold a pet to support disaster relief efforts relatively recently. This time Blizzard is supporting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and to do so, they have ventured into new territory since in addition to selling a cosmetic in Overwatch for charity, the cosmetic in question is planned to have a limited run.

Personally, I've felt rather mixed on these promotions since while all the profits made are going towards a good cause, it comes at the expense of continuing to justify Blizzard's pricing model. Since I criticized Blizzard's pricing of cosmetics in the past, I was thinking of posting a follow-up article on the specific topic of selling arguably overpriced cosmetics to raise money for charity. Instead, I contented myself with occasionally expressing my mixed feelings.

What has prompted me to post an article on the topic is that discussion on the sale of the Pink Mercy skin personally bothered me a little more than usual. When I browse a Blizzard subreddit, there's often posts regarding Blizzard's overpricing practices but also ones expressing opposing opinions too. Therefore, I wasn't too annoyed by a recent post defending Blizzard's pricing of the Pink Mercy skin. What did irk me though was how questionable the poster's logic seemed. This detail bothered me so much that I reasoned now's a good time to express my thoughts regarding the topic of selling cosmetics for charity, however awful some may find them.

Loot Boxes are Literally Worse Than Pay-To-Win

Some time has passed since I wrote my article about loot boxes and since then, much has happened. While there have been fewer controversies, discussion on the topic still happens fairly often and there has been some relatively recent news regarding regulating them. By constantly exposing myself to this discussion, I have developed a new perspective on the issue and in this article, I wish to share my enlightenment.

The Worst Kind of Microtransaction

While microtransactions in themselves are a revenue stream the gaming industry shouldn't have since they should be able to make do with game sales alone, there's no questioning that loot boxes are the worst type of microtransaction invented. The randomized rewards are solely meant to cause frustration and artificially lengthen grinds so that companies can line their pockets. In fact, I can't think of a single time I got something good out of a loot box this week since I've only gotten pointless common sprays and rare recolor skins after opening three in Overwatch. It doesn't matter that I got five legendaries last week from just my Arcade loot boxes since life and its experiences is about the here and now. The fact is that right now I'm upset.

Kids Don't Care About Winning Anymore

Once upon a time I used to play soccer and other sports as a kid. It was exhilarating to try to win by accomplishing whatever objective was set before me and collaborating with my team that was usually a circle of friends I never talk to anymore. These bygone days do not exist in 2018 though. Heck, I haven't seen kids doing anything competitive for a solid decade in fact. They're more content with tapping away on their phones or tablets and anyone with half a brain knows there's games for both of those devices that have loot boxes in them. In fact, these games are especially devious since they try to disassociate themselves from their loot box brethren by using other labels like "gacha."

All this matters because of two reasons. The first is that kids do not have the same competitive mindset that I grew up with. The second is that kids are a vulnerable demographic and the games they're playing are luring them into spending their allowance (and possibly more) on these virtual pachinko machines. In fact, I have a colleague whose kids have blown $20 last month on some Fate mobile game just for a chance at some virtual characters that look nice to them. That may not sound like a lot but over a year that's a whopping $240 blown on what sounds awfully like gambling. There's no question this needs to be banned and especially made inaccessible to these young minds.

Games Shouldn't Have Randomized Elements At All

At this point I realized there was something fundamentally wrong with games in general and it goes right back to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. I remembered that those games use dice a lot to determine random results that can ultimately result in a highly frustrating experience. I thought games were supposed to be about having nonstop fun and dealing with adversity is objectively not fun at all.

So why not just remove randomized elements entirely? Any time you could get a critical hit you also might not. I don't remember there being any sense of wonder when opening a treasure chest with a randomly generated reward. The same goes for procedurally generated games that seem to use their systems to produce randomized worlds not to entertain the player but to waste their time as they explore nonstop to find what they want. The truth is there is comfort in consistency.

Final Statements

At the end of the day the title of the article really says it all. I have never felt such frustration from microtransactions than I have when it comes to randomizing my rewards even if I get double my money's worth. Getting stomped by someone with better equipment in a game seems so minor by comparison. Therefore, on the day that this article is published, I announce that I have had a change of heart regarding loot boxes.

