Classic Burning Crusade... Yay, I Guess?

It's been a week since BlizzConline came and went, and faithful readers may well be wondering why I haven't said anything about the Burning Crusade Classic announcement, considering how excited I've been about this prospect for almost a year.

Truth be told, I thought the actual announcement was somewhat anticlimactic (though I didn't help myself by only watching it on my second screen while tormenting my class leader's newest tanking alt in Strat Undead). We all knew it was coming; it was just a matter of getting the details, most importantly the actual launch date - and that we didn't get. On the one hand I'm a bit disappointed because I was really hoping to be able to book time off work soon (hah), but on the other hand Blizzard not wanting to commit to a date yet implies to me that the rumours about an early summer launch may well turn out to have been overly optimistic, and that wouldn't be an entirely bad thing for me as it would give my guild more time to clear (and re-clear) Naxx.

What we did get is confirmation of how expansion/character progression is going to work, and I have to hand it to Blizzard on that front as it seems like they managed to find a solution that should at least come close to satisfying the maximum number of players. By default the existing Classic servers will progress into Burning Crusade, but you'll get a prompt for each individual character whether you'll want to take them along for the ride or transfer them off to a perma-Classic version of your server instead. The character copy option I wanted will exist too though, if only as a paid service. And there'll even be level 58 character boosts!

You could be cynical and call those last two things greedy cash grabs, but to be honest I think the restrictions put on these services make sense. As much as I would have liked to be able to just copy everything to save myself from having to worry about making any wrong choices, if this was the default for everyone it would probably clog up the servers and databases with millions of effectively "dead" duplicate characters that people didn't plan to play anyway, and I can see why Blizzard wouldn't want to do that. By putting a price tag on the service it'll be limited to those who actually want to use those characters and I guess that makes sense. I'll definitely be copying my hunter main and possibly some alts as well, depending on the pricing (which we don't know yet either).

It's a similar thing with the character boosts. I'm not really a fan of that kind of thing in general - though probably not for the reasons people usually cite - but I can see the appeal in this particular instance. Does anyone who started playing Classic with existing friends not know someone whose interest fizzled out before they hit the level cap but who might be interested in coming back for Burning Crusade? There are sensible restrictions in place to cater to this particular audience without opening the doors for people to skip ahead or boost farm bots (only once per account, no draenei or blood elves, no professions trained etc.).

The other major reveal was that unlike current Classic with its #nochanges approach, Burning Crusade will have #somechanges. I would have been worried if this had been the direction for the current game from the start, but to be honest after one and a half years Blizzard have shown themselves to be respectful of what Classic means to people. They have in fact made some small changes to the current game as well, such as increasing the spawns of Black Lotus to align better with how much more populated Classic servers are compared to Vanilla, but these changes were always made with great care and have made a lot of sense.

From the sounds of it they'll take a similar approach to Classic BC, for example by giving the faction-specific paladin seals that turned out to be horribly unbalanced to both factions, or by not having Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep open on launch day. Draenei and blood elves are also supposed to be released with the pre-patch instead of the actual expansion launch to give people time to get their new shamans and paladins caught up in time for the opening of the Dark Portal. While that's definitely a departure from how things were "back in the day", it honestly sounds great and I'm perfectly happy with those tweaks.

So yeah, basically the reason I haven't had much to say about the official BC Classic announcement is that it all sounds very solid but what details we've had aren't very exciting to me personally. Without an actual release date my focus will remain on Naxx and simply getting more of my alts levelled up for now.

Speculating About Insta-90s

It's been confirmed that Warlords of Draenor will come with a free boost to level ninety for a single character - in fact, you'll get it even before the expansion actually comes out, as long as you pre-purchase. It's also pretty much a given by now that at some point afterwards, level ninety characters will become available for purchase as an out-of-game service, similar to server transfers and race changes.

Both Liore and Wilhelm have spent some time pondering this week which class they'd like to insta-level this way. I did a bit of thinking about it too, but the end result was pretty much that it's a moot question for me. It's kind of funny actually: before resubscribing in December, the idea of a free boost to ninety with Warlords of Draenor sounded great. I pretty much shared Nils' mindset: "let me skip the silly panda expansion, thanks". Now that I've actually played MoP though, I think that pandas aren't so bad, and I wouldn't mind levelling another character through Pandaria. And I don't inherently prefer endgame play to levelling, so it seems pointless to skip half the fun.

