Malchome’s Mind on Gaming

By now the news has spread the Blizzard will eventually implement in game Auction House(AH) Access into the Armory, the signed in portion of course. I saw it mentioned first on mmo-champion which points to a WoW Forums post.

I think this is a really cool idea, I won’t be using this feature most of the time, but definitely something I will be using at other times. Especially since theoretically you could be on 1 character of the account and check the AH on other servers and or the Bank Alt of the same account. But they may put something in place such that is that account is logged into the game no character on that account could be checked. We will have to see.

Over all I like this idea but lets be serious the current AH in game feels like a quick fix that was added at the last moment to at least have some sort of an in-game economy going. The default interface is a pain in the ass and even with Auctioneer and other Add-ons it is still extremely tedious and a bitch to find stuff if you are just browsing. If you know exactly what you want it works otherwise it fails.

Out of the 4 in game AH like interfaces I have dealt with directly and several, more than 3, others I have heard about only 1 stands out as actually being something different, robust and useful.  EVE-Online is the only MMO I have seen that actually has a robust and useful economic interface.  I believe it is this way because, crafting and the economic game are actually acceptable play styles in EVE.  Whereas in all of the other MMOs I have dealt with and heard about those systems, crafting and trading, seem to be a quick fix to add features.

So what am I suggesting or IMO is needed. A complete overhaul of the AH. Yes our bag space may be limited by stack size but why the hell should the AH. The AH like everything in the game is ultimately a series of entries in a Database. Currently it seems like 1 entry in said DB has a stack size limitation. This is insane.

The following are IMO the way to make the AH sing.

• 1 entry in the AH per Item of unlimited quantity (ultimately an unsigned Int of either 8/16/32bit in size. 16 would be the best since dust and some rep items could get into the hundreds easily.)
• The biggest and most important one,  list Buy Orders
• Fully customizable search for gear.
• Wild Card Search-able for Name Text
• iLvL
• eLvL
• Quality(Pick-able, not Lowest filter.) If I want to find a green item I want to see green, not green, blue, and purple.
• Stat Search X [<|>|=] of Y Stat [Str|Agil|Stam|Int|Spr|SP|AP|Armor|Crit|Hit|Haste|ect....] Repeatable so add additional filters.
• Price History (at least past week) so we can in game see the price trends over the past week. (Min, Max, Avg) of both Price listed and Price Sold. Maybe a separate graph showing # sold at what price through Bid and Buyout.

Essentially look at what EVE-Online has for an in game economic interface and make something similar with the Blizzard polish, because I really can’t think of any way to really improve the EVE interface, I just know that I like it and it would be great to have something similar in WoW. Unfortunately for EVE it is about the only thing I really like in the game but I will save my dislikes of EVE for another post sometime.

So what brought this to mind is that I have been playing my XBox 360 a bit when taking breaks from WoW.

If a Starcraft 2 beta ever begins I may mess around with that or give my beta access to friends that like RTS games more than I do.  I just don’t like that with the exception of the highest skilled players he who mobilizes a medium size strike force wins it seems in most RTS games.  In Civ III parlance I end up being an Industrious/Commercial leader and specialize in perfecting my resources and scientific research.  In MOO2 I would end up with the species that was creative and end the game with Millennium Falcon size ships with the Death Star weapon.  I loved destroying planets with small frigates.   So In RTS games I hate micro managing individual units and thereby leaving other units quasi vulnerable.  It is a shame that turn based strategy games have seemed to stop evolving other than with better graphics.

Anyway back from that tangent.  The one aspect of RTS games that I do like are Tower Defense scenarios.  In a LAN game a long time ago in Red Alert I won the game by building out a web of Tesla Coil Towers across the map.  I had wiped out the other player’s base but they had 1 unit hiding somewhere on the map….  So rather than scour the map looking I just let automated defenses do the killing.

So the game that brought me back to this style of play was the South Park Tower Defense game that is on XBox Live for download.