Randomness in Rewards - Some (Additional) Brief Thoughts

Randomness in reward systems is something that comes up sometimes when discussing various topics especially those related to WoW. The last time I wrote an article explicitly discussing randomness was many months ago and while it has shaped many suggestions prior to and since then, I feel I wasn't clear enough when making my point of how I think randomness should be used in a reward system. This especially became apparent more recently when discussion of loot box systems intensified and while I said my piece on that particular type of microtransaction, I still didn't make the connection regarding how the random chance to earn some rewards could be addressed. This is because gambling with real life money for entirely random rewards, while a concerning issue, is not the only one that needs to be considered. In this article, I'll briefly express more specific thoughts on where, in my opinion, randomness has a place in a reward system; feel free to skip to the end for a summary.

In the aforementioned article, I mentioned that having consistently worthwhile rewards in addition to the random rewards can help to alleviate the frustration of not earning the latter type of reward. This is an ideal I take very seriously and is the basis of my Valor gear upgrade suggestion since most endgame activities are intended to award Valor and by doing so, one can rationalize not earning Titanforged upgrades since eventually, their gear will be upgraded as much anyways. However, while evaluating the discussion on loot boxes and considering future article topics such as one involving how the Legendary gear system in the next expansion could work, I found there's another way to design around randomness in a reward system and I had already made suggestions on how to utilize it in a way.

The idea is to provide a viable, consistent alternative that provides players with a choice between taking a random chance or something specific. I am able to articulate this better thanks to some criticism I read on loot box systems that specifically mentioned that the critic in question would rather buy goods outright at a premium instead of having to deal with the frustration of not getting what they want. I think this can be adopted in some reward systems like with Legendaries where one could choose between a random Legendary or spend a bit more effort to earn a Legendary of their choice. It is also compatible with my other idea of having decent consistent rewards since the choice between random and specific can be added.

The Summary So Far

This article isn't exactly impressive since I basically spent several paragraphs to express an epiphany I've had for a while. The following consists of my current ideals of how to handle randomness in a reward system:

• Rewards that involve random chance have an upside and a downside. The upside is when one earns the reward, causing positive feedback. The downside is when one fails the earn the reward, causing negative feedback.
• While there's some benefit to intentionally causing negative feedback due to certain psychological experiments, I think dampening the consequences of that feedback will still yield a similar effect. This is specifically in the interest of reducing other detrimental effects such as upsetting players who don't appreciate the psychological manipulation.
• One way to do this is to provide some worthwhile reward consistently in addition to the highly desired reward randomly. This effectively replicates such operant conditioning with a safety net to protect against the frustration of failure.
• Note that this approach will likely require several iterations to get right since opinions on what is a worthwhile reward can vary wildly. Vigilance and aggressive tuning is highly recommended and if all else fails, try to overshoot the rewards a little bit.
• Another way to do this is to provide a relatively costly alternative to earn a highly desired reward. The ideal situation is one where players determine whether it's better to go for the random chance or toil through the alternative method. Factors that make the alternative method more costly could include a relatively time-consuming task or the like but this discussion probably warrants its own article. Needless to say, making the alternative method (nigh) impossible or unreasonable to accomplish makes it pointless.
• There's probably other ideas out there but the two options above are broad in scope and in some cases, intertwine. If I can think of more, I may or may not write articles about it.

Hopefully this provides some clarity on how I think randomness in a reward system should be handled. I wanted to get it out now while I felt inspired to actually write it, meaning this is more of a "bonus" article of sorts and there should be another one on the way soon.

