Merrin’s keyboard clattered staccato, punctuated by the plack of her thumb whacking the space bar and the authoritative tock of the Enter at the end of each line. “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ve got rsync running on that rack. The script’ll shutdown-dash-H when they’re done, and then you can do your thing with the cables.” She pushed her chair back from the table with the KVM switches and the big flat-panel scrolling with file copies, stretching and twisting her arms. “Meantime, do you still have that bottle of Scotch you used to keep under the floor?”

David laughed, “You knew about that?”

“I saw you checking on it, the week of the BC launch, when we kept having switch failures and the CSRs were breathing down your neck about queue times and latency.” She smiled. “I figure you probably still have one. Don’t suppose you’d be willing to get it out now—for old times’ sake?”

He shook his head, still grinning, “Guy can’t get away with anything ’round this place. Yeah, I think there should be a little bit left.” He scooted his way down the aisle and popped up one of the floor-tiles with a suction grip. “Sure enough,” he said. “Aged fifteen years, sherry casks, the whole nine yards.” He drew out the bottle and held it up, the red amber liquid a warm and homey contrast to the sterile fluorescents. Merrin slipped between the racks and slid down to sit against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest against the dry chill.

“It’s weird that it’s ending,” she said, brushing a stray wisp of hair back behind her ear.

He nodded in agreement, and pulled out the cork. “I guess we don’t have a glass.” He started to get up, but she waved him back.

“Don’t bother, just give me that,” she put the mouth of the bottle to her lips and took a long gentle sip. “Hope you don’t mind my cooties,” she added, handing it back.

He smiled, and shrugged, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” he said. He took a drink from the bottle, and looked up. “Looks like Anub’arak is done.” He squinted, “And Cenarion Circle…” He sat down with his feet in the floor well, rested his head against the cool black metal of the rack, and handed the bottle back to Merrin with a sigh.

“To the end of an era,” he said.

• • •

After two weeks with no recruits, Douglas McBride was beside himself with boredom. To hell with military discipline, standing around in the sun outside the Abbey all day is bad enough, but at least the volunteers made for a diversion. He slung the shield off his back and set it against the cool grey stones beside the door, and sat down in the shade of the Stormwind recruiter’s awning. The recruiter herself was asleep at the table, her head cradled on her folded arms and her empty register fluttering gently in the breeze.

The usual hubbub of fighting was blessedly absent; the Marshal knew the footsoldiers were derelict, and that he ought to go and do something about it, but he hadn’t the heart for it today. He sighed, and watched the birds wheel and dart among branches overhead, and the wolf-cubs slinking and tumbling and playing in the grassy fields beyond the Abbey, and decided the world would probably survive anyway. Despite all rhetoric to the contrary, the kobolds hadn’t shown any inclination to assault the Abbey in force, maybe it was all right to just let them have their cave.

Footsteps awoke him with a snort and a start, not realizing he’d been asleep. He scrambled to get on his feet, silently cursing himself for setting a bad example to a new recruit—only…

The new recruit was an Orc.

No. That couldn’t be right. This had to be an invader. Marshal McBride shook his head to clear the cobwebs and groped for the hilt of his sword. But instead of roaring or charging or attacking or—whatever it was Orcs are supposed to do—this one just stepped back a pace, and lifted his open hands in a gesture of calm.

“It all right,” said the Orc. “No…me no attacking.”

The unexpected surprise of understanding an Orc’s speech froze McBride in place, and it took him only a moment to realize the Orc’s intent probably couldn’t have been hostile. He had no weapon—only a much-worn fishing pole slung at his back. He wore no armour—he was dressed in trousers and a tunic of simple homespun cloth, and a pair of too-large leather boots, and a low slouchy hat with a broad brim better suited to tending crops than bashing heads. True, he had apple-green skin and prominent fangs, but his eyes were warm and brown and curious, not red and seething and angry, and his black hair was neatly braided. And he was carrying a basket…

“Me bored, and no humans come’d to vineyard since many days,” said the Orc. His speech was gruff-sounding, accented, but surprisingly clear. “I Grosh, son of Mo’goh. I bring food and we swap news, ha’?” He prised up the lid of the basket, and McBride smelled some kind of delicious warm food inside, like new-baked bread or a mince-pie. He could see the top of a brown earthen bottle, plump with the promise of the Orcs’ superb brewing craft.

McBride relaxed, and took his hand off his sword. He looked around in the vain hope of an explanation—soldiers chortling in the underbrush, or perhaps something more sinister. But there was only the day and the sun and the smell of the wildflowers and the buzzing of bees and the birds overhead, and the faint yipping of wolf-cubs and kobolds in the distance. What harm could it do, after all?

“All right,” he said at last, with a sigh—partly of resignation, but mostly of relief. He unbuckled his sword-belt and set the old thing down beside his shield. “I am Douglas, son of McBride, and that smells bloody delicious.” He gestured to the table where the recruiter was still snoring over her book. “Let’s sit.”

• • •

“Really, Valanar? Really? ‘Naxxanar was merely a setback?’” Keleseth banged his goblet on the table and shook his head in disgust.  “Couldn’t you think of anything more original to say than that?”

Valanar rolled his eyes. “Are you still going on about that, Kel? For the love of the Sunwell, let it rest. It was the heat of the moment.” He looked pleadingly over at Taldaram, who was studiously ignoring them both, peeling grapes one at a time and stacking them like cannon balls on a salver. “Can’t you reason with him, Tal? It’s been literally months, and he just won’t let it go.”

Keleseth grumbled and refilled his goblet from the enormous carafe he’d arrogated to himself at the end of the long trestle. “No I won’t let it go,” he insisted, his eyes struggling to focus. “It was a joke. You made us look like a bunch of clowns in front of those people, and now they won’t ever take us seriously. All I eh…ever wanted,” he sobbed now, wiping his nose on his long, embroidered sleeve. “All I ever wanted was…”

“There, now, brother,” said Taldaram soothingly, looking up from his grapes. “Just calm down, it’s not your fault. It’s going to be all right.”

Valanar crossed his eyes and looked away, beckoning a servant to bring a bucket. Keleseth glared at him through a haze of tears, and gestured vehemently with his goblet, sloshing blood-red wine all down the front of his robe. “It’s not going to be all right!” he wailed. “Nobody’s come in months now. Months, Tal! They don’t take us seriously, and it’s Val’s fault with his stupid jokes and those stupid bouncy balls he threw at them! We’re a laughingstock!”

Taldaram sighed, plucked a grape off his pyramid with a critical eye, and ate it. “Look,” he said. “I know you’re angry with Val, but I don’t think it’s really his fault. Yes, it was a stupid joke,” and here he carefully avoided meeting Valanar’s sharp glare, “…but people kept coming for a long time after he said that.” He ate another grape. “And anyway, it’s not as if Himself has been doing His job so much lately,” he jerked his thumb meaningfully upward toward the top of the citadel. Kel’s eyes widened a bit at this blasphemy, and he looked around furtively.

After a long moment, Valanar took his long-toed silk slippers off the table and let his chair fall forward onto its legs again. He looked at the other two with a conspiratorial glint in his eye. “Hey now. What do you say we get out of here,” he said quietly, “Go into Dalaran, see the lights, do some dancing, have a little fun?”

Keleseth stopped blubbering and gaped. “Are you out of your mind?” he hissed. “You know we’re not allowed to leave! He’ll hear you!” Taldaram sat listening, silent but attentive.

Valanar shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “You said it yourself, Tal. We haven’t seen hide or hair of the Big Guy in ages now. No orders. No presence in the mind, no ravage the living, nothing.” He held up his hands, “Even Queen Crazy upstairs hasn’t been on our cases. If you ask me, he’s napping, but who cares? We could be back before morning and if we pay off the Nerubians downstairs, nobody else needs to know.”

A hush fell over the room as they considered this. The usual knots of guards patrolling the Crimson Hall had been more and more sporadic of late—they could slip out without anyone seeing. Even the Professor’s freakish hulks were gone. The prospect of a night out, doing something—anything—besides sitting around in the Crimson Hall, was an unspoken craving they’d all shared. The silence wore on, as they considered it.

Finally Valanar broke the spell. “Let’s go,” he said firmly. “We aren’t getting any younger just sitting here.” He stood up, and put out his hand to Keleseth with a kind expression. “Come on, brother. Let’s get you a clean robe. You wouldn’t want Lady Jaina to see you with wine down your front.”

