Subs equal Pay-to-Win

Anyone concerned about World of Warcraft adopting a Pay-to-Win system needs to realize it already is the model they use. Subscriptions are Pay-to-Win.

I've noticed a lot of online discussion about WoW possibly going free to play and other payment models. Gamebreakers has one here. Naysayers think free-to-play is the downfall of any game and these hybrid concepts are an abomination. One major complaint is the idea of being able to pay cash for gear. This concept is touted as the worst possible decision a company could make because it would become a Pay-to-Win system.

In Pay-to-Win, people spend cash to get uber gear or something else that gives them an unfair advantage over players who don’t shell out cash.

Subscriptions are basically the same as a Pay-to-Win business model. You can't win if you don't play. Any subscribers can log in and grind dailies, dungeons or raids until they get the top-of-the-line gear. But this option is only available to those who pony up the dough for a sub. You pay money, you can get gear. You don’t pay and you’re out in the cold.

If they added an option to be able to buy gear, I wouldn't complain. Granted, I'm too cheap to use the option myself, but I think they should sell extras to those willing to pay more to play the game as they wish. 

Let's face it. Time is money. Buying a piece of gear for cash is just an extension of that. People like to argue that a subscription model creates a level playing field. But it doesn't. 

Time is as much a resource as money. Some would argue that it's not fair if some kid with rich parents can buy something I spent a month to earn in a game. I would argue it's not fair that the kid didn't have an extra month in his life to earn the item himself. Maybe he has a part-time job. Maybe his parents limit his Internet access.

Now, I'm not in favor of players being able to buy the absolute best gear. I think that should be reserved for the elite raiders who have that extra time and dedication to participate in weekly raids.  But I don't see why players shouldn't be allowed to purchase the next best thing. I'm talking about the epics like those you can get in dungeons or through daily quests. 

Consider this example. Let's say you want an uber helmet. It's not best in slot, but it will get you into the latest raid. It will take you 30 days of grinding a daily quest to get.

You purchase two months of a subscription for $15 a month. You grind out the helm for 30 days and have another 30 days to raid with the guild. Total cost = $30.

Your friend wants the same helm. But he works a lot of hours and can't log in every day to grind it out. It would take him two months under a subscription to grind enough dailies to buy it. Total cost with a month to raid = $45.

Now let's say a more equitable option were available. If an option to buy gear was added, he could pay $15 to buy the helm. Add that to a month sub to raid with the guild and his total cost is $30.

Your friend doesn't have some unfair advantage just because he didn't spend the 30 days grinding dailies. He just caught up to you. It doesn't make your helm worthless. It's worth $15. You spent the $15 for a sub. Your friend just wanted the helmet. 

Under the Pay-to-Win model, each player would be able to decide whether to spend in-game time to get something or fork over cash. I don't see how having money to buy an item you want is any different than spending X amount of hours to acquire it. 

The end result is the same. 


Storyline shortfalls

Matticus recently wrote about the story line shortfalls in Cataclysm and I have to agree with him.

I feel the same about the lack of connection to the current story and wanted to share my thoughts as well.

Granted, I never played Warcraft III and didn’t start World of Warcraft until Burning Crusade shortly before Wrath. As my wife and I leveled through Azeroth and Outlands, I enjoyed the stories and exploring this huge new world (though it didn’t feel as huge as Star Wars: Galaxies when we had to walk across contintents).

In Shattrath, I felt a connection to the Aldor, whom I viewed as the good guys (We’re playing Alliance) and wanted to help them out. I didn’t get into much endgame stuff as Wrath was around the corner. With Wrath, I felt like we delved into what made Arthas tick as we saw his downfall. By the time we hit the Icecrown area, I could tell Arthas was a bad mofo. I couldn’t wait for the Citadel to open so we could bum rush him.

By contrast, I feel nothing toward Deathwing, other than gratitude for cleaning up some things around the world. Through the various new questing areas, I have dislike of a few NPCs, but Deathwing hasn’t really affected me. I have little info on his background or motivations.

Now, I will admit I didn’t read each quest through each area, but I didn’t in Wrath either. Be it by cutscenes or whatnot, I understood the story and cared about it.

I don’t for Deathwing. But I hope the new questing hubs coming in 4.2 will change that.

Best stats for a Resto Shaman?

With the new changes to mastery for resto shamen in 4.1, I have to re-evaluate my stat choices.

Even with the change, it feels to me like haste should take the cake. The faster I can cast, the better chance I have of getting a heal off. When heals go off, people don't die.

Of course, you have to have spirit to go with haste. Earlier, I didn't realize this and stacked haste to the point my spirit couldn't keep up. Now, I scaled back and reforged off my haste because it was considered the least valuable stat.

But now, I have to rethink everything, since I want to be at the top of my game for raids.

And the Elitist Jerks site is no help. In their 4.1 discussion, they label Intellect as the most valuable stat, followed by Spirit. The problem is they don't take a stand on the stats I can do something about with reforging, haste, crit and mastery.

I recall reading other sites that suggest you get to 916 haste and then move onto other stats.

I guess I will stay away from reforging, outside of Spirit until I figure it out.

What stats are my fellow shamen prioritizing?

Why not kill Deathwing?

I'm not concerned with Deathwing's demise.

I'm not sure if I haven't been paying as much attention during leveling, but I don't have any feelings toward this world-changing upstart at all. It's almost the opposite. Thanks to Deathwing, I get to fly around Azeroth and witness some major scenery changes in the old world. He helped bring heroic versions of Deadmines, an instance I always liked and spent a lot of time running.
I have only leveled my main character to 85, but I didn't seem to learn too much about the black dragon supposedly bent on world destruction.