I've seen people suggest that you could use the boost to level up a class that you previously struggled to level up. In my case that would probably be the warlock. For all the alts that I made over the years, I still only have two warlocks: one is my bank alt on my old Horde server; the other was my very first alt ever, created back in late 2006, and he's only made it to level 44 during the last seven years. The thing is though, I don't think I've ever struggled with the class due to anything inherent to levelling it - 'locks just haven't "clicked" with me. I don't see that changing just because I suddenly have more buttons. So that would be another pointless boost.

I think I'll just save it in case some sort of rare and special opportunity arises where boosting a character to ninety would actually make sense for me. Like, I don't know, a sudden desire to raid with a friend on another server where I don't have any characters. I don't think it's likely to happen, but there you go.

What I find a lot more interesting is the question of how making insta-90s available for purchase will affect the game as a whole. I think from Blizzard's point of view it's going to be a big win, at least in the short term. It's going to be another thing that they can charge big bucks for on top of the subscription (can you really see a boost to ninety for an entirely new character being cheaper than transferring an existing one?), with the only downside being the risk that some people will cancel their subscriptions earlier than they otherwise would've done, purely due to this new feature. And I don't think there will be very many of them. I suspect there will be some players that will "binge" by buying multiple 90s and will thereby burn themselves out more quickly than they otherwise would've done if they had been slowed down by manually having to level each character, but I can't see them making up a significant portion of the player base.

The question of how insta-90s will affect the players is going to be a more difficult one to answer. I suspect that as a tool to get lapsed players to return and jump right into the new content it will be pretty successful - though how well those players will be retained after their first month will depend on how Warlords of Draenor actually plays.

There will also be new players for whom it will be a boon that allows them to jump right to a level where they can play with their friends' already max-level characters. Like the binge buyers, I don't think that this group will be all that sizeable however.

To most long-time players, I think it will be just another thing to spend money on that might give them brief joy, but that isn't really a game-changer in the long run. (I'm thinking of all the people I've known who've server-transferred, faction- and race-changed about half a dozen times by now.) Another character at ninety will sound great in theory, but in practice it will be just another toon to run dailies or raids with, and without having invested any time into levelling, I suspect that many players won't actually feel that attached to those new characters. It reminds me of when SoE announced that they were selling high-level characters for Everquest 2 last October. Several bloggers I read immediately jumped on the bandwagon there too, talking about how they always wanted to have a look at higher-level content in Everquest 2, how they had always been deterred by all that levelling and this was just the thing for them... just to abandon the idea after one or two play sessions.

There will be a dark side to the insta-90s too however: unless Blizzard puts some kind of restriction on who can buy them (which I doubt), people who are completely new to the game will buy them to play with the "cool kids" right away... and they will be terrible. I've seen people say that levelling doesn't teach anything to anybody anymore, and that anyone could pick up a new class at ninety and master it within the hour. That may be true for an experienced player, but for the truly new to the game... nope. I vaguely recall running a Drak'tharon Keep pug back in WOTLK with a paladin who seemed to have absolutely no clue what he was doing, what any of his buttons did, anything at all - and eventually he fessed up that he had just bought the character on ebay (or wherever). That's the kind of gamer we'll all see a lot more of once insta-90s become available for purchase. I'm not saying they'll be ubiquitous, but there'll be enough of them for it to be noticeable, and they'll make the worst players you've seen until now look like superstars in comparison. "You bought that character, didn't you" will become the new insult of choice for anyone who doesn't know how to play.

And randomly assembled groups will be worse than ever.

Invasion of the sparkly ponies

So Blizzard is now offering a special mount in their online store, and everyone's going wild about it. On the blogs I read people mostly seem to be focused on the business aspect of the whole thing, whether they see it as a good thing that the mount doesn't actually give anyone an in-game advantage or frown at what they consider a very steep price tag for a virtual vanity item. For the record, I have no problem with this kind of RMT, and I don't mind the price either. People spend much larger sums on much stupider things, so twenty euros for a virtual horse don't strike me as that outrageous.

On my server, the pony craziness has already hit the community with full force. Krasus' Landing has turned into a horse show, and people are racing the things all over Dalaran as well. Last night I got to watch a grown man explode into excited squeals in guild chat as soon as he spotted his first pony after logging on. Earlier today I saw an orc warrior, whom I know to be a fairly "tough guy" type in real life, squat on top of one the sparkly horses in front of the north bank, looking extremely silly. The poor mount's legs looked as if they were about to buckle under the orc's weight at any moment. It looks quite cool when in flight, but something about the partial transparency makes the proportions look out of whack when it's on the ground, as if the torso's too fat and the legs too spindly. It looks utterly ridiculous.