How would it all work I really have no idea.  I just think that the concept would be interesting and I am sure Blizzard or some other gaming company will figure out a cool way to incorporate something like it into a raid and or dungeon scenario.

So I have not posted in awhile.  There have been several reasons for this.  The two main reasons being a bit busy with work and not really getting around to post when at home, always more stuff to do in and out of game.  The other reason is that I really have just been waiting for patch 3.3 to hit.

Because I have been waiting for 3.3 and the joy of the new LFG tool to finally be able to get random groups when ever I have time I have mostly stopped playing my level 80s except when raiding.  I have farmed some more badges and stone keeper shards for my new time filler.  Leveling several new alts.  I am currently working on a Mage, Rogue and Druid.  The cool thing that is keeping most of the mind-numbing bordom at bay when leveling the umpteenth toon through the lower levels is now I am skipping large blocks of zones especially in the 14-20 segment.

The reason I am able to do this and doing this is that I can now get XP in the Battlegrounds.  I use to hate battlegrounds while leveling before because they always seemed to be a waste of time and then there were the twinks.  Now my Mage and Druid with 2 Heirloom pieces of gear are a quasi Twink but no where as bad as they use to be.  With the turn XP off feature all of the serious Twinks have been moved to their own little bracket.  This means that the battlegrounds are now full of people just wanting to play a game or few to either level through BGs or just to get a break from the normal quest grinds.  Before getting to one of the more serious points and improvements that needs to be made to Battlegrounds I have to say playing a Rogue with 2 Heirloom daggers enchanted with Life-stealing is fun as hell.

Bracket Restructure

As the section title directly above states Bracket Restructure is one of the main things that needs to be done now that we have XP in Battlegrounds.  All BGs need to run from X0-X9.  Let the level cap players always be in their own separate bracket.

The reason for this is the end result of several previous PvP changes.  Lissanna, a mutual friend and I got into an argument about this on Sunday over vent.  Because it is player behavior Lissanna is of the opinion that no blame can be placed on Blizzard.  Ok so what is the combination of issues that is causing a problem?   It is a mix of XP in BGs bringing players of All Levels into a BG instance and the level capped 80s only wanting 80s in their game using the AFK reporting tool to “kick” anyone of a significantly lower level out of the instance.  Because there are no repercussions for reporting someone AFK you can just do it to anyone for no particular reason.  This then causes the person to get the debuff and if they don’t do a certain action within a time frame they will be kicked and given the Deserter Debuff.  This occurred to our mutual friend in AV when they were killed and were running back to meet up with the group.  While they were dead they were reported and kicked while running back.  This type of crap can not be tolerated.  If a person is active and attempting to participate they deserve to be there unfortunately even if their performance sucks.

The report AFK tool has now become kick those that don’t agree with us and is now a device for griefing.  There needs to be a mechanism put in place that allows one to defend themselves from being wrongfully labeled.  Because there are legitimate reasons in battlegrounds to remain stationary to either defend or gather surveillance.    Especially if you are a Rogue or Druid since you can stealth and remain mostly hidden.

Yes as Lissanna pointed out this is a player behavior issue especially since the player base asked for such a system to be implemented.  However since we own nothing in the game it all belongs to Blizzard then they are also to blame.  The created the system and implemented it, and like many things they implement they don’t seem to stop and figure out all of the ways the system could and will be abused so that there are counter mechanisms in place to enforce better behavior or more fair play.  As in if you falsely report someone AFK then you are the one booted.  There should at least be a Query system to the player so that they can respond to their accusers directly.

Anyway I look forward to the PVP XP through level 70.  Afterward, looks like it will be impossible with the level cap Twinks behaving badly either because they don’t know better or are bored.  I suspect the later but ya never know.

I admit I don’t like seeing a non 80 in the BG when I run BGs on my 80s but I realize that the system allows them there and as long as they try I don’t have a problem with them being there.  I would prefer to see the level cap become it’s own bracket for just this reason.