“Are you sure this will be all right?” said Keleseth plaintively.

Valanar shrugged. “Who can say? But after all, what have we got to lose?”

• • •

The wind howls bitterly through the abandoned houses of Darrowshire, and the sky is the colour of a morbid stain. The Plague has come and gone years hence, and yet still nothing will grow in that barren earth but the greying stalks of rot-gorse and moss. Pamela doesn’t mind the wind, but she often misses the green grass and the warm sun and the laughing sound of water running down the brook. And her doll is missing again, like always.

She leans against the broken doorframe in her threadbare cotton dress, looking out over the valley. She wishes Father would come back again—but she knows he will not come ’til she has found and mended her doll. She holds up her hands, ghostly in the sallow light, and tries to remember how it had been before…when she ran on the real grass, and played in the real light, and when dolls and Papa and Mama and Jessica all stayed where they were supposed to be.

Pamela is still a little girl, her hair in pigtails, but she doesn’t feel like one. She feels like a thousand years old and cold and lonely, even though she can’t feel the wind that shudders and tears against the rotting lath of the old, forgotten walls. She never learned to count, but she knows it has been many, many seasons since anyone came to help her find her missing doll—her doll, and her Papa. Oh, Father—why must you always go?

The world runs in cycles, she knows. Night follows day, and day becomes night; the rain falls, and the clouds rise. The living die, and the dead rise from their graves. And her Papa goes away to war, and her doll is lost and broken, and living people come from lands far away to help her find them, and mend them, so she can see them—until they are lost again. That is how the world goes—and yet, it has been so long now, so long since Father’s ghost once again kissed her forehead and bid her be brave, and strode away up the road with his grandfather’s rusty sword slung over his shoulder.

Perhaps the world has changed? What if this time, Father really is gone?

Tears sting her eyes, or the memory of tears. Pamela suddenly recalls a thing she had long forgotten—from before the war, before the Plague, sitting at a table in the Harvest festival, with food and music and laughter. She remembers a moment, tussling with her cousin over a bit of ribbon, and knocking a milk jug off the table. It was blue—beautiful, captivatingly blue glass from Theramore—and it fell for what seemed like an eternity and smashed into a thousand blue shards on the floor. She cried, she was so sad and afraid and ashamed. But Mama was not angry—they just swept up the shards into a bag, tossed it in the corner, and it was done.

Where is the jug now? Is it there again, on the table, waiting for the next cycle?

Pamela has tried to go exploring before, and she knows she cannot go far: This, too, is a truth of her world. The further she goes outside the village, the more grey it becomes with mist until she can barely see, and she always gets turned around and winds up back at the old house. But she can go down into the village, she knows, and look among the houses. Angry spirits live there, and they can hurt her if she isn’t careful—but she knows now that most of their power is in fear alone. She wipes at her eyes, although they are already dry, steels her heart, and steps out the door onto the path.

The village well is crumbled and dry. The paving stones are dark with lichen and old blood, and the houses glare at her with windows like black eyes. She creeps quietly along to the house where they held the harvest feast—the door hangs now by one hinge, and inside it is grey and silent. She can see well enough, though; here is the table, there the benches—still miraculously intact. She closes her eyes—remembering how it was then. There was the jug on corner of the table. The beautiful blue glass on the rushes. The bag tossed into the corner—

There. She walks to a place beside the chimney, beside the coal-bucket. There is a lump of burlap there, wrapped up and pinned under the corner of the shovel and tongs. She reaches for it, but she cannot move it—her hand only rustles the dust on the surface. Frustrated, she leans closer, getting down on her hands and knees. Even now, she worries that Mama will chide her for getting dirt on her dress, an old reflex never unlearned. She leans closer.

And there, peeking out from a fold, she sees it—a little triangular shard of blue glass.

So maybe now I too am shattered, she thinks. Perhaps my doll is really broken, and she will remain broken forever. Maybe Father really is gone, and he will not return.

Perhaps it is my turn, too.

• • •

David woke up because it was too cold, and too quiet. The empty Glenmorangie bottle lay defeated on the floor, and Merrin was still asleep, curled up with her head in his lap and his jacket draped over her. Above them was the relative silence of the powered-down server blades, their final backups complete—only the HVAC’s persistent roar remained.

He ached from sleeping against the wall, and was creeped out by a rack with all its machines powered off. He pulled out his cell phone to check the time: Only 9:30. It felt like he’d awoken in another century.

Merrin turned her head and looked up at him with sleepy eyes. “Is it…they…is done?” she mumbled?

He smiled wistfully at her, and nodded. “Yes, I think so. Everything’s shut down.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and made a little noise of complaint. “Umf,” she grumbled. “Guess we should get up and start pulling those cables.” She sat up halfway, swaying a bit, and pulled David’s jacket tighter around herself. “S’cold.”

“Yeah, I guess the HVAC is set for all the machines running. So now it’s really cold,” he agreed.

She got up, still wrapped in his jacket,  squeezed back between the racks to the console, and slumped down in her chair. “Okay, just give me a minute to wake back up, then we can do this.”

David stood up, and stretched, and looked around. De-cabling those racks was going to take all night. And anyway, they weren’t coming to haul the blades out ’til Monday.

“You know what, Mer?” he said. “Screw this cabling thing. I’ve got a better idea.”

She looked at him, askance. “Oh? What’s that?”

“Let’s go dancing.”

When you first sign in and create your character in SW:TOR, you’re treated to some lovely cinematics that set the stage for the conflict between the two factions, the Sith Empire and the Jedi Republic. All the good things you may have read about the quality of the voice-acting and the cinematics are true—they’re visually appealing and compelling, and of course that lovely familiar John Williams score never hurts. After that, you’re set down into the starting area, where you begin to learn the mechanics of moving, talking, looting, shooting, and quests, as you are taught the history and motivations of your class and faction. So far, so good.

Against this rich, immersive backdrop, however, is the jarring voice of the General chat channel. It’s there right from the beginning, and it’s everything you might expect. WoW veterans may remember some of the epic trolling from the General channel in the Barrens, back in the day, and if so the General channel in the Old Republic starting areas will neither shock nor surprise you. It didn’t shock or surprise me, either, but it did spoil my sense of immersion and connection to the story—and since few game companies can weave a story the way Bioware can, I really resented this. Probably the first thing I did to customize my user interface was to find the Chat settings and disable the General channel.

This got me thinking, though, about the experience for new players—those who, perhaps, have not spent the past four years playing WoW as if it were a part-time job. While it’s true that one of the great things about an MMO is that it’s a multi-player game, I believe there may be some virtue in the idea of fine-tuning the tools for social interaction within these multi-player online games: After all, without a sense of story, it’s not so much a game as it is a big, unstructured chat room with graphical avatars—Second Life never really appealed to me for that reason.

Diabolical Advocacy

With that in mind, here’s my thesis: There should not be any global chat channels.

Yes, I really mean none. No General chat, no Trade chat, no zone-wide instance channels. These channels do not promote the social aspect of the game—if anything, they work against it, to the extent that they promote unstructured social interaction without any connection whatsoever to the wider game. While there’s nothing morally wrong about this, it seems to obviate the purpose of the game as compared to, say, a global IRC channel or a busy Facebook wall. And, more importantly, I think you get better quality social interactions from opt-in relationships than you do from an opt-out broadcast medium.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Lara, if you don’t like the trolling and juvenile behaviour in a global channel, just leave the channel.” And yes, that’s always an option—but the problem isn’t just about soothing my tender sensibilities (which are neither tender or nor especially sensible), it’s the effect of global chat on the whole social atmosphere of the game. Why do people stand around in Stormwind and Orgrimmar talking about politics while the rest of the world is empty? Simply put, because apart from dungeons—to which they can teleport—that’s the only place they can find other people to talk to. It’s a self-reinforcing problem, and it’s made possible (or at least worse) by the existence of the global channels.

But How Do I…

So, if we got rid of General and Trade, how would people find and communicate with each other? After all, not all uses of the General channel are bad. Remember running around in Stranglethorn Vale, trying to find the missing pages of The Green Hills of Stranglethorn? I wouldn’t blame you if you’d blocked out that painful memory—but calling out in General was a great way to arrange trades. Need help with a quest? Can’t find Mankrik’s wife? Seems like there’s real value in that channel, and an opportunity for some social interaction.