When images of the celestial steed were datamined for the first time there was a lot of speculation about it being a drop from Arthas, or maybe from some boss in Ulduar. The ghost of Arthas' old horse? The mount of the titans? It all sounded very cool. From that point of view I'm a bit disappointed that it ended up in the cash shop instead. For me things only really have value in the game if that value is created in context. I like my mounts because I had to work for them, or I have a fond memory of getting really lucky with a drop rate or a loot roll, or because they are just the perfect fit for my character. A sparkly horse that randomly shows up in everyone's mailbox one day just because they spent some real cash in Blizzard's online store means nothing to me. If anything, this openly advertised breaking of immersion makes me frown a little. However, I realise that this is just my view of the game, and others will probably disagree.

So if you think that the celestial steed is just the mount for you and you have the money to spare... good for you! Still, remembering Lil' K.T. and the pandaren monk pet, I can't help but wonder if many of these newly-made horse lovers aren't fooling themselves just a little. When these mini-pets first came out they were all the rage as well - people were going on about the awesome animations they had, and I swear that half my raid force bought at least one of the two. There was a veritable army of these little guys out during out first couple of raids after their release. A few months later however, and they are completely forgotten. Many of those former impulse buyers just don't bother to have any vanity pet out at all, while others have gone back to showing off pets to which they actually have some kind of emotional connection. I can't blame them, and I'm sure that the sparkly pony will end up exactly the same way: it'll be a big fad for maybe a few weeks, but then people will grow tired of having the same mount as everyone else, something to which they have no real connection to other than that it gave them a brief feeling of "oh cool, I must have one of those", which then led to an impulse purchase.

But then, if everyone actually considered whether they really want a mount like that instead of going "OMG A PONY MUST HAVE", Blizzard wouldn't be printing money the way they do. I hope they put the extra millions they earn from that to good use at least.

I don't understand the authenticator hype

And no, this post is probably not what you expect from the title, considering the most recent news...

I remember when authenticators were first released, most players didn't care too much about them. I was one of them, but unlike many people I haven't changed my opinion on the matter since then. Basically I think that authenticators are definitely useful - but no more and no less. They are sort of like home security systems: you may have valid reasons to believe that you should have one (because you are very rich/because you share your PC with your little brother who downloads all kinds of crap) and there are tangible benefits to having one, but it also costs money and causes a bit of extra hassle in your everyday life (having to turn the security on and off all the time/having to enter what is essentially a second password every time you log on). So even though it's a useful thing to have, many people still won't want or need one, and that's alright.

I don't have a home security system because I'm pretty poor and live right across the street from a police station. I also don't have an authenticator because I think that I'm pretty sensible when it comes to keeping my passwords and my PC in general safe, and on the very small off-chance that I should mess up anyway, Blizzard seems to be pretty damn good at restoring everything within a couple of days anyway. This is one of those cases where "it's only pixels on a screen" actually rings true for me, because well... they can be replaced easily. It's not like someone clearing out your house in real life, where the burglars might never be caught and even if the insurance company pays up it still won't be the same as actually having your old stuff back.

Lately I noticed a lot of what I'd call "authenticator fanboy-ism" emerge all of a sudden, especially in the comment section on WoW.com, but in other places too, where people say things like "People without authenticators shouldn't get support from Blizzard" or "If you don't have an authenticator, you deserve to get hacked". What the hell? Do you think people who didn't buy a mini Kel'thuzad pet shouldn't get support either, since you seem to think that support is a bonus feature for buying extra gadgets on top of the game instead of, you know, actually paying for the game? Do you think people deserve to have their stuff stolen in real life if they don't have a direct line to the police? It just strikes me as utterly out of proportion.

If you want to buy an authenticator and don't mind the extra hassle every time you log in, by all means go ahead! It does provide an extra layer of security. But don't talk about people who don't feel the need for that as if they were all handing their passwords out to hackers for free. As the latest piece of news on the subject shows, it still always comes down to what the person behind the keyboard actually does with their information. No security system can protect you if you actually invite the thief into your house.

There's also been some talk about Blizzard making authenticators mandatory in the future. I'd really prefer if it didn't come to that. I will accept it if it happens and will pay those extra five pounds or whatever it will cost because I do want to continue to play the game, but I'm convinced that it will not be the end of all hacking, and Blizzard's support team will be no less busy - they might have to deal with fewer keylogging problems and the like, but instead they'll likely get lots of calls about people not knowing how to work their authenticators, losing them, breaking them, or having them stolen by "that friend who originally made the account for me". Authenticators can make people feel better about the safety of your account, but they still can't protect anyone from their own mistakes.