This Article is About Item Level Requirements

Item level is something of an objective measure to determine how powerful a piece of equipment is in World of Warcraft. Because of this, the average item level of all equipped gear on a character is a good way to quickly gauge how powerful the character is. Aside from the fact that much of the depth of optimal gearing is ignored, item level requirements have become a benchmark to determine whether a player is worthy of joining a group. However, since players are free to set requirements to whatever they want, there are many groups that, at least in my eyes, set unreasonable requirements. The latest of these requirement shenanigans occurred about two weeks ago when Timewalking Black Temple was made available:

Normally, since Timewalking Black Temple drops item level 900 gear for level 110 characters, the requirement is on the cusp of being unreasonable since it requires players to be so geared they likely don't need about half of the drops. However, the problem is twofold because BC Timewalking scales down your item level to 141. The scaling mechanic in question nullifies any advantages that having item level 900 or higher gear may have, so therefore the requirement makes no sense. What this listing told me at the time was that the leader might be incredibly incompetent and the idiocy was so hilarious that I tweeted about it. It also serves as a catalyst to a topic I've been wanting to talk about for quite a while: item level requirements.

How to Improve Any Game In 3 Easy Steps

There's no denying the gaming market has many games. They can range from terrible to amazing and each employs a specific set of practices to help ensure success. After gathering information on the gaming industry all of my life, but especially over the last half decade, I've compiled a few simple steps that are foolproof for improving any game. For the sake of posterity, since I suspect this will be relevant for at least a year or so, I will keep the tone of this article as neutral as possible and directed at nobody in particular. So for devs, players, and everyone else, here's 3 ways to improve a game - guaranteed.

1. Manipulate Emotions

Manipulation of emotions is important for keeping a player engaged. As an artistic medium, the job of a game is to typically make the player feel something so that they continue playing and become immersed. That way, even when they're not playing, they'll tend to think of the game and talk about it with their peers. They may even come back for more!

One way to evoke emotion is to add a lot of randomness to the game. After all, while it feels good to win, it only feels good to win intermittently since constantly winning devalues the feeling until there is nothing left. Randomness accomplishes this well since it creates those rare times of something going a player's way, causing them to feel good about it.

In addition, a game should be incredibly difficult to evoke frustration. This strong negative emotion has a high chance of making the experience more memorable. It may even motivate a player to try harder, because they absolutely should be doing that. If confronted on social media by a frustrated player, it is highly recommended that fellow players and developers alike tell them to "git gud."

Finally, it is important to bring a player out of the experience too by putting up roadblocks that stop them from playing entirely. It would be highly irresponsible of the developers to not stop their players every once in awhile. Such a practice also helps to create a feeling of anticipation in the player to the point gaming activities are scheduled intensively. The exception to employing this practice is if the player has money like a responsible person would. If this is the case, it's considered acceptable to charge a few dollars to let them keep playing... at least for a while.

2. Reward Loyalty

Veteran players are always the most important customers since they've spent a lot of money and/or time on the game. The sunk cost fallacy is an important trait of such players since it allows practices such as increasing the cost of various things related to the game. Because the players are so immersed in the game, they won't notice or care about the change and typically attempt to justify it in some way. Furthermore, incredibly stalwart fans of the game will defend such practices against harsh, pesky criticism.

In addition, veteran players should feel like they are powerful and in control so it's important to put more effort into those players' experiences. This is typically done by selling them a form of power or developing content exclusively for them. It may even be lucrative to abandon concepts like new player experience since it wastes valuable developer time and in multiplayer games, new players are basically just fodder meant to sate the needs of superior players anyway. Besides, these new players might not even spend much money if any at all, so they're better off moving on to another game quickly.

3. The devs are always right

When all else fails, remember that the developers of a game can see everything regarding its inner workings. They are basically wizards and there's simply no way a consumer can understand their ways without undergoing the extensive education and ordeals they went through to join their ranks.

Thus, suggestions from some random person on the forums or the like mean nothing since until it's actually added into the game, it's just a bunch of words that can easily be edited or deleted. To put it another way, the final call lies with the developer and it's fine to protect the artistic vision, design philosophy, or whatnot of a game. The process typically involves ignoring criticism and doing whatever they wanted to do anyways, explaining the reasoning for their decision afterwards.

Conclusion

And there you have it. These are tips that will ensure any game is successful. Please for the love of gaming don't actually do any of this.