I’d argue, though, that we’d get better quality social results if, when you wanted help with something, you whispered a particular person or chatted them up in /say, rather than invoking the gods of zone-wide conversation. Even the existence of such a thing is a sharp blow to the illusion of the fourth wall—and MMO’s already have a pretty weak sense of story immersion, most of the time. What I’m really advocating, more than anything else, is a move back toward the game aspect of the MMO. A lot of the trolling and attention-seeking that goes on in those channels could be funneled into things like guild or raid group chats where it would at least be limited to a group of relevant people.

However, even with that, there’s some value in being able to call out,  ”Hey, does anybody have an extra copy of Page 24? I have a 6 or a 10 to trade” to other players in the zone. Or to say, “Oh no, the Alliance are killing all the quest givers at the Crossroads again! Please help!” Or perhaps, “Forming a raid group to go kill that stinky pig Garrosh, whisper me if you want an invite.” These kinds of messages are well-suited to a broadcast medium. One way to preserve the ability to do this, without having a completely open channel, might be to have a “curated” channel, with a special UI for composing prefabricated requests. I could imagine a list of stock inquiries, like “Can someone please help with <list of running quests>” or “Forming a group for <list of quests or local dungeons>, whisper for invite”. A person could still “spam” the channel with these, and some probably would, but without the “reward” of incensed replies (“If this mob is invincible, how come I can see it?” “That’s invisible, you dolt!” “Trolololol…”) interest in doing that would probably pale quickly even for bored teen boys.

Clean Streets

Having said all that, I don’t actually expect Blizzard or Bioware or any other MMO publisher to get rid of global channels. At this point, it’s an institution, and given how much flak they get for changing the weighting of a stat by a tiny fraction of a percent, a big visible change like this would probably earn them a lynch mob. Still, there might be some real value in making the default experience for new characters to start with all those global channels disabled, and let players opt into them as they see fit. Even better, maybe make the global channels require an opt-in each time, so that leaving the zone for which the channel applies would reset your membership.

I think the important point here is that unstructured global communication should have some limits, because its effects on the sense of story, of community, and of immersion, are so pervasive. And while individuals can opt out of those channels, their very generality is what has the effect, and when people who don’t want to listen to ignorant diatribes and ungrammatical trolling leave, it only makes the atmosphere worse. Better, I think, is if the default experience is tuned for optative interactions, and the broadcast medium made secondary.

Some people say that if you don’t want to talk to other people at all, you should just play Skyrim. You should do that anyway—it’s an amazing game. But you don’t have to go to extremes; it’s perfectly possible to have a multi-player game in which the emphasis is on the game, rather than the players. Maybe it’s worth a shot.

For the sake of discussion, I call a dungeon “challenging” for a group of players if there’s some reasonable doubt about whether they can, with a moderate level of cooperation, preparation, and skill, successfully complete all of the encounters in that dungeon. Or, to put it another way, it’s challenging if there’s is a chance that they might fail to complete at least one encounter without extraordinary effort, careful play, and good teamwork.

So when I say that normal 5-player dungeons aren’t very challenging, what I mean is that a randomly-selected group of poorly-geared, unskilled, and uncooperative players, put into a 5-player dungeon by the Dungeon Finder tool, can reasonably expect to complete all of the encounters inside, without any fuss. I can only assume this is intentional on Blizzard’s part, since many players do not seem to be interested in challenges, especially while levelling. (Witness how many people silently drop group at the first sign of a wipe). But it also means that a moderately skilled group of four friends, queuing up in the hope of stretching their limits a bit, is bound to be a bit disappointed.

It was in this spirit that some friends and I found ourselves looking for ways to push beyond the gentle boundaries of the Dungeon Finder, to find something we could do with our growing alts that would let us feel a little less like well-insured steamroller-operators, and more like brave and heroic adventurers facing daunting odds. After all, it’s hard to be thrilled at victory if there’s no chance of defeat.

We tried a number of things, and learned some lessons, which perhaps you might find useful as well.

Lesson 1: Avoid the Well-Trodden Path

One of the first things we noticed is that the “random dungeon” option of the Dungeon Finder tool never puts you anyplace difficult. As much as we enjoyed getting the Satchels of Dubiously Helpful Goods, it quickly became clear that random choice would always prefer instances with mobs around our level. If you look at the list of dungeons available for explicit queuing, you see that LFD almost always opts you into the ones that are at the “green” level of difficulty.

If you’re seeking challenge, then, don’t queue at random: Instead, pick which instances you’d like to go to, and queue for them explicitly. Always favour the highest-level dungeons available to you. A good rule of thumb is: Try to go places where the boss loot requires a higher level than you currently are.

Lesson 2: Take Off the Training Wheels

Even if you queue explicitly for higher-level dungeons, the Dungeon Finder won’t let you get into too much trouble. For example, while it is perfectly possible to zone into Sethekk Halls at level 63, LFD will never put you there until everyone in your party is at least level 65. Likewise, you can zone into the Forge of Souls at level 75, but LFD will not let you queue for it till level 80.

If you’re queuing for the highest-level dungeons you can, and still aren’t finding the kind of excitement you want, skip the Dungeon Finder completely: Once you reach the minimum level to enter, get a friend with the Have Group Will Travel guild perk to summon you to the meeting stone outside your favourite instance, and walk right in. Remember: Your aggro radius may be bigger than you’re used to. Also? You’re crittable, crushable, and you’ll miss a lot. It’s great!

Lesson 3: Run One Player Down

Running Magister’s Terrace at level 65 is a lot of fun, but if you really need to get your pulse rate up, you can also try doing it with a group of four instead of five. Our four-player group made it through all three five-player wings of Tempest Keep with no wipes, but we got destroyed by a very bad double trash pull in Magister’s Terrace (the room just before Priestess Delrissa, if you must know). The whole instance was delightfully harrowing, and we had a blast. Similarly, we had a really rough time of it as a four-player group in Forge of Souls at level 75 (another wipe, this time on the Devourer of Souls, after a fairly close call on James Brown Bronjahm).

So if riding the bottom edge of the entry bracket isn’t edgy enough for you, try cutting your group down a player or two, and see how you can do. You may be pleasantly surprised at how difficult it can be.

Lesson 4: Swim in a Bigger Pond

At level 70, mostly as a joke, the four of us rode out to Karazhan. We figured we’d try a few trash pulls, maybe take a few attempts against Attumen and Moroes, and get the tarnation beaten out of us. After all, it’s a raid instance, with boss-level mobs, intended for ten players. Back in the Burning Crusade days, casual raid groups often took two nights to clear all ten of the boss encounters inside Medivh’s old castle. Also, it’s such a lovely instance, full of great atmosphere and spooky music.

It turns out that four or five level 70 characters can clear the entire raid, including the dreaded Prince Malchezzar (“madness has brought you here to me!”), in a single evening of fun. We started out with four, but it turns out none of us had completed the quest that allows you to summon Nightbane, so we invited another friend along who had done it. We didn’t even wipe, although several times we had some individual deaths.

The lesson here is, don’t be afraid to try something radical: The Northrend raids aren’t available until level 80, but the early Burning Crusade ones will let you in the door at level 68, and nowadays, almost all the attunement requirements have been removed. You will not get very good experience from raid content, but if you’re looking for some harder fights, this is one way to find them. (I should note, though, that we had a harder time in Magister’s Terrace than we did in Karazhan).

Lesson 5: “When I asked if you had BG experience…”

Another way to get a challenge is to step outside the dungeon world completely, and queue up for some battlegrounds. Diving into the level 70-74 bracket with no PvP gear at all was a breath of fresh air. To be certain, we suffered some defeats, but the experience really made clear to me the power of cooperation to surpass the limits of gear. By the time we got to level 74, we all had plenty of appropriate PvP gear, purchased out of the honor we’d won from random battlegrounds.

Unlike the Dungeon Finder, the Random Battleground finder always puts you into a level-appropriate place. So, if you feel like a change, PvP can be a great way to play with your friends and learn some new skills.

Wrapping it All Up

What I hope you’ll take away from this is that, even though running dungeons at their “appropriate level” may not be much of a challenge, with a few like-minded friends and a little motivation, you can still make your own fun, and find some worthy opponents to fight.

Unlike real heroics, there are no achievements for these kind of “hand-made” heroics, except perhaps the bragging rights you get among your guildies for receiving the Northrend Dungeonmaster at level 75. Really, though, the achievements we get points for aren’t as exciting as the ones we make for ourselves: Those are the ones that make for fun and geeky party tales long after the “Achievement Unlocked” window has faded away.

