- For the most part, heroic 5-mans are now no more than a means to Valor points, as I no longer need any of the loot. The only minor exception is a caster off-hand that I might want if I ended up winning and using the spell dagger from Deathwing (almost all off-hands are itemized with spirit for healers).
- Unless I move on to normal/heroic mode raiding, most of these items are things that I will not replace until the expansion. Moreover, it doesn't feel like there are many choices - the challenge with effectively replacing all of the gear on all the characters in the game as many as four times in a single patch (the new 5-man dungeons, followed by raid finder, regular, and heroic mode of the Deathwing raid) is that there just isn't room for variety.
- Blizzard intentionally did not include weapons on the regular bosses in the easy raid finder mode (which generally offers loot that's half a tier above five-mans). The final Deathwing encounter does offer weapons, which are a full tier above what you get in five-mans, but they seem oddly situational. The two choices for mages are a staff which spends a lot of its budget on a proc that increases haste for some of your group members and a dagger with an uncontrollable AOE proc - something which should give pause to all but the most trigger-happy of DPS. (If you want to use the dagger anyway, you need to go back to 5-mans for the aforementioned off-hand to carry with it.)
- A second trinket is one area where I'm kind of lacking, and at the mercy of the random number generator. There are three trinkets a mage can use in the raid finder, but one has another automatic AOE proc. These are also hard to get because DPS melee shamen and druids (along with caster shamen, druids, shadow priests, and mages/warlocks) are allowed to roll need on these caster DPS-focused items, resulting in a lot of rolls when one does drop.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Looting the Raid Finder
I took my third trip through the WoW Raid Finder this week, and I guess I must have been statistically due. I won a glove token - which I gave away to another player when I won the ilvl 390 gloves off of Deathwing's back (don't ask) - a pair of shoulder pads, and enough Valor points to pick up the belt off the Valor vendor. My PVE set now no longer has inappropriate items in it (e.g. PVP or spirit gear that was enough of an upgrade to be worth equipping despite suboptimal stats). A few observations:
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
If you can't say something nice?
There are a few things I could blog about today. I'm strangely not excited about writing any of them. I suppose when you've been at this for long enough, there are relatively fewer things that you can write that you haven't written in the past and/or don't expect to be covering repeatedly as the news in question gets closer to the present?
On the plus side, I suppose the upshot to having a blog that's nearly four years old is that it gets easier to just shrug, /punt, and go hit the raidfinder or something.
On the plus side, I suppose the upshot to having a blog that's nearly four years old is that it gets easier to just shrug, /punt, and go hit the raidfinder or something.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
SOE on "Free to Play, Your Way"
"We've introduce[d?] non-recurring passes into EverQuest II, which have been really popular for some of the newer players that aren't quite as committed yet. It's a great on-boarding tool so that people can feel like they can buy a one-time pass using virtual currency, see if they like it, and then see if they can move on to a recurring fee"In the early days of the EQ2X beta, devs expressed concerns that existing subscribers would cancel if allowed to buy their way out of all the restrictions on non-subscribing accounts. They are not wrong to fear this - I would suggest that SOE's competitors, such as DDO and LOTRO, have ended up with models in which almost all players will pay less in the long run by paying for unlocks rather than subscribing.
- Laura Naviaux, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at Sony Online Entertainment, in an interview with ZAM
However, the results have consistently left me feeling that SOE never intended for the non-subscription model to be a viable and attractive alternative to the subscription. For all the studio's talk about how they want to give the consumer flexibility, both EQ2 and DCUO intentionally retain restrictions that non-subscribers cannot lift in any way other than subscribing. Their model has always felt like players were expected - as close to required as the studio could get away with - to "move on" to the old monthly fee if they wanted to continue playing.
I just was not expecting to have my impression confirmed by their marketing chief.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Rift At 50
Telhamat, my Rift Cleric, finally hit level 50 this week. In addition to a welcome back weekend, Trion handed out 3 days of game time to anyone who has an account as compensation for changing their passwords after a hacking incident late last year. As a result, of all these freebies, I was able to reach the game's level cap without any additional paid time beyond the initial month - certainly no grounds to complain about the value I got for that purchase a year ago.
Soso Solo
I have soloed characters to the level caps in WoW, EQ2, DCUO, LOTRO (though I have yet to catch up with the latest increase), and now Rift, so I'd suggest that I have a fair amount of experience with solo PVE play. Unfortunately, I can't recommend Rift all that highly in this department.