"Masterwork" Tag Added

It's been nearly five years since I started this blog and within those five years, I've published many articles and created content in other ways. While I've made attempts to sort out the clutter, mostly by reverting content I think was awful for some reason back into a Draft (or Unlisted in the case of Youtube) and tagging the article as such, it's both embarrassing and tedious to do so. During this time I found that I have a tendency to reference specific articles in discussions. For instance, if a discussion on issues with WoW's leveling came up, I could contribute a list of points regarding the leveling experience and how it could be improved.

As a result of the previous observation and because the "Popular Posts" on the sidebar doesn't seem to change much or reflect the posts I would like readers to see, I am adding a "Masterwork" tag. This tag will be associated with some frequently referenced articles that are somewhat decent in some sense, such as how it reflects my opinion about a topic. At the time of this posting, only one article has this tag and I have a few tentative candidates, but hopefully it'll become populated with numerous articles to better sort good articles from the clutter. Once I tag enough articles, I'll add a convenient link in the sidebar that may or may not replace the "Popular Posts" widget.

Feedback, as always, is welcome. Also, a new Legion's Gameplay Loop article is on the way, as are a couple of other short articles related to WoW.

Altoholism in Legion

The pendulum of Blizzard's design appears to have swung back once again as criticism has cropped up about there being too much to do in Legion. It's not as big of a deal for players who focus on their main, though there may be some relatively minor grievances like having to choose to play one spec until their Artifact Knowledge gets very high. For players with alts like myself, however, it can be. Between attunements, class campaigns, and other time-consuming content, the time needed to experience it all multiplies out of control and there's a sense of feeling punished for partaking in increasing replayability in WoW by rolling alts. 7.1 proceeded to address some of the issues by adding an account-bound Order Resource cache and making attunements account-wide, among other changes. However, considering how advantageous it was to have alts in the previous expansion, the criticism continues.

Upon viewing such criticism at this point, I can't help but feel a little annoyed especially due to a lack of consideration for other types of players among other reasons. Because of this, I thought I'd offer some perspective because while I do think that altoholism has its place in WoW and it should be embraced and improved upon, I also don't think the current state of Legion is as alt-unfriendly as people might make it out to be.

April Fooled: Some Thoughts on Pranking People

Another April Fools has come and gone and with it the good, bad, and frustrating have all transpired in their <insert various emotional responses here> ways. As someone who expected it even on the 31st, I wasn't quite caught off-guard by preemptive pranking due to time zone differences and less so on the day in question. However, there's no question that some pranks affected me in a negative way in particular. This applies in a big way when the pranks affect many people with potentially wide-reaching consequences. I was going to write an analysis article shortly after my terrible, brief April Fools joke, but instead I'm going to take some time to discuss some of the good and bad April Fools Day pranks I saw and close with guidelines for future pranking.

A Brief Announcement About Changes

This was going to be a lengthy article about suggesting a mechanic similar to Paragon for World of Warcraft to make up for the repeated lack of articles that would normally be over a schedule arbitrarily defined by me. However, the brainstorming is taking far longer than expected when it comes to perks, meaning the article's about 90% done. So instead, this article's going to be about casting the light of transparency on some things I've been doing behind the scenes. They aren't exactly subtle changes, but it doesn't hurt to make it all official, so here's what's happened:

Over the years I've been tweeting and streaming under the name "Mame_Interest," which served as something of a fusion between two of my commonly used screen names. However, a large part of why I chose this name is because the username "Interest" and variants of it are commonly used. After grappling with the idea of change for a while, I decided it's probably for the best to make the transition sooner rather than later. Therefore, I'm now going under whatever variant of "Interest" I was able to use on Twitter and switched my streaming channel to one I made a while ago but abandoned for the sake of consolidating my activity to a single channel. Links in the sidebar have been updated accordingly (if there does happen to be any error, please let me know).

So far I consider the change satisfactory even though I haven't been streaming at all lately (and have little plan to as of this writing) and wish my username on Twitter had fewer underscores since many of the usernames I wanted to use are held by long-dead accounts that I have no way to free the names of. I guess at the end of the day I can't complain too much since the username recognition factor is a little higher than before.