So, go forth, Heroes! And conquer!

Nothing motivates a girl to find work like new steel in her hands and an empty purse on her belt, so I signed me up for a tour with a veteran unit bound for Ashenvale. Seems like no matter how often we beat the Horde back across the Gulch, they find a way to keep up their clear-cutting, so occasionally the tin hats up the Keep get a notion to send them a more serious message. This week, that’s supposed to be us.

We shipped out late afternoon and the schooner made fast trip of it, hauled in so close to the wind you could hear the hull lowing in the water, and we flew out to sea like a smooth stone skipping on a pond. At this point, I’ve been on enough tours that I don’t get much seasick anymore, so I spent most of the week’s journey stalking around above-decks, or slung in a hammock tryin’ to improve my reading, or playing cards with the non-coms in the aft cabin. Won a bit of coin, too, before the Cap’n's mate busted it up on a point of protocol. Some folk got no sense of fun.

Six days, and we put in at Theramore Bay; they mounted the whole unit up on messenger gryphons so fast that we about had windburn by the time they dropped us in the courtyard at Silverwing Hold. This was an experienced crew—nobody I knew, but from the looks, these were boots as been here a time or two. We didn’t talk much, just the little quiet stuff you say to make sure everybody’s got what they need; the priests and a lithe young Druid went quietly through the unit, working their magic to bolster our stamina and protect us from harm; a serious-looking Paladin blessed us with the strength of the Light. We ate and drank a bit, and then the hour was upon us.

They blew the horns and we bustled out the gates into the Gulch. We kept a loose formation, but we rode close together, driving hard down among the rotting old stumps of those bloody great Ashenvale moonwoods the Horde sawed up into timber and sent the Night Elves into such a rage all those years back. It smelled of damp wood and new rain and the sharp reek of machine oil. We surprised a Sin’dorei priest coming round the hutment below the lumber mill; and by way of limbering up a bit, I slipped into stealth and gave her a little rap behind the neck that slumped her over on her riding-worg’s back. She never came out of it; a couple of hunters filled her full of holes and sent her spirit back to wherever it is them Blood Elves go when their strings get cut.

I was impressed by how well our unit worked together, even without a commander to set the paces. I joined a small team that worked our way up the sluice-tunnel toward the flag-hall, and a number of the others fanned out in twos and threes to secure the exit. The flag-hall was defended by a staunch pack of Horde soldiers, so we went to work.

Another rogue and I took it upon ourselves to make life interesting for their healers. We took it in turns to blind, stun, kick, gouge, and otherwise beat the everloving tarnation out of ’em, thereby ensuring they were too busy to spend their time keeping their comrades alive. As satisfying as it is to cut a healer’s strings, we tried real hard to avoid it, since their type tends to get knit up by the Horde’s spirit mender with a full head of power and a safe place to stand. I generally prefer to just make myself a nuisance to them till the folks in the ironmongery can cut loose their support.

We eventually took control of the mill, and tore down their flag as proof of the deed. Their comrades clearly had a similar idea, though; as we packed our way back down the sluice-tunnel and out into the bucking fields, we heard the shouts of the Silverwing guards and a peal of the clarion horn they use to signal an invading force. It was stiff resistance all the way up the hill, but we managed to keep most of our team alive into the safety of the Silverwing postern.

The fight went on for what felt like forever. I didn’t have much time to think about it then, but looking back, it was uncanny how well our unit worked together. A few of us had fought together before, but mostly we were thrown together by circumstances. Despite that, we had a more cohesive fighting team that afternoon than I’ve ever seen before in all my time fighting for the Sentinels down there. We ranged up and down the length of the Gulch, and went toe-to-toe with some brutally skillful and battle-hardened Horde in the tight corners of both their lumber mill and our fortress.  Three times we drove them back, and lost a lot of blood doing it, before they finally yielded the field and withdrew beyond the palisades.

I may not be the finest soldier that ever cut throats, but I’ve sure seen a lot of raw recruits come and go in defense of the Gulch. Compared to them, this veteran force was like something from another world. Nobody wasted time chasing down enemies far from the zone of control. Nobody hollered pointless obscenities, nor even talked much to speak of, except what it took to keep our tactics clean. Our offensive and defensive units stuck together and fought hard, and in the end, we scored a decisive victory.

I’m beginning to get an inkling why some of these veteran fighters are working hard to get commissions for special-force units, instead of taking whatever quick-pay work they could have off the posterboard down Old Town. Much as I like paying work, it sure was nice to get in with a group of folks who know the value of sticking together and keeping focus on the mission. It’s gonna be hard to go back to some of those raw press-gang mobs I mostly get in with; maybe it’s about time I talked to Old Man Shaw about a bit of special-force work myself.

]]> http://rootbranch.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/down-the-rabbit-hole/feed/ 2 laranyacat http://rootbranch.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/death-is-only-the-beginning/ http://rootbranch.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/death-is-only-the-beginning/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 03:47:26 +0000 Lara http://rootbranch.wordpress.com/?p=624 Continue reading →]]> A few minutes ago, I reached level 85 on my Rogue. I was pleased to clear this particular hurdle using the experience gained from a decisive victory in Eye of the Storm, but in fact I was close enough that even a loss probably would have been enough to tip me over.

Now that she’s reached the level cap, Kivrin is once again at the bottom of her bracket. This time it’s a much deeper gulf than in the leveling brackets: No longer can I queue against people who have experience disabled; this time, everybody’s (effectively) a twink, and I expect my first several weeks at 85 are going to be a painful lesson in being ruthlessly curb-stomped by an endless succession of Tauren paladins wearing about a hundred item levels worth of better gear than I can possibly afford to equip right now. Actually, who am I kidding? It won’t just be the Taurens, nor just paladins: Everybody hates rogues almost as much as they hate warlocks. They all remember getting one-shot by Ambush when they were level 19, and it is a murderous hatred indeed.

Kivrin’s a leatherworker, and I would love to have her craft the starter leather PvP gear, but the materials requirements for those are pretty murderous themselves. In general, I feel that the crafting professions in WoW have approximately zero fun-to-effort ratio; but I think leatherworking is probably the worst of the lot. I’ll probably write another post on the subject of what’s wrong with the leveling experience for crafters in WoW, but suffice it to say it’s probably on par, frustration-wise, with being trapped in a six-hour Alterac Valley battle in which the first thing anybody does is capture FWGY.

A few weeks back, I broke down a few statistics about battleground wins and losses and concluded that, at least in my experience Horde and Alliance are pretty evenly matched. I’m happy to report that this is still basically true, but there is one notable exception. Here are my numbers as of level 85:

As you can see, the numbers are still pretty close to even, except in Strand of the Ancients. I don’t know exactly why, but for some reason we got pretty badly rolled in Strand: 35% means we are losing two games for each one we win. Now, with a sample size of only 23, we can’t take this too seriously, but it’s still interesting how that one battleground stands out from the others. Similarly, we can’t say much based on my seven Isle of Conquest games so far, even though it does look fairly reasonable.

Despite having learned to dread the load-screen for Strand of the Ancients, I’m moderately proud of having returned 112 flags in Warsong Gulch (killing flag carriers is my pet project in the Gulch, and that number leaves out all the times I killed the EFC and someone else got the return). I’ve also died 889 times in return for 11,892 honorable kills, which just goes to show you how liberal the game is about whom it gives credit for an HK.

All in all, it’s been a fun process leveling this way. If you’d asked me six months ago, could I imagine leveling a character via PvP, I’d have called you crazy: Now that I’ve done it, though, I must confess my views have completely changed. As much as I detest the behaviour of the other players in battleground chat, I had quite a lot of fun doing this, and I plan on playing more PvP in the future. Whether I will continue with Kivrin, or start a new character to play through the ranks, I’m not sure — I’ll see where the mood takes me.

Meanwhile, I’m pleased that she’s arrived at 85 with the full 4000 Justice Points and 4000 Honor she’s permitted. Unfortunately, 4000 Honor doesn’t translate into very much gear: Each dagger costs 2450 Honor, and most of the interesting gear pieces cost 1650. Even if I trade in all my Justice points for Honor, I’ll only have an effective budget of 6500 Honor to spend on gear: Take away 4900 for main-hand and off-hand, and there’s only 1600 left for other slots. I wanted so much to save up and have gear waiting for me, but that just wasn’t possible: The materials for crafted gear were beyond my budget and farming time, and you can’t buy anything with Honor that you can’t yet equip. Ergo, I lost a lot of Honor in conversions to JP, buying vanity items I’d rather have skipped, and buying trade goods to sell on the AH for cash.