There's no way for Trion to balance content around all possibilities in the soul system, but any of the four DPS Cleric souls paired with 10 points in Justicar can chain-pull 3 mobs at a time with limited to no downtime or consumables. (I didn't even realize there were drinks I was supposed to be purchasing and consuming until someone mentioned how many they consumed on a dungeon run.) The game's zones are extremely lengthy and linear, so there's limited opportunity to push the envelope on better optimized solo builds by attempting more challenging content.
Meanwhile, the game's exp curve is inexplicably weighted in favor of killing mobs over completing quests. If you have rested exp, you will get significantly more experience for killing 10 rats than for riding halfway across a wide zone to turn in the quest to kill the 10 rats. Quest reward gear is generally much worse than what you can get at the same level from zergable Rift events. Overall, zones are pretty, quests and lore are reasonably well written, but overall the long and non-challenging quest grind feels the opposite of rewarding. Nothing about what I've seen makes me excited to work on the endgame solo daily quests.
The group flexibility niche?
My seldom-active Rift characters happen to be parked in Ferrel's raiding guild, Iniquity. Having seen my level 50 achievement notice in guild chat earlier that evening, the guild invited me on a farming run that very night. The group had some empty slots in an excursion back to farm the old River of Souls instance for raid currency etc, and they figured there would be unclaimed loot that could be handed to a blogger/tourist.
The random loot table obliged, and I ended up with a belt, a pair of gloves, and a 2-handed hammer. (I also snagged a level 50 purple helm with currency from a past world event). Perhaps more valuable was a hint of what exactly this game has that other games do not. Through the soul system, Rift players have unprecedented flexibility to find something they can do with the players they have, rather than attempting to find players to satisfy the needs of the content.
Healer has to sign off? No problem, the tank will go heals and a DPS will switch to tank mode. Freshly dinged 50 who can't hit anything due to lack of gear? At least I can switch to a healing role and contribute somehow, since heals can't miss. Not enough players to run this zone? There's a smaller one that still has some tokens and loot, or the even less structured outdoor content.
None of these ideas are original or even that impactful individually. Taken collectively, though, I'm starting to see why this game seems to draw the older-school crowd from the days when MMO's were more of an activity than a game.
Going forward
I'm actually not done with Rift just yet - I happened to snag a very good deal on some game time earlier this month. It appears that the biggest thing I need to do with this time is to stop trying to solo. I have more fun in this game when I play as a healer than as a DPS (perhaps in part because I have built a Purifier that heals a lot like my WoW mage does DPS). Trion will take my money as a solo MMO tourist, but they will never hold my attention in that role because that's just not the direction they have chosen to take their game.
In a lot of ways, Rift is the exact opposite of the direction I'm going as a player - subscription in an era of non-subscription options, group-friendly when that does not fit my schedule. The fact that the game makes me at least interested in trying it anyway suggests that they're doing something right.
Soso Solo
I have soloed characters to the level caps in WoW, EQ2, DCUO, LOTRO (though I have yet to catch up with the latest increase), and now Rift, so I'd suggest that I have a fair amount of experience with solo PVE play. Unfortunately, I can't recommend Rift all that highly in this department.
There's no way for Trion to balance content around all possibilities in the soul system, but any of the four DPS Cleric souls paired with 10 points in Justicar can chain-pull 3 mobs at a time with limited to no downtime or consumables. (I didn't even realize there were drinks I was supposed to be purchasing and consuming until someone mentioned how many they consumed on a dungeon run.) The game's zones are extremely lengthy and linear, so there's limited opportunity to push the envelope on better optimized solo builds by attempting more challenging content.
Meanwhile, the game's exp curve is inexplicably weighted in favor of killing mobs over completing quests. If you have rested exp, you will get significantly more experience for killing 10 rats than for riding halfway across a wide zone to turn in the quest to kill the 10 rats. Quest reward gear is generally much worse than what you can get at the same level from zergable Rift events. Overall, zones are pretty, quests and lore are reasonably well written, but overall the long and non-challenging quest grind feels the opposite of rewarding. Nothing about what I've seen makes me excited to work on the endgame solo daily quests.
The group flexibility niche?