Anyways, back to finishing that article. Sorry if the tone's even more casual than usual as some semblance of professionalism will return with the aforementioned article.

2016: A New Year's Plans

A new year has begun, marking close to the fourth year since I've started this blog to express my ideas and otherwise make creations I can call my own. Now that the holiday season is largely over and I've managed to find a stretch of time in which I can publish an article, I thought it'd be appropriate to post something of an update on things to come. In the interest of saving some time, I have summarized everything I could think of as briefly as possible below.

The "In Retrospect" series will continue. While I kind of stopped after doing the first part, I was planning on reviewing Wrath of the Lich King and several things happened at once, such as the beginning of my addiction to Old School Runescape and the realization that Wrath of the Lich King had a lot of notable memories to recall and I could never successfully recall enough during recordings  to a point I considered satisfactory (a problem that occurred to a lesser extend with the Burning Crusade video). As to when the next video will come out I am unsure.

Speaking of a Runescape addiction, it is only natural that I consider doing some content related to Runescape. At the moment, it's a possibility of some streaming and analytical articles. However, this is not a guarantee since I would still like to focus on WoW.

Since I haven't been streaming any League of Legends (or Heroes of the Storm or World of Warcraft) lately, I might end up doing playthroughs of one game after another, then uploading them in unlisted parts. These parts would be compiled into playlists for anyone interested in watching some gameplay and I have already created one such playlist of a game I've recently finished streaming. In addition, I've also entertained the idea of making this into a regular series since a set of unlisted playlists of unlisted playthroughs meshes pretty well with my personal nature.

In accordance with the above, I've generally had almost no interest in playing League of Legends. I may have already said this before, but unless something happens in the future that rekindles my interest in the game, I see no reason to publish any content related to the game in addition to not streaming it.

I kind of liked creating personal pieces about more overarching concept such as the gaming industry state, social concepts, and so on. The videos in particular could probably use a significant amount of improvement but I may look into doing more of this stuff (after I finish Wrath in Retrospect ideally).

That concludes the list of announcements. Next article should be something analytical about World of Warcraft since I have quite a backlog of things to analyze.

My Current Ideals (for WoW)

There's no denying that World of Warcraft has a special place in my heart. A huge chunk of this blog is dedicated to analysis and (hopefully) constructive criticism of the game and prior to that, it was one passion project after another taking the form of Wowhead threads. While the passion has somewhat dampened down, I would like to think it has become more refined in a way as time has passed. With this refinement comes some ideals that I'm likely to utilize when publishing analysis or constructive criticism related to World of Warcraft. Here are the current ideals that largely help to drive my analysis and criticism - I want to:

Improve the social state of WoW from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

As I mentioned in this recent article, which is a large part of why I'm writing this article at all, I put great value into the social experience in World of Warcraft because players are effectively content in this type of experience (hence the term, MMO). In terms of quality, I'm generally referring to improving social interactions between players healthier by promoting positive interaction as reasonably as possible. Suggestions that involve increasing the size of the playerbase and providing more incentive for players to socially interact are some examples of improving the social state of World of Warcraft in terms of quantity.

Utilize less drastic changes that preferably do not defy thematic when relevant. A preferred method for doing so is to use existing in-game concepts in some way.

The reasoning for this is explained somewhat in my article on making (more) reasonable suggestions, but the general idea of this philosophy is to attempt to make suggestions that hopefully won't require a lot of work to implement (following the path of least resistance as best as possible so to speak). By utilizing existing concepts, like I attempted in my suggestions for the Hunter class a while ago, it's a matter of copying and pasting at least some amount of existing code, which helps to cut down on the workload. Also, it may help to make suggestions more specific since a given concept will generally be of limited use, which in itself is helpful since players are more likely to make more general (and possibly drastic) suggestions (such as splitting PvP and PvE).