Despite those limitations, though, I think she’s come out pretty well. It remains to be seen whether I will find the upgearing process too much to bear (in which case I will probably bail on her and start over), or whether it will be quicker than it seems. Only time will tell.

A lot of raids at this point devolve into a lot of confused talk. The raid leader is lecturing people about not standing in fire, and kvetching about situational awareness and slow response times. A few people are giving excuses. There’s the usual contingent who are trying to suggest a strategy-change. Some are bandying superstitious beliefs about positioning. Everybody’s pretty bummed. People start going AFK for a snack, there’s confusion about who’s resurrecting whom, half the raid’s missing buffs of some kind or another, and even the quiet players who sit in the back and do their best are starting to get tired of what appear to be the same mistakes happening again and again.

This is the kind of stuff that eventually breaks raid groups.

Breaking the Cycle

So how can we stop the cycle of making mistakes, feeling awful about them, arguing about what to do, and halfheartedly trying again? For some groups, I guess, the solution is to just put their heads down and keep trudging away, and eventually they get past the rough spot and things feel better. I think maybe that’s one of the things that distinguishes what we might call a “hardcore” raiding team from a more casual one. I don’t think it’s such a great approach for those of us who are more casual, for whom the fun of winning may not compensate as much for the misery of losing.

Whether in game or out, I take it as an axiom that we all learn best by doing. So naturally, when we’re trying to get better at an encounter in game, the best thing we can be doing with our time is working on the encounter. Reading up on strategies, knowing the subtleties of your class, and taking the time to be prepared with gear, gems, enchants, and consumables are all useful and important, but what really makes it come together is actually working on the encounter.

Keeping that in mind, therefore, I offer the following proposition: The greatest enemy of fun and progress is slow recovery. What I mean is, the longer it takes the group to pick itself back up off the floor after a wipe, buff up, get into position, and go, the more detrimental the wipe will be to group morale and progress. Why? Well, on the practical side, slow recoveries mean you get fewer attempts in the time you have available to play together—clearly that cuts into the learning-by-doing! And, from a more emotional viewpoint, slow recoveries give people too much time to discuss, internalize, and agonize over small and easily-corrected mistakes, and that saps morale. So, perhaps the most important first step to take to maintain fun and momentum in a progression raid is to trim down that recovery time. So, when a wipe is called, die quickly. Cast or accept resurrection promptly. Get your buffs up, get into position, and get ready to go. Don’t lecture each other too much, or spend a lot of time apologizing over things. Death is a better lecturer than you are, and doing better the next time is a far better apology than you can possibly make in words. Get back in there and try it again.

Of course, even if your team recovers briskly from mistakes, you’ll still have to cope with issues of knowledge, awareness, and skill. Knowledge of encounter mechanics comes partly from research and partly from experience. Awareness and skill, however, come almost entirely from practice. Oh, sure, some people have better reflexes than others, and that can be a factor, but in most casual raid groups, native finger dexterity isn’t that big an effect. Much more important is the time each of us spends simply doing the things we need to do well.

Unfortunately, a raid night is a pretty high-pressure time for people to be practicing. For folks who are struggling with how to get out of fire, or learning how to see dangerous debuffs, or things like that, learning in raid is like trying to become an actor by jumping up on stage in the middle of Les Miserables and trying to sight-sing the leading role. It’s stressful and confusing, and when we make a mistake, we feel as if we’ve let our friends down, and that adds more stress, and let me assure you, that’s a quick spiral road to Hell.

Thinking Outside the Raid

So, if the best way to learn is by doing, and doing requires raiding, and raiding produces stress that inhibits learning, how can we possibly make anything better? Is there, perhaps, some way we can get the practice we need to improve our skills, without having to burden ourselves with guilt over all our minor mistakes?

I’m going to propose that there is.

Suppose we had a place in which players could practice moving, getting out of fire, interrupting casters, cleansing important debuffs, and keeping track of cooldowns, without dying a lot and paying expensive repair bills. Sound far-fetched? Well, you need not merely suppose, because several such places already exist within the game: The Ring of Trials in Nagrand and the Circle of Blood in the Blade’s Edge Mountains are two examples of open PvP arenas. Anybody who enters these arenas will be flagged for “free-for-all” PvP, which means, they can fight against any other player who is also flagged, even players of their same faction.

If you’re the kind of person who hates PvP, this may sound like a terrible idea to you, but bear with me for a moment. The beautiful thing about the free-for-all PvP arenas is that they permit you to stage controlled combat exercises against your own teammates. In short, the arenas give you a way to stage your own military-style “live fire” exercises.

Imagine for a moment that you split your raid team up into groups, like Cops & Robbers. The Robbers will set up a combat challenge which the Cops have to overcome. Unlike regular PvP, where everybody tries to kill whomever they can, the point of these arena challenges is to let people practice using their abilities in a fun and low-stress environment. For example, here are some games you could play with your teammates in the free-for-all arena:

• Run the Gauntlet. The Robbers fill a defined area with various AoE spells, perhaps cast at random, perhaps in defined patterns. The Cops have to pass through the danger zone from one side to the other without taking too much damage. Learning objectives: Movement, awareness of spell ranges, debuff awareness, health-bar awareness.
• Obstacle Course. A variation of the Gauntlet, the Cops start out in a group and the Robbers use various damage and crowd-control spells to impede them as they try to escape. Each Robber might have a fixed location and task, so the Cops can find a way out if they try hard enough. Learning objectives: As for the Gauntlet.
• Tag! One player is “it” and has to try to “tag” someone else who hasn’t been tagged before by hitting them with a spell. If you kill your target, you lose the game. The last person to get tagged “wins” the round. Learning objectives: Movement, avoiding spell effects, positioning.
• Kickball. The Robbers (a spellcaster group) stand in a wide circle with a one or more Cops in the middle. Each Robber takes a turn trying to cast something with a cast-time at the Cops. If she succeeds, she wins a point and leaves the circle; if a Cop manages to interrupt her cast, she stays in and the Cops win a point. After each Robber has cast, the round is over. Learning objectives: Positioning, cooldown management, interruption, enemy cast-bar awareness.

These are just a few ideas, and you could easily come up with more. Games like this can be fun, and are low-cost, because even if you die, your death is due to player damage and does not apply durability damage to your gear. You could even arrange to give prizes for people who do especially well—a minipet or some kind of item upgrade (e.g., a belt buckle) or even cash if you happen to like that sort of thing. More importantly, games like this are less stressful than practicing in the raid, because there’s less at stake. Everybody can get a taste of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can chatter in Vent all you want about silly or funny or crazy things.

To keep the spirit, games like this shouldn’t become mandatory guild or raid-group events. Just like trust exercises at day camp, though, they can really help build some skill and cohesion among the members of a raid group. That in turn can help make the raid nights themselves run more smoothly and be more pleasant. And hey, you want to bring an alt? No problem! Bring them all and switch at will! Even if you’re playing with a character besides your main, most of the basic movement and awareness skills are completely transferable.

There’s always some chance you might run into another group at the arena, who aren’t perhaps quite as friendly as your own team may be…but in that case, it’s easy enough to band together against a common enemy. And even if you hate PvP, an arena exercise like this can be a real blast. In more ways than one.

I did not come up with the idea of using the free-for-all arenas for war games; I took the notion from “fight club” style competitions that were put together by some of my RL friends and their guildmates. It was such an appealing idea, though, that I’ve always thought it would make for a great training ground.

At the request

Delicious Raspberry Muffins

Ingredients:

Batter:

• 1 ½ c. white flour
• ½ c. rolled or quick oats
• ½ c. chopped walnuts
• ½ c. brown sugar, packed
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 eggs
• ½ c. buttermilk
• ½ c. vegetable oil
• 1 c. raspberries

Topping:

• ¼ c. butter (2 oz.)
• ¼ c. brown sugar, packed
• ¼ c. rolled or quick oats
• ¼ c. white flour
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Preparation:

Combine flour, oats, walnuts, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and brown sugar. Mix in eggs, buttermilk, and oil to form a batter. Fold in raspberries gently to avoid breakage and discolouring the batter.