My seldom-active Rift characters happen to be parked in Ferrel's raiding guild, Iniquity. Having seen my level 50 achievement notice in guild chat earlier that evening, the guild invited me on a farming run that very night. The group had some empty slots in an excursion back to farm the old River of Souls instance for raid currency etc, and they figured there would be unclaimed loot that could be handed to a blogger/tourist.
 |
| Telhamat, with her new hammer |
Healer has to sign off? No problem, the tank will go heals and a DPS will switch to tank mode. Freshly dinged 50 who can't hit anything due to lack of gear? At least I can switch to a healing role and contribute somehow, since heals can't miss. Not enough players to run this zone? There's a smaller one that still has some tokens and loot, or the even less structured outdoor content.
None of these ideas are original or even that impactful individually. Taken collectively, though, I'm starting to see why this game seems to draw the older-school crowd from the days when MMO's were more of an activity than a game.
Going forward
I'm actually not done with Rift just yet - I happened to snag a very good deal on some game time earlier this month. It appears that the biggest thing I need to do with this time is to stop trying to solo. I have more fun in this game when I play as a healer than as a DPS (perhaps in part because I have built a Purifier that heals a lot like my WoW mage does DPS). Trion will take my money as a solo MMO tourist, but they will never hold my attention in that role because that's just not the direction they have chosen to take their game.
In a lot of ways, Rift is the exact opposite of the direction I'm going as a player - subscription in an era of non-subscription options, group-friendly when that does not fit my schedule. The fact that the game makes me at least interested in trying it anyway suggests that they're doing something right.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
First Time MMO PC Builder, Part 3 (Finalizing, Testing, Troubleshooting)
When I left off last week, I had assembled the core components of my new gaming machine, with a few details to work out, a few additional components to add, and a few spare parts to obtain. Most of all, I had some general cleanup work ahead of me to ensure that cables were routed properly and the system was in good working order. I also had some testing and, unfortunately, a bit of troubleshooting.
Finishing Touches
Testing and Overclocking
Now it was time for stress testing and basic overclocking. PC builders seem to have universally rallied around a program called Prime95 to test whether machines will crash when pushed to do hard computations for extended periods of time. After surviving an initial round of testing, I went into the ASUS bios and enabled their pre-configured automatic overclocking feature.
With little more than a single click of a button, this ramped the stock speed on my CPU from 3.3 GHz up to 4.2 GHz, and an extended round of stress testing indicated no problems. A real overclocker would push the envelope further, but this spot on the effort-reward curve is good enough for me, at least for the moment. The GPU, whatever I end up with, is already going to be the bottleneck for this system, and there's no reason increase power consumption, wear and tear, etc to go beyond that until/unless I need to.
From here, it was on to testing all the clients I copied over from my laptop. Here, the results were universally positive. I'm not able to max out all of the Anti-Aliasing and Shadow settings, but I can have max draw distance and texture quality, which are the two settings I care the most about. I can sort of notice the improvement in quality when you start throwing in the fancier effects, but it's not worth gutting frame rates. I'm able to run WoW, EQ2, LOTRO, DDO, DCUO, Runes of Magic and Rift on the new machine at my primary monitor's 1920x1080 native resolution, while leaving a second monitor (an old 1280x1024 monitor) up with a web browser and other utilities.
Overall, the project is starting to look like a win, though it will definitely be interesting to see how SWTOR, with its higher requirements, runs.
Troubleshooting
Unfortunately, the fan controller turned around to give me my first troubleshooting experience with the machine. I selected a Lamptron FC4 because it sounded functional and matched my aesthetics - no fancy LCD screens, and it was black with blue LED's, matching the case fans - and because it seemed priced reasonably at $30. I was otherwise going to be out probably $15-20 for molex adapters for my four case fans, so this seemed like a small additional expense to add some additional functionality.
Reviews on Newegg were mixed - many on Newegg commented that the build quality looked a bit inconsistent - but I figured that this was the issue you always have with any sort of online review - the one person who got a dead unit has a stronger incentive to complain than the dozen who didn't. Once the device arrived, though, I saw a bit of what they meant. The metal brace used to mount the device in the 5.25" bay is unnecessarily short - just barely long enough to even reach the first screws - and it took a lot of repositioning to get the thing in correctly.
Then, about half a week in to the life of the machine, I noticed that one of the LCD's on the front panel was no longer fully lit. After a quick check, I determined that the connected fan was also no longer running. My first guess was that maybe I did something wrong while installing it, so I removed both side panels and the front cover so I could unplug and replug the offending fan. No luck. Then I swapped the fan with one of the others, and it was immediately obvious that one of the four fan channels was no longer working properly, as the previously non-working fan fired up and the previously working fan sat, inactive. (The big advantage to seemingly cosmetic LED's on fans is you can immediately tell when one isn't running.)