As for the remark on thematic, contradicting thematic or creating a nonsensical one (or perhaps even a reasonable one for nonsensical reasons) may contribute to a reduction in immersion, which can contribute to a lesser game experience (for example, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for Hunters to summon demons).

Err on the side of consumer friendliness when it's relevant (within reason).

This should rarely come up when discussing game mechanics, but occasionally I'll criticize a consumer-unfriendly practice by Blizzard, generally focusing on World of Warcraft-related ones. This is because the practice is likely to be harmful in the long term due to reasons such as players being driven off by excessive pricing of goods and services or otherwise doing what one may perceive as a "cash grab." I would like to think that being consumer-friendly, especially in the gaming industry where there's numerous questionable practices that people may be becoming more wary of as time goes on, would be of great benefit to Blizzard both in terms of finances and public relations.

Respect the competition. Design concepts from other games and such could be of benefit.*

With great power comes great responsibility, and World of Warcraft's dominance in the MMORPG market is a form of great power per se. It can be argued that aside from this dominance, Blizzard themselves benefit from a sizeable, loyal following that effectively empowers them, providing far more leeway in terms of decisions both in and out of game that would be prone to driving away players in an unbiased circumstance, which I am inherently against.

Aside from these undertones of pushing consumer-friendliness and the like, drawing innovation from other titles that could realistically see use in World of Warcraft, such as transmogrification, could be of great benefit and also falls under the above philosophy of using existing concepts. In this case, however, the concepts come from another game.

To put all of this another way, while World of Warcraft is a special game in many ways, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be subject to the standards of game design, marketing, and so on, particularly in the MMORPG context.

Touch upon as many issues as possible (especially smaller ones) that may or may not relate to the above. Having as few issues reasonably possible is important to the health of the game.

World of Warcraft is a huge game that probably has numerous tiny bugs, oversights, and other issues that are left ignored. It is understandable to do this since larger issues take higher priority due to their higher levels of gamebreaking potential. Furthermore, based on the contents of the numerous hotfixes that occur, it's clear that there's some people at Blizzard hard at work on resolving more subtle issues. With that said, I try to point out smaller issues when I see them to help the process along. This philosophy also ensures that I try to vary what I analyze and criticize.

Be as clear and detailed as possible.

While it's understandable that being too detailed may lead to some confusion, I like to think it helps to alleviate it more. Also, it matches my tendency to be wordy.

Focus on addressing what I consider "core issues" with World of Warcraft. (Warning: May cause repetition in articles and other statements from myself.)

Including the aforementioned points that already cover core issues to some degree, these are currently what I consider core issues with the game:

• Poor business practices that harm the game state, company image, etc.
• Some of these issues technically have only an indirect effect on the game itself, but I consider this a core issue because if the company goes under, the game follows.
• A disturbing lack of healthy social interaction and community for a MMORPG.
• Poor player retention due to a variety of reasons including but not necessarily associated with the above, such as:
• A lack of focus on independent/solo "persistent" content, or content that has nearly endless replayability potential that could keep players engaged throughout the week.
• Lengthy intervals between major content additions.
• Numerous flaws that detract from the game being able to hook newer players in from a gameplay standpoint.
• And possibly more...

Final Statements

Hopefully this article provides a look into my perspective. I am aware that I have my biases despite attempts to be objective, so much like how I've refined my passion, these ideals will be refined by changing over time as needed. This means short of a dramatic overhaul of perspective, some edits to this article may be made periodically.

End of September Announcements: Weekday Streaming Digression and Layout Change

Back in May, I attempted a weekday streaming schedule to observe the results of doing so. Despite the fact I'm generally rather undisciplined and don't have a pertinent need to invest into passion projects (like streaming at the moment), I managed to do pretty well over the summer. However, over time, I've found that my focus was changing and my drive (especially to stream) diminishing to the point that I began to cancel some streams without sufficient reason, even though lately there have been some justified reasons for doing so as well. It's also worth noting that aspects of my life have changed and I find I need to accommodate for them. With that said, here's what's happening:

At the moment I'm considering some tentative stream time changes. Instead of starting on every weekday at around 5 PM (which turned into 6 PM over time), I'm going to attempt an earlier around 3 PM start much like when I initially started out. In addition, I'll probably go for streams on Wednesday and Thursday, though there may be times I don't stream at all or stream more frequently, with an emphasis on the former case being more likely to happen in the long run. I will also list the schedule as unofficial to further ensure that streaming is less of a focus (for the time being).