Mash together topping ingredients by hand until they crumble pleasingly to the touch.

Pour muffins with a ¼ or ½ cup measure, and distribute topping evenly over the tops of each. Makes 10–12 medium-size muffins.

Bake at 400°F (204°C) for 15–20 minutes; a toothpick or skewer should come out clean.

Notes:

• To substitute buttermilk, combine 1 ½ tsp. lemon juice with ½ c. milk and let stand 5 minutes. A dollop of sour cream can also be delightful.
• For best texture, I like to run the oats through the food processor with the chopping blade for maybe ten seconds before mixing the dry ingredients.
• When filling muffin cups, leave a ¼ inch or so gap at the top of each cup; the muffins will spring vigorously, and overfilling will make a mess.
• Fresh raspberries are delightful, but frozen berries are fine also. Do not bother to thaw them first, just fold them in gently.
• For best results, do not soften the butter before making the topping. You will need strong fingers, but the results will have a nicer texture.
• I usually use canola oil, but walnut oil can also add a delicious flavour.
• For ease of cleaning, I like to use paper cupcake sleeves in my muffin tins. If not, you may want to lightly grease the cups with shortening.

A note for readers from places which use more rational measurement systems than the United States (i.e., almost everywhere else):

• 1 tsp. = 5 mL
• 1 cup = 236 mL
• 1 oz. = 28 g

Share and enjoy!

On a whole, I think the changes are mostly for the good. As much as I enjoy healing, the style of play for healers at the end of the previous expansion wasn’t all that interesting. Discipline Priests would bubble everything. Holy Priests would roll Prayer of Mending and have Circle of Healing on cooldown. Restoration Druids would blanket the raid with HoTs. Holy Paladins would keep the tanks alive with Beacon-copied Holy Light bombs. Shaman would spam Chain Heal and use Cleansing Totem to trivialize the management of debuffs. By and large, nobody had mana problems in end-game content. In one sense, it was fun to be so powerful; a couple of good healers could paper over an awful lot of other mistakes. At the same time, it wasn’t very exciting.

On the other hand, coming into the new world order can feel like a bait-and-switch.

Levelling a healer in the post-Cataclysm world starts out feeling powerful. Your healing spells hit hard, your tanks don’t take too much damage, your mana pool is pretty good, and there are really only two encounter mechanics in low-level dungeons: Tank, and Spank. You’ll have to keep around plenty of water to drink, but you probably won’t have too much trouble keeping people alive. In fact, the higher in level you go, the better it gets: By the time I got my baby priest to level 80, I hardly had to drink at all in dungeon-finder groups. The healing style was a little different, but it wasn’t a struggle.

Everything changes, entirely without warning, when you get to level 83 or 84.

All at once, your spells cost more. A lot more. You get less regeneration for each point of Spirit on your gear. The output per point of mana may not actually decrease, but the net effect is as though it did. You get to 85 and spend your saved-up Justice points buying some nice new gear. You plug in some gems and some enchants, hoping it’s just a gear issue, but the problem continues. People in your group actually die. You go from feeling like hot stuff, to wondering what possessed you to roll a healer in the first place.

People will say it gets better as your gear improves, but that’s not really true. Yes, as your gear improves, you will have to drink a bit less, and you’ll have an easier time keeping the tank alive through big spikes. No matter how good your gear gets, though, it remains that we can no longer heal our way out of every problem.

Tanks who pull the entire room without crowd-control, who don’t use their damage-mitigation cooldowns, and who ignore good positioning, are going to die.

Damage dealers who stand in bubbling goop on the ground, who don’t interrupt healers, and who carelessly pull aggro, are going to die.

Healers who feverishly spam their biggest heals, who madly cleanse every debuff, and who work themselves into a tizzy trying desperately to save everyone from themselves, are going to fail.

That is the biggest lesson for healers from the Cataclysm: The old way of healing was enabling people to fail. Now we have to pay the piper.

I realized something important the other day, as I was healing a group of puggies through heroic Throne of the Tides: When we see people standing in bad stuff on the ground, we tend to assume they’re stupid, or inattentive, or lazy. Sometimes they are. But there’s another view: Perhaps they are just assuming the healer can keep them alive. After all, that’s the way it always used to be. They stood in bad stuff, and sure, their health bar went down, but the healer filled it back up, and all was well. They hit mobs with reflective shields on them and got debuffed, but the healer cleansed them, and all was well. They pulled aggro on extra mobs and got smacked around, but the healer blew a cooldown and saved them, and all was well.

In short, it’s our fault players pull too much, stand in bad stuff, and don’t use their tools. In the economic calculus of fun, killing mobs and getting loot are good, while dying, running back, and paying repair bills are bad. As long as we survive, everything must be good, right?

With this in mind, I made some changes to the way I was healing:

We used to expect the tank to be responsible for marking kill targets and requesting crowd-control. Now it’s at least as appropriate for the healer to do it, so I do. Most of the time, tanks don’t mind, and DPS are surprisingly willing—even eager—to get a chance to use their shiny CC spells. You’ll occasionally get a jerk who intentionally breaks the sheep, but most people are good (and for the jerks, we have Vote to Kick).

We used to heal the DPS through bad stuff on the ground. Now, I don’t heal them till they get out of the bad stuff. Turns out, many people actually do pay attention to their health bars, and when they’re suddenly at 25% health, they actually will get out of the fire. Topping someone up takes a lot less mana than healing them through ick, so I wind up not having to drink as much. The ones who don’t notice, die. They get out of bad stuff much more quickly after that—or they complain about healing, and we send them to Italy.

We used to dispel every debuff, and try to keep every health bar full. It used to be possible. Now it’s not possible in all but a trivial fight, so I’ve learned to be selective about which debuffs I’ll dispel, and whose bars I’ll fill. In my mind, I keep a tally of the damage everyone has taken and whether it was avoidable damage (e.g., standing in bad) or  unavoidable damage (e.g., randomly targeted spells or AoE). I’ll handle unavoidable damage as quickly as I can, but avoidable damage I view as somebody else’s problem. Of course, everyone makes mistakes, so I won’t just let somebody die because they missed a single jump on Assad’s cast of Static Cling. I now prioritize, however: The Hunter can break herself out with Master’s Call, so the Moonkin gets the dispel.

The new style of healing means people are going to die sometimes. A smart healer can still pull irons out of the fire, but groups can no longer afford to ignore fight mechanics and trust in the healer to save their bacon. More importantly, we as healers can no longer take it personally every time the group wipes. Of course, we can’t just sit back and blame the group, either—even accounting for changes, the modern healing regime requires us to know our spells, watch our cooldowns, keep our gear up to scratch, and pay attention.

It remains, however, that our days of enabling failure are over, and we have to learn to embrace that truth if we want to have any fun. My only real disappointment is that the experience of healing prior to the level cap doesn’t really prepare you for this. So, consider this fair warning: Healing is still fun. But it ain’t easy.

Traditionally, I’ve avoided PvP like the Scourge Plague. Then again, I’ve never really done serious PvP. So, when I was looking for something new (and inspired by Cynwise‘s and Psynister‘s posts about low-level PvP), I decided I’d give it an honest try. And so, from the very beginning, I bought myself a couple of Heirloom knives, chose talents and gear to emphasize survival and control instead of raw damage output, and started queuing up for battlegrounds.

I’ve noticed several important differences between the levelling experience in PvP as compared to PvE:

Group composition. A dungeon-finder group requires one tank, one healer, and three DPS. You’re allowed to run a dungeon by manually assembling a different composition and walking to the Meeting Stone, but nobody bothers. The battleground finder, by contrast, has no compunctions whatsoever about stacking a 15-player team full of Hunters, Feral Druids, Warriors, and Rogues in Arathi Basin. On the upside, you rarely have to wait too long for a queue. On the downside, the odds are good, but the goods are odd: It’s quite likely you’ll wind up on a team that has exactly zero healers. You can win a battleground with no healers on your team, but it’s a very different (and much more painful) experience.

Where your gear comes from. Leaving aside heirlooms, a standard PvE levelling experience gives you a fairly constant stream of new equipment from quest rewards, dungeon bosses, and the [Satchels of Helpful Goods] you receive as a perquisite for completing random dungeons. In theory you could also use crafted equipment, but in practice such gear is mediocre in quality, priced beyond its utility on the Auction House, or takes more time and materials than it’s worth. Crafted gear doesn’t really start to be useful till you pass level 75 or so, at which point there some good options.