Eventually, I discovered that pressing the knob down reasonably hard (not something that you'd otherwise have reason to do) caused the fan connected to it to fire back up, only to stop again the moment the knob is released. I'm not sure if something is bent or so poorly connected that it stopped functioning after days, but I'm concerned about trusting this device with the operation of my fans if it's this shoddy. It's possible that a pair of pliers may be able to fix the problem, but I'm not sure if I want to risk doing something that could affect my ability to return the thing if it's really that poorly made.
Meanwhile, I didn't spend money on a backup solution to the problem of how to hook up the fans, so I would need to partially dismantle the machine and leave it out of commission until a replacement arrives. Given that I cannibalized my old desktop for parts to set this thing up, this is a bit inconvenient. Ah well, a relatively minor first issue as far as DIY computers go, and at least I know enough to know how to identify the problem, rather than having to go to a shop with no clue what it's not working.
Final thoughts to follow once I figure out how to deal with the fan controller issue and have a bit more time to test the machine in action.
Finishing Touches
 |
| The hard drives take up relatively little space in the very bottom of the case, after re-arranging some cables. |
- The first thing I did with my new shipment of parts was to swap out the right-angled SATA cables with straight ones. I had to remove the lower front fan from in front of the hard drive bay so I could put the two drives back in the configuration that I wanted them in, but the advantage was clear - absolutely no obstruction to the two intake fans.
- Next, it was time to install the fan controller. More on this story in a minute.
- I installed two cards, which I appropriated from my old desktop - a wireless network adapter PCI card and an nVidia 9600 GSO graphics card. The latter is definitely a place-holder - I had to check the benchmarks to verify that this card is actually superior to the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics on my CPU - but I decided to go with this approach for two reasons. First, I'd like to see how the machine runs with the current hardware, so I can tell how much additional firepower I need. Second, Nvidia's new chips are expected shortly, and I see no reason to rush into a purchase when there will likely be new models or bargains on old ones in the near future.
- Now it was time to start routing cables. Because my build is relatively minimalist, it only took me a dozen cable ties or so to get everything secured to my liking.
 |
| The finished interior of the machine. |
Now it was time for stress testing and basic overclocking. PC builders seem to have universally rallied around a program called Prime95 to test whether machines will crash when pushed to do hard computations for extended periods of time. After surviving an initial round of testing, I went into the ASUS bios and enabled their pre-configured automatic overclocking feature.
With little more than a single click of a button, this ramped the stock speed on my CPU from 3.3 GHz up to 4.2 GHz, and an extended round of stress testing indicated no problems. A real overclocker would push the envelope further, but this spot on the effort-reward curve is good enough for me, at least for the moment. The GPU, whatever I end up with, is already going to be the bottleneck for this system, and there's no reason increase power consumption, wear and tear, etc to go beyond that until/unless I need to.
From here, it was on to testing all the clients I copied over from my laptop. Here, the results were universally positive. I'm not able to max out all of the Anti-Aliasing and Shadow settings, but I can have max draw distance and texture quality, which are the two settings I care the most about. I can sort of notice the improvement in quality when you start throwing in the fancier effects, but it's not worth gutting frame rates. I'm able to run WoW, EQ2, LOTRO, DDO, DCUO, Runes of Magic and Rift on the new machine at my primary monitor's 1920x1080 native resolution, while leaving a second monitor (an old 1280x1024 monitor) up with a web browser and other utilities.
Overall, the project is starting to look like a win, though it will definitely be interesting to see how SWTOR, with its higher requirements, runs.
Troubleshooting
Unfortunately, the fan controller turned around to give me my first troubleshooting experience with the machine. I selected a Lamptron FC4 because it sounded functional and matched my aesthetics - no fancy LCD screens, and it was black with blue LED's, matching the case fans - and because it seemed priced reasonably at $30. I was otherwise going to be out probably $15-20 for molex adapters for my four case fans, so this seemed like a small additional expense to add some additional functionality.
Reviews on Newegg were mixed - many on Newegg commented that the build quality looked a bit inconsistent - but I figured that this was the issue you always have with any sort of online review - the one person who got a dead unit has a stronger incentive to complain than the dozen who didn't. Once the device arrived, though, I saw a bit of what they meant. The metal brace used to mount the device in the 5.25" bay is unnecessarily short - just barely long enough to even reach the first screws - and it took a lot of repositioning to get the thing in correctly.