Aside from the reasons I gave above, other reasons for this change include but are not limited to:

• A general lack of desire to increase viewership on my end (for example, I dislike self-promoting too much and usually only link the stream to my friends, who may or may not have an interest in what I'm playing).
• This applies to far more than my stream, but it's most apparent when it comes to streaming since having no one to interact with makes for a rather unexciting stream.
• Streaming gameplay, especially on a set schedule, generally feels more laborious and otherwise stress-incuding to me, reducing my general enthusiasm, which in turn greatly reduces the quality of the stream.
• This especially becomes apparent when I play games off stream for several hours and realize how much fun I'm having. It also makes me wish I'd have streamed the gameplay then rather than at the set time.
• I'm not satisfied with the general quality of the stream aside from the lack of enthusiasm. It's not really a matter of equipment (I can only upload at a specific bitrate anyways unless I'm partnered) so much as my gameplay ability is clearly slipping, especially when it comes to the MOBA games I stream.
• I find writing articles and editing together videos a better method for discussing topics in-depth, which in turn better matches up with my analytical style. This is doable on stream but generally feels like it gets less traction and I find the analysis usually comes in the face of something that happens on stream, which may never be the case.
• This does not mean I'll be uploading videos or publishing articles more frequently, however.

It has to be mentioned this is an issue directly attributable to me, meaning no other individual is at fault.

On an unrelated note, I'm also in the process of adjusting the layout of this blog. I've already increased the width of the post in an attempt to make the body of posts more readable and less pushed out by a sidebar full of ads and other widgets. There may be more changes in the future, such as to the background. I would love to hear feedback on this in particular since the attempt to change the layout was made in response to some criticism on the layout a while ago.

Introducing WoW in Retrospect

"Through rose-tinted glasses, some look back on experiences of the past as pleasant. Others view past experiences through a gloomy haze as miserable and perhaps try to bury it to forget. I personally find the past exceptionally interesting and worth analyzing (with an emphasis on objectivity).

World of Warcraft, both through player experience and the numerous iterations it has undergone over time, has had a rich and storied history, thus catching the brunt of my fascination. Whether the history goes back to as far as Vanilla or a patch ago, let's look at WoW in retrospect."

WoW in Retrospect is a new series I'm hoping to get going. While the general tone of the series is intended to err more towards reviewing the history of some concept in World of Warcraft, the initial few episodes will discuss my personal experiences with World of Warcraft over each expansion, up to and including Warlords of Draenor (for now). I'm not sure if I'll post episodes periodically to here, but for now I'll link to the playlist (with the first part as of this posting). This series is where my time's been going for the last couple of weeks, hence why there hasn't been much activity anywhere during that time. This may be a continuing trend until I finish the initial few parts, but I do have an analytical article in the works, so that's something to look forward to on this side of things.

My Experience With Mobile Games: Crusaders Quest

Why did I write this article? Click here. 

After learning of Puzzles and Dragons, my quest to discover more interesting mobile games that transcended the stereotype of being exploitative and/or unoriginal. Along the way I ran into some interesting ones, such as Terra Battle. However, they didn't catch my interest for long and I usually got bored of the game within a matter of weeks, if not days, hours, or minutes. While browsing the Google Play store for more titles to take a look at, I came across Crusaders Quest, which despite being a real-time action RPG, was "highly popular" with Puzzles and Dragons players. After skimming some reviews and checking other information, such as the download count, I decided to give it a try and have found myself a regular player since, often to the point of firing it up over Puzzles and Dragons.

Much like with my last review, this one will be from the perspective of a player who hasn't spent a single cent on the game, yet enjoys it to the point of playing daily.