In PvP, your options prior to level 60 are good, but extremely limited. The Arathi Basin factions (The League of Arathor and The Defilers) will sell you upgradable boots and belts starting at level 28, while the Warsong Gulch factions (Silverwing Sentinels and Warsong Outriders) have upgradeable weapons, rings, and spellcaster cloaks starting at level 18. Except for the Arathi Basin boots, which are amazing (because of the movement speed increase), these items are decent, but you can easily get better from PvE. It’s not till level 60 when you  get access to the old epic PvP gear sets that the gear you can purchase from honor becomes a clear improvement over the stuff you get by killing dungeon bosses, and in the meantime you have to cover the rest of your body with something. Heirloom gear may not always be best-in-slot if you’re twinking, but it’s a fair sight better than naked.

Your role in the group. ”Birds gotta swim, and fish gotta fly; tanks gotta tank, and deeps gonna die.” In PvE, the three general roles are pretty distinct: Tanks are supposed to stack up armor, stamina, and threat-generating talents. Healers are supposed to stack up intellect and spirit. DPS are supposed to do whatever it takes to maximize their damage output. Good PvE healers and DPS maximize their output, even if it means they have less health and no armor. This is generally fine, because the tank will have aggro from everything, and nobody else is getting hit.

(I realize the situation is different in end-game raids. However, you’ll notice that even raiding DPS won’t generally take pure stamina-increasing talents)

PvP stands all of that on its head. There is no threat table in PvP, and therefore no “tank” per se; a Priest standing in the open casting Greater Heal is a more effective taunt than Righteous Defense. Everyone, regardless of role, needs plenty of stamina and as much armor as they can carry, and even pure damage classes like rogues and hunters need to spend some of their talents on survival and mitigation, rather than just output. Crowd-control spells, which are helpful (but rarely used) in PvE content, are essential in PvP (unless you take your pleasure from dying and losing). And while there is a role for dedicated healers in PvP, all players with access to healing and cleansing should be expected to use them, even if they’re spec’d for damage. Likewise, even dedicated healers in PvP will need to be ready to do some damage to finish off that pesky rogue.

Movement and positioning. Outside of a raid, where you stand doesn’t really matter in PvE. Okay, okay, don’t get angry with me, I know melee are supposed to stand behind the mobs so they can’t be blocked or parried, and if you’re fighting a dragon you’re not supposed to stand near its tail, and you have to move out of fire, so on. But until you reach the level cap, it just doesn’t make that big a difference. Tanks should avoid letting mobs hit them from behind, the rest is just window dressing. The usual expectation in PvE is that once the tank has control of the pull, everyone will settle down in their favourite spot and whale away at their highest-output spells. Having to move is a much-resented intrusion.

At all levels of PvP, movement and position are life-and-death. If you’re a ranged class like a Hunter or a Mage, it is critical to your survival to maintain distance from your opponents. If you let a Rogue close with you, she will, pardon my French, Fuck. You. Up. If you’re that Rogue and you let a Mage or a Hunter keep distance from you, you’re the one who’s in trouble. Distance, orientation, line-of-sight, and visibility are crucial to success in the PvP world, and each class has to strike its own balance. Most importantly, never be still. Even if you’re just a defender hiding next to the flag, you should be moving: It reduces the odds a stealthy enemy will notice you and sap you before you can respond, or that a Hunter’s flare will expose you, and it increases the chances you’ll see incoming enemies in time to call out to your teammates for help. Likewise, if you’re assaulting the flag carrier, you should be using your crowd-control to help separate him from his support. Smart players will stick with their healers, but many players won’t, and in PvP, distance equals time.

The source of currency. This is the difference between PvE and PvP that has struck me the most, and it’s really the point of this post. Prior to level 70, the only “currency” that matters in PvE is gold. The whole system of badges emblems points doesn’t come into play until you reach Northrend, where you can earn up to 12×7 = 84 Justice Points each week by using the random dungeon-finder. You could use these to purchase epic-quality gear from the vendors in Shattrath (level 70) and Dalaran (level 80), but for the most part you’ll be better off saving them up for when you get to level 85, when you can use them to get over the gear-hump and into heroic-mode dungeons.

PvP, by contrast, uses Honor as a currency. Honor differs from points in a couple of ways: One, you can earn it at any level; and two, if you are playing battlegrounds with any regularity, you will earn it at a prodigious rate. By the time Kivrin reached level 70, she had purchased a [Black Battlestrider] (2000 Honor), a [Black War Tiger] (2000 Honor), an [Alliance Battle Standard] (500 Honor), and a nearly complete set of epic PvP gear including the armor from Arena Season 4 (1550 Honor). Of course, you can only have 4000 Honor at a time, so these purchases were made over time, but even after buying all these things (plus various pieces from the Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch factions), she had over 2000 Honor left at level 70.

In fact, one of the puzzles when you run a lot of battlegrounds is, what do you do with all that Honor? You need to spend it on something, or you “lose” it (any Honor in excess of the cap is discarded). And yet, there just isn’t that much to buy, until you reach level 80 and above, where the items are more expensive. You can sink some into heirlooms, but as I already had heirloom gear purchased by one of my maximum-level characters, I struggled with this question until I discovered that you can now visit the Honor Trade Goods vendor in Stormwind or Orgimmar, and exchange 375 Honor for 275 Justice Points.

On the surface, this may seem pointless. After all, you can’t really do much with Justice Points at low level, right? Well, actually no: You can use them to buy high-quality PvE heirloom gear. And that means you can kit out your favourite alts in fine gear without having to spend away the points your level 85 characters need to buy their own upgrades! What’s more, it means by the time Kivrin reaches level 85, she will almost certainly have the full 4000 Justice Points she’s allowed to carry, in addition to another 2600 or so worth of points “saved” as Honor. That’s about three and a half times as many points as my PvE characters have had upon reaching level 85 through the “traditional” means, and it implies the whole “gear grind” will be a lot less painful for Kivrin than it was for my other level 85 characters.

The upshot of all of this, at least for me, is the somewhat surprising revelation that playing PvP may be a more efficient way to level and gear an end-game PvE character than actually playing PvE. And of course, nothing requires you to play strictly one or the other; I’ve run dungeons and completed quests with Kivrin throughout her career so far (to get out of the bottom level of each new bracket). As a result, she is not even level 80 yet, and already has nearly 3000 Justice Points, is (yet again) almost completely capped on Honor, and has a nice sampling of good PvE gear from the dungeons she’s visited.

It’s as if she’s been issued a license to print money. Speaking as someone who used to hate and fear PvP, I’m also pleasantly surprised to discover that the whole process has been quite fun! Oh, sure, there are times when you suffer a demoralizing defeat, but I found the more I played in battlegrounds, the less that bothered me. You try, you learn, you win some, you lose some. I’ve learned a lot by watching how our opponents play, especially when they’re completely destroying us. I think it’s made me a much better player. And if I ever grow tired of it, there’s always another notice on the Heroes’ (or Warchief’s) Call Board I can go follow.

So, while PvP levelling might not be for everyone, I can certainly vouch for it being a lot more fun and engaging than I ever would have predicted when I started.

Note: This post was inspired by a conversation I had with my Waypoint guildmates Rezznul and Lizzia about how one could explain, in-character, the funny jerky blinking motion you see from characters who have really bad network latency. What follows is my humble attempt to answer this need.

Rain lashed down against barred-shut storm shutters that rattled and thumped in the gusty wind. For hours now it had fallen undiminished from a sky as purple as a bruise, pooling around the road cobbles and sheeting over the wet black roof-slates to gush down the gutters and off the eaves. Every street was otherwise empty, save a misty fog that ebbed and surged among the grim, black-eyed houses.

Though the hour was late, a heap of orange coals still glowed and hissed amid the hearth in the common-room of the Scarlet Raven; a few oil lights flickered inside their glass chimneys on the tables and the counter, making a danse macabre of patrons’ shadows against the masonry. The patrons themselves said little, for the mood and the room were both uncommonly dark. Just a few muttered conversations over the rims of mugs, and none at all of the customary drunken singing. Smitts stood in sullen silence behind the bar, polishing glasses in a desultory manner.