Then, about half a week in to the life of the machine, I noticed that one of the LCD's on the front panel was no longer fully lit. After a quick check, I determined that the connected fan was also no longer running. My first guess was that maybe I did something wrong while installing it, so I removed both side panels and the front cover so I could unplug and replug the offending fan. No luck. Then I swapped the fan with one of the others, and it was immediately obvious that one of the four fan channels was no longer working properly, as the previously non-working fan fired up and the previously working fan sat, inactive. (The big advantage to seemingly cosmetic LED's on fans is you can immediately tell when one isn't running.)
Eventually, I discovered that pressing the knob down reasonably hard (not something that you'd otherwise have reason to do) caused the fan connected to it to fire back up, only to stop again the moment the knob is released. I'm not sure if something is bent or so poorly connected that it stopped functioning after days, but I'm concerned about trusting this device with the operation of my fans if it's this shoddy. It's possible that a pair of pliers may be able to fix the problem, but I'm not sure if I want to risk doing something that could affect my ability to return the thing if it's really that poorly made.
Meanwhile, I didn't spend money on a backup solution to the problem of how to hook up the fans, so I would need to partially dismantle the machine and leave it out of commission until a replacement arrives. Given that I cannibalized my old desktop for parts to set this thing up, this is a bit inconvenient. Ah well, a relatively minor first issue as far as DIY computers go, and at least I know enough to know how to identify the problem, rather than having to go to a shop with no clue what it's not working.
Final thoughts to follow once I figure out how to deal with the fan controller issue and have a bit more time to test the machine in action.
Guide to Moving/Copying MMO Client Installs
As I've been setting up and testing the new computer, one of the questions I ran into is how to avoid re-downloading the 100+ GB of MMO clients I had installed on my old machine. I tried Googling the question of how to move/copy an MMO installation and got very incomplete/fragmentary information which varied by game. I decided it would be quicker to break out the portable hard drive and test for myself.
All testing was done on a fresh 64-bit Windows 7 install. I was able to log into a character on every game except where noted below. This is presented for informational use only, and PVD takes no responsibility for any technical support or performance issues.
World of Warcraft
Conclusions I've heard conflicting things about whether MMO clients could be copied without issues, but it appears that the modern MMO patcher is able to recreate whatever it needs to function (e.g. registry keys) if deposited in a new location with minimal issues. This has a few practical implications:
All testing was done on a fresh 64-bit Windows 7 install. I was able to log into a character on every game except where noted below. This is presented for informational use only, and PVD takes no responsibility for any technical support or performance issues.
World of Warcraft
- Game Version: Cataclysm Patch 4.3
- Files copied: Entire WoW directory (28.3 GB, including screenshots and UI mods)
- File to launch: Launcher
- Comments: No issues, game immediately launched as if it had always been there.
- Game Version: Rise of Isengard, Update 5
- Files Copied: Entire Directory (14.3 GB)
- File to launch: Turbine Launcher
- Comments: The first time I tried to log in, the launcher crashed just after selecting my server. Undeterred, I tried again, and got in fine. I'm pretty sure I remember the same thing happening on my other machine the last time I did a clean install.
- Game Version: Update 12
- Files Copied: Entire Directory (6.46 GB)
- File to launch: Turbine Launcher
- Comments: Same issue as LOTRO, probably unsurprising since both are the same engine. Second login attempt went fine
- Game Version: 4.0.6
- Files Copied: Entire Directory (10 GB)
- File to launch: Runes of Magic
- Comments: No issues - real relief to have this one installed fully patched, because their patcher is a very slow and painful process.
- Game Version: Game Update 62 (Age of Discovery launch update)
- Files Copied:EQ2/assetcache folder (14.2 GB)
- File to launch: Launchpad
- Comments: I did this one by downloading the installer for the streaming client, installing it, and then closing the downloader. I then added the assetcache folder to the new install. This folder contains all of the fixed data about content (e.g. textures, music, etc). After copying this over, I re-launched the downloader and let it mop up what was left, which was under one GB. No issues.
- Game Version: Game Update 8
- Files Copied: Entire Directory (17.7 GB)
- File to launch: Launchpad
- Comments: This time I encountered an issue - the launchpad took my login and downloaded the updates, but I did not have any version of DirectX installed on the machine and was not able to launch the client. I downloaded the DCUO installer from the DCUO website, and it offered the option to "repair" an existing installation (rather than install a new one or uninstall an existing one). I selected this option, it downloaded the missing DirectX, and the game launched smoothly with extremely limited download time.