This is quite a change from the Wrath of the Lich King for me. As I leveled Morkk to 80, many quests gave me Arthas' backstory and I didn't like what he was becoming. I started a death knight, like everyone else, and absolutely loved that storyline. I was surprised by how much I wanted to kill the Lich King for telling me I was nothing and he was the next best thing to sliced bread. By the end of that chain, I was more than ready to off the big guy himself.

Of course, I had to wait. As others have commented, we got to storm all the way up to Icecrown Citadel and then turn around and fly off to Ulduar. Just you wait, you evil man, we'll be back for you. Then we had to prove that we were up for the challenge, which was a step I didn't mind, before getting a shot at Arthas himself.

Granted I don't raid much, and didn't spend much time in Ulduar or ToC until I needed gear for Icecrown. Mostly, I didn't care about those raids. But when the ICC 5-man instances showed up, I was all over those. They offered tougher fights than heroics at the time, and added even more to my quest to hunt down the Lich King. Plus, I got gear to help me be less of a smear against the floor in ICC.

In the end, I had plenty of reasons to want to see Arthas dead. Unfortunately, my guild and I weren't skilled enough to tackle him and I didn't get to see him drop. (Now, I have a new guild and am level 85, so you can't avoid death forever, Arthas.)

But in Cataclysm, I don't have that passion against Deathwing. It was interesting to see some folks from vanilla instances come back and the effects they had on the world, but I don't really see Deathwing as a threat.
I plan to pay more attention as I level up my death knight, but right now, I don't see myself caring if Deathwing lives or dies.

Does anyone think the "World Destroyer" needs to go down?

Clear out cloth before 3.3.3

As the title suggests, I'm getting rid of most of my [Moonshroud], [Spellweave] and [Ebonweave] before the next patch.

When 3.3.3 hits, the cooldown and location restrictions for the cloths will be lifted, making it easier for crafters to make and causing the price to drop. Depending on your server's current prices, it may be wise to liquidate these before the patch.

On my server, the prices have steadily decreased since the release of the incoming patch notes, but they are still about 20-40g more than the cost for materials. As the patch hits, you can expect this profit margin to drop closer to the material costs.

At the same time, we'll see a drop in the prices for epic items made from the cloths, though the ilevel 264 craftables will still fetch a high price given the cost of [Primordial Saronite].

I've also been toying with the idea of crafting a bunch of [Glacial Bag], but given the expected drop in material prices that may not be a wise investment. It's debatable how the pending 7-day cooldown on the bags will balance with the decreased material cost.

I'm leaning toward ignoring the market because I don't have a tailor who is exalted with the Sons of Hodir, but I've heard others are making a slew of them before the patch.

Downfall of gear scores

With all this talk of gear scores, I've been paying more attention to mine and I'm starting to rebel.

First of all, gear score has never been a good assessment of a player's skill. While his character should be able to do something, that doesn't mean the player behind the mask can accomplish the task.

The gear score also doesn't factor in what items are good for a character, it just looks at a number and assumes players would only wear useful gear.
Yay! Our tank has a 3800 gear score. It would be more impressive if half of it weren't cloth.

So as all these morons run around asking for groups with 5k gear scores, I am left wondering if it would be better to equip useless gear just because it has a higher score and make it easier to group up.

For example, I just picked up [Mudslide Boots], but my gear score went down. I had been wearing [Lightning Grounded Boots], a 226 ilevel item, but my score dropped by 6 points when I equipped the [Mudslide Boots].

Since the new boots are better for me, but the gear score fanatics out there would have me use the old boots.
What's a spacegoat to do?

Back in the Saddle

It took a while for me to get my finances in order, but I'm back on Warcraft.
Currently, I am just grinding out daily heroics and the weeklys for badges to get my gear ready for Icecrown.

I am loving the new LFG tool and generally don't have to wait long for a group. Of course the bad part is that if the group fails, we have to wait again for the queue.

My problem with the LFG tool is the need/greed system, specifically how it won't let me roll on the [Very Fashionable Shoulders].

With a healing main spec and bolt-throwing on the side, many pieces of cloth and leather in the 5-man ICC heroics would be upgrades for me. For the shoulders, I have twice seen them disenchanted in front of my very eyes because I didn't win the greed roll.

Actually, I haven't had any decent drops from my sparse heroics, except for [Mudslide Boots], which is a marginal upgrde for me.

Here's crossing my fingers for the RNG gods to shine in my direction soon.

My Space Goat

This blog is going to focus on the World of Warcraft from the perspective of an average player.

I started playing during The Burning Crusade so I'm not an original player, but I didn't start yesterday. I haven't done enough raiding or arenas to be a jaded elitist, but I don't consider myself a complete n00b.

My original character was a human paladin, but he went to the wayside when I started my draenei shaman named Morkk on the Dalaran server. I leveled in the restoration tree (stop laughing) with my wife, a draenei protection paladin named Mindey.

From the time I started, I knew I wanted to be a healer and, for me, the best way to learn was by using that abilities and talents in fights while leveling. In case no one noticed, the game doesn't offer much in the way of healer training.

So, it took longer to level, but we had fun doing it and I learned enough about healing to prevent my first foray into a high-level dungeon (70 at the time) from being a complete fail.

I geared up a bit and went into Karazhan a couple times with my guild, Stronghold, but raiding lost some of its luster when the Wrath of the Lich King was announced.

With Lich King, we again took our time leveling and I eventually got enough gear to head into Naxxaramas with the guild. Some of them had been in the original instance, so they could offer strategy and other advice. It was all new to me since I skipped over the level 60 raids and I didn't do much at 70.

Between work and family obligations, I don't raid regularly, but I enjoy it when I have the time. I haven't been to the top tier areas, but maybe someday.