The door rattled in the wind, then louder than the wind. Our heads turned and silence fell as it shuddered and quaked, until at last it banged open as forcefully as if it had been shot from a cannon. A blast of cold, wet air swirled inside, reeking of leaf-mold and autumn damp, gusting around the tables and making the lamp-lights flutter madly. Everyone stared aghast at the figure of a pale young man suddenly framed there in the doorway, and a few of the more skittish patrons yelped in surprise. For a brief, frozen moment, every person was still and silent, transfixed by this strange new face, standing with one hand upraised as if in greeting, or perhaps in supplication. A violent fork of lightning flashed across the sky, making his very body seem to flicker forward, then backward, then side to side—and then, without warning, he pitched backward into the street as stiffly as a tree sawn down.

We were out of our seats in a trice, but Old Man Gnarltree was first to the door. He held the rest of us back with an arm as big as a tree-trunk, seized the old oak door in his hammer-callused hand, and heaved it shut with a rattling thump. He braced against it with his shoulder and hammered home the iron latch.

“What the devil are you playing at, Morg?” said Perelli angrily. “You can’t just leave a boy lying in the road, weather like this. We need to get him inside.” There was a vigorous murmur of agreement from the rest of us, who’d gathered in the vestibule.

“There ain’t a thing we can do for him, Antonio,” growled Gnarltree. “He’s too far gone already. We let that thing in here, and we’ll all suffer the same.” He parked his broad back against the door, folding his arms and glowering at us. Outside, the thunder grumbled and boomed uneasily in the distance.

“Are you gone mad?” said Perelli, incredulous. “You can see that boy hasn’t got the pox. What possible danger can he be to us? If you won’t help him, then let me do it.” The merchant was pulling on his heavy travelling cloak around his shoulders and trying to push his way to the door, but there is no budging a blacksmith with his boots set. The two of them scuffled a bit as the rest of us mumbled restively, trying to decide what to do.

“Morg’s right,” said a gravelly voice, and we all turned. Bliztik, the Goblin trader from Raven Hill, thumped his mug on the bar, hopped down from his stool, and ambled out onto the hearth. His usual satisfied grin was absent, and his mien was grim as he pointed to the door. “What you saw out there ain’t a boy—’least not anymore. It might look that way, but if you value your purse, you’d better not get fooled. I’ve seen it before—that there’s a Skittering Shade.”

A gasp suffused us. Perelli glowered at Gnarltree and turned his back on the door. “Bliz,” he said, “I respect you as a businessman, but right now you’re talking nonsense. Skittering shades? We’re not a bunch of kids scared of Duskwood shadows. The Scourge is gone. Our crazy superstitions need to go too.”

Bliztik threw up his hands and shrugged in his expensive waistcoat. “I know, Antonio, it sounds crazy. But I’ve seen ’em myself—the Skittering Shades ain’t just superstition. They’re as real as cash money, and they’ll turn anyone fool enough to let ’em cross the threshold into another one just like ’em.” He pointed at the rest of us, milling around in indecision. “If the rest of you lot have any sense, you’ll stay inside safe and warm ’til the storm’s gone past.” And with that, he clambered back up onto his bar-stool, and took up his mug again. “That’s what I plan to do,” he said, “and I suggest you join me.”

Of course, we all grew up with stories about the Skittering Shades. Standing still, they look just like us, and they can talk as well as a person can—but a Shade’s not a person. It’s a dead thing, a dark evil thing that haunts old graveyards and quarries and spiderwoods and other such-like places where folks have died in pain and the light is dim. Nobody knows what makes ’em come out, or what they want, but a person who lets a Skittering Shade touch him will never come home.

They’re called Skittering Shades because of how they move: A Shade can’t move in a straight line, not ever, nor cross over running water, nor abide the touch of quicksilver. Whenever they aren’t standing absolutely dead still, they kind of skip and blink and change direction, like seeing the frames of a broken zoetrope. Just like that boy in the door, you know we were all thinking it. Standing still, though, you can’t really tell a Shade from a regular person, and as long as they don’t take a step, you might never know what they are ’til it’s too late.

Folks hereabout mostly claim to not believe in Shades, but we all lock our doors at night, and most of us keep a little jar of quicksilver near at hand. And everyone knows when you come to somebody’s house after dark, you’ve got to let them see you coming across the yard so they know you’re a live person. Everybody has a bell or a knocker a ways out that a visitor’s expected to use, and even now, someone who doesn’t do it is likely to wind up having the Watch called, or get a bolt in the head. So for all that we agreed with Perelli’s sentiment, none of us was brave enough to ignore Bliztik’s dire warning. That cranky Goblin’s seen a lot more of the world than most of us combined.

After a while, we all settled back down to wait out the storm, and even Perelli did off his cape and slumped in a corner chair, looking fretful. Morg, too, once he satisfied himself that the door latch was sound, stumped back to the bar for another mug. I sat down by the fire and sipped a glass of port wine and tried to convince myself what we’d seen had been a trick of the light. The rain wore on, punctuated by the crash and grumble of thunder, and I dozed fitfully in the glow of the fireplace, my face toward the door.

After some time, I don’t know how long, a little thread of cool air dusting around my ankles woke me with a yelp. I saw that the door was slightly ajar, and that Perelli was gone. Someone else must’ve noticed too, or maybe they saw me staring at his empty chair, because a hush fell over the room. Even Morg stood frozen, his enormous hands clasped tight around the base of a tankard. I swallowed hard, pulled my shawl closer around me, and crept over to the door. Hands trembling, I reached out and placed a hand on the iron knob; it was damp, and shockingly cold, and I drew my hand back as if burnt. With sudden terror I realized that although the door was open, the iron latch was still shot closed.

I made to push the door closed, but the latchbolt was too stiff for me to move it, and had the same unnatural coldness as the knob, so that I was forced to let it go. As I breathed on my fingertips to warm them, I became aware of a low murmuring sound outside, as if two persons were having a quiet conversation. Despite my fear, I peered out through the crack into the rainy night.

Perelli was kneeling there on the ground, soaked to the skin, his cloak spread out over the dark figure of the fallen boy beside him. He was bowed over with his head close to the boy’s, and he seemed to be saying something, but I couldn’t make out his words. He must have heard me, because he turned and looked right at me; even through the rain I was struck by how captivating his eyes are. He beckoned to me urgently with one hand.

“Quickly,” he said, “the boy is alive, but he’s very badly hurt. Help me lift him so we can get him inside.”

I hesitated, uncertain, and his expression turned to pleading. “Please, help me,” he said. “I know you’re not a fool like the others…we can’t let this lad die because of our ignorance and fear.” His handsome face was streaked with rain, making it look as if he was in tears; he might have been, at that. I swallowed hard, and took a step forward, hooking both my hands on the edge of the door and hauling it open far enough to slip out.

Lightning dashed across the sky, and the rain pounded down on my braids like a waterfall. Perelli sighed with relief. “Thank you,” he said, his voice strained. “Please come here and help steady his head. I’m afraid he’s twisted his neck.”

Nervously, I stepped forward, balancing carefully on the slippery stones. “Hurry,” said Perelli, offering his hand to help me balance. “Please, he may not have long to live!”

As I reached out to take his hand, my foot slipped on a broken cobble and I lurched unexpectedly to the left. Perelli rose from his crouch, took a step toward me…and for just an instant, I saw him flicker before me, revealing a burst of his handsome face in profile before he froze, pinning me with his gaze.

An icy chill washed suddenly over me. I screamed aloud, and threw myself away from him, tumbling over on my back in the cold water, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery stones. Without a sound, he advanced quickly toward me, his face fixed and intent, his image skittering to and fro against the purple sky. The door seemed suddenly an impossible distance from me, my every move as slow as if I were swimming in thick oil. I tried to scream again, but the very breath seemed to be drawn out of my lungs as his broad shape came closer and closer.

I heard a voice shouting, as if from a long way off, and an enormous hand seized me by the collar, dragging me bodily across the ground. And then I was inside the Scarlet Raven again, the door closing with a crunch, and the friendly yellow warmth of the fire filling my senses. I gasped, a chilly breath of white mist escaping my mouth, and then my vision went black.

I awoke to morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, and the warm and earthy smell of hot tea brewing in a mug beside my bed. The dark and the sky and the rain were gone, but the terror of the night still haunted me, as it does even now. They tell me that when I screamed, they found me lying in the street, but of Antonio Perelli and the strange pale boy, they saw nary a sign.

I have never gone back to Darkshire since that night, and I hope I never will.