- Game Version: Don't remember, probably 1.5 or 1.6.
- Files Copied: Entire Directory (~10 GB)
- File to launch: RiftPatchLive
- Comments: I initially tried running the "Rift" executable before I got DCUO up and running and received the same error message for missing DirectX. Apparently DCUO installed a version that Rift was happy with because the game launched without issue. It's entirely possible that Trion also offers a repair tool that could have rescued this issue, I just happened to have done DCUO's first.
Update: I initially copied this to Program Files on my SSD for faster loading, but noticed that screenshots were not saving, apparently because Windows does not want the client writing to the program directory. I moved the game to Users/Public/Games and the problem was resolved.
- Game Version: Thanksgiving Beta Weekend
- Files Copied: Entire Directory (18.5 GB)
- File to launch: Launcher
- Comments: I don't actually own an SWTOR account yet, so I don't know for sure whether this works. The patcher patched itself and gives me a login screen, but I can't download the updates (or log in, obviously). This entry is included primarily because people often find posts like this through Google months after they've been written - I will edit this once I actually have a SWTOR account to verify that it works, but I do not anticipate issues.
Conclusions I've heard conflicting things about whether MMO clients could be copied without issues, but it appears that the modern MMO patcher is able to recreate whatever it needs to function (e.g. registry keys) if deposited in a new location with minimal issues. This has a few practical implications:
- If you're moving from a still-functioning older machine to a new one ,you can move the data over via a portable hard drive, network sharing, or whatever other means are at your disposal. You could probably even use multiple DVD-R's for clients that won't fit on one disc, as long as you can break it up and reassemble it correctly.
- If you are using an SSD that has room for some, but not all of your MMO's and you do not play all of them every month, it is possible to copy over your current favorite, and send it back to the data drive the next time your subscription lapses.
- If you have just the one hard drive (with enough empty space available to duplicate the clients you want to copy) and you need to reinstall Windows for whatever reason, you could, in principle, create a new partition and send your clients (and/or other files, though I would definitely back up anything that can't be easily re-downloaded given time) into that area for temporary storage. Then you can format the original system partition, reinstall windows, recover the files, and remove the partition.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Weekly vs Daily Engagement
As a result of my dungeon and raid finding activities earlier in the week, there have been no more Valor points available for me to earn in WoW since Thursday. This new, more flexible system point system makes WoW a game that requires weekly engagement, rather than daily engagement. While this change may be good and even necessary, I wonder what effect it will have on community and retention.
The new system
I earned the VP for the week as follows:
Min-maxing by minimizing
In terms of both schedule and level of burnout, not having to grind away at WoW is definitely a good thing. The reality may very well be that the game can no longer hold player interest seven days a week. The issue is that the old daily rewards did not just prolong the time it would take players to earn all the rewards.
Having a reason to sign in every day encourages full guild chat channel. I wonder whether players will begin to notice emptier guilds as the population on a whole adjusts to this new, reduced commitment. This could, in turn, reduce player involvement and ultimately make the online world less "sticky" than it was before. Are we looking at a tragedy of the commons, in which players want flexibility but will be disappointed when their friends aren't around due to the same flexibility?
The new system
I earned the VP for the week as follows:
- I attempted three dungeon runs on Tuesday night (reset night in WoW), two of which were successful, for 300 Valor Points.
- I went two for two on Wednesday night for another 300 points.
- I spent Thursday night on a Raid finder marathon, and would have been awarded 500 VP's if not for the weekly cap of 1000 points (i.e. I only received 400 points due to the cap). I even re-queued to loot the bosses I missed the first time around.
Min-maxing by minimizing
In terms of both schedule and level of burnout, not having to grind away at WoW is definitely a good thing. The reality may very well be that the game can no longer hold player interest seven days a week. The issue is that the old daily rewards did not just prolong the time it would take players to earn all the rewards.
Having a reason to sign in every day encourages full guild chat channel. I wonder whether players will begin to notice emptier guilds as the population on a whole adjusts to this new, reduced commitment. This could, in turn, reduce player involvement and ultimately make the online world less "sticky" than it was before. Are we looking at a tragedy of the commons, in which players want flexibility but will be disappointed when their friends aren't around due to the same flexibility?
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