"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." — J. Edgar Hoover
If you're wondering why this blog has been a bit quiet lately, I regret to inform that just when I thought I had broken the habit... I've started playing World of Warcraft again.
This time round, I've been power-levelling a new warlock toon who has reached level 66 as of writing. And as you can see, she's a bit on the shameless side. Some people still take the issue of female armour a tad too seriously though.
With yet another expansion announced, there's still more to come. It's nothing short of remarkable that a game originally released 10 years earlier - albeit with mid-life upgrades - is still dominating its market segment, despite sagging subscription numbers and challenges from various competitors. Star Wars: The Old Republic & Twin Galaxies, City of Heroes, DC Universe, All Points Bulletin - all have attempted to make a dent in WoW's grip on the MMORPG sector, but have either shut down or gone free-to-play. EverQuest, EVE Online and Ultima Online still have a small but loyal following, but aren't about to knock WoW off its throne anytime soon.
At this stage, there seems to be only one thing that will kill Warcraft, and that's Warcraft itself. Pathfinder Online, which has successfully crowd-funded its way into progress, remains the only potential contender that could take on the Warcraft franchise at its own game.
In the meantime, there'll be new lands to explore, and more demons, ghouls, beasts, elementals and bandits to hack into little pieces. Or in the case of my warlock, burn to a crisp with the utmost glee.
For nearly 4 years, I've played World of Warcraft, which is now into its 4th expansion set. There are times, though, when it seems to crowd out a lot of my other interests - not least of all blogging. Lately I've been making an average of just 1 post a month - despite there being no shortage of things to blog about - and for regular blog readers, it's too long a gap.
I'm currently in the process of completing a quest line for a legendary item - itself just part of a wider unfolding plot in the latest expansion - and it basically involves earning 6000 Valor Points. As of the current Warcraft patch (5.1.0), players are capped at a maximum of 1000 of these points per week, making the completion time a minimum of 6 weeks. I'm already about halfway through, and it's proving to be something of a daily grind - one of the ongoing complaints some Warcraft players have of the game. If it's anything to go by, 1000 Valor Points per week involves something like 5 raids (90 points each per week) and 7 heroic dungeons (80 points daily).
So far, WoW has remained nearly unchallenged for almost a decade now as the definitive, and most popular, MMORPG. Upstarts like Star Wars: The Old Republic, All Points Bulletin and City of Heroes have tried, and failed, to knock Warcraft off its perch. A lot of these competing games have given the impression of reinventing the wheel, or have taken first-rate concepts and let them down with second-rate execution. Even long-established titles like EverQuest and EVE Online haven't exactly set trends.
Yet one project might just break the ice. Paizo Publishing, the publisher of the highly successful Pathfinder RPG books, has exceeded its Kickstarter goal for the forthcoming Pathfinder Online MMORPG being developed in partnership with Goblinworks. The developers claim to have learned from the experiences of previous MMOs, and cite a number of differences setting it apart from what came before it - namely their belief that most MMOs are 'theme parks', and putting more of a focus on the players. More importantly, it intends to do away with the long grinds in questing and crafting that risk taking the novelty out of a game.
In the meantime, I'll try my best not to let one activity get in the way of the others. After all, it pays to enjoy everything in moderation - including a decent beer.
Mists of Pandaria, the 4th expansion to World of Warcraft, is officially to be released on 25 September 2012 - just a couple of weeks from now. After a 4-month break from the game, I've finally re-activated my account in time for the new expansion. So don't be too surprised if things will be a bit quiet here for a short while - especially when power-levelling a goblin rogue to level 85 before the big day.
Patch 4.3, the end game patch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, is finally out now, and it's brought some much needed refreshment to an increasingly stale and repetitive expansion.
They originally said armour customisation wouldn't happen, but it did, and they call it Transmogrification. Players get to keep their Level 85 stats while still harking back to their favoured gear sets.
The new Darkmoon Faire has been rejigged from the ground up - and it looks all the better.
The Raid Finder tool will take the drudgery out of looking for a raid group, although a raid will still only be as good as its weakest member. Going from past experience with the Looking for Dungeon tool, a poorly put-together group can drive up frustration and high player churn.
Alt characters won't take as long to grind through the old zones, but at this stage, two Level 85 characters are enough for me. I marvel at the perseverance of those who've managed to level 10+ toons to 85.
There'll be no political posts right now, in keeping with electoral law guidelines. So, we're taking a detour for now.
In the days of Warcraft 3, the 'pandaren', a race of panda-like people, were created by senior Blizzard Entertainment artist Samwise Didier as an April Fools joke. But by popular demand, they were later incorporated into the game as playable units, only to vanish from the scene in World of Warcraft.
At BlizzCon 2011, Blizzard announced the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Months earlier, the name had been officially registered at the US Patent Office as "digital entertainment", cranking the rumour mill up to 11. There were those who found it inconceivable that the next expansion could be all about pandaren, and as such believed it would be a mobile game of some sort, given that the patent explicitly ruled out any non-digital media such as books, comics or card games.
With the official announcement, the Warcraft fan base was immediately polarised. While some welcomed the announcement as a breath of fresh air and a bit of harmless fun, others felt that the inclusion of the pandaren would forever ruin the game, with some going as far as threatening to cancel their subscriptions once it was released. The most common complaint heard about Mists of Pandaria is that it's one big rip-off of Kung Fu Panda, and that it was a sop to the kiddie crowd and 'furry fandom' subculture.
Rumours also resurfaced of Mists being banned for sale in China, due to supposed laws against depicting the killing of pandas in games after negative reaction from Chinese gamers. That's actually an urban myth, as there are plenty of games in China which depict pandas involved in deadly combat. The real reason behind the negative reaction was the pandaren originally being designed to look like Japanese samurai — invoking still-raw memories of General Tojo's wartime atrocities — and were later changed to look more Chinese.
Personally I'm not too hung up about the forthcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. Yes, there is an element of Kung Fu Panda, but the pandaren were conceived by Didier long before the movie came out. The game mechanics will be further refined for the better. And it seems to offer a bit of light relief after the overall grimness of the last 2 expansions, Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm.
A potentially more serious issue surrounding the Warcraft universe is perceptions of faction bias, whether founded or unfounded. Rumours were leaked a few days after BlizzCon 2011 that in the lead-up to Mists, a major Alliance city would be destroyed by the opposing Horde, triggering a major inter-faction war that would be the main theme of Mists. It provoked an Internet backdraft never seen before in Warcraft circles, prompting defensive responses by Blizzard community managers. Yet it was merely the trigger for an issue that had been brewing for at least a couple of years. Daniel Whitcomb of WoW Insider and The Renaissance Man of the Children of Wrath blog have already explained the issues in depth.
My take on the matter is that the bias is not necessarily intentional, but in comparison to its Horde-side counterpart, Alliance-side quests and lore — especially in Cataclysm — have been rushed through to meet release schedules, and as a result have come across as somewhat flat and one-dimensional. As pointed out by Renaissance Man above, such flaws are a lot more pronounced in interactive media like computer games, than they are in books or films.
If Blizzard gets it right, there'll be some much needed depth to the storyline. Get it wrong, and World of Warcraft could fatally lose a sizeable chunk of its player base, and may even provoke jingoistic fervour that could spill over into real-world violence, as happened with the 2011 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver. For the most part Blizzard has never put out a bad game, and the next Warcraft expansion could put that to the test.
