As you may have already guessed, my next project is going to involve videos. For the past month or so, I’ve been setting up this project.  At the moment, a few technical preparations are still being made. I’ve done all the basic design work for the site, and I’ve passed the rough blueprint to a friend of mine for scripting (coding). Aside from that, everything is set from a technical and conceptual standpoint, so I can begin scripting episodes.

I realize people aren’t quite sure what to make of this. I’ve told most of my guildies and close WoW friends what I’m up to, but not my readers. There’s a good reason for that, however. What I’m planning is mostly an untapped medium. So instead of telling everyone what I’m planning specifically, I’ll provide you with examples of  what I will not be emulating:

1. Video Logs – Video logs are a mostly unused medium for WoW commentary, so it’s no surprise The Weekly Marmot generates tens of thousands of views per episode. That being said, I do not like the idea of just sitting down in front of a camera and talking for ten, twenty or thirty minutes. If the goal was simply to sit down and talk, you’re better off writing a blog entry. If you’re going to do a video, you should be using footage to supplement what you’re saying. Otherwise, there’s no point in making a video about it.
2. Encounter Guides – While there was a lack of quality guides out there for raid bosses two years ago, TankSpot has filled that void incredibly well. So there’s no reason for me to do encounter guides. Besides, I’m not interested in making encounter guides. That being said, I may create episodes where I critically analyze an encounter (or several).
3. Machinima – I may include some machinima as supplementary footage (when I’m allowed, or when I collaborate with someone), but I am not interested in, nor artistically capable of, making full-on machinima. There’s plenty machinima to go around, anyway.
4. Live Casts – While some people tend to love when a top tier guild broadcasts their raids, and while I absolutely love Day[9]‘s daily Starcraft netcast, I will not be doing any live broadcasts. It’s a future possibility, but the content would have to be interesting enough, and the talent involved would have to be good enough to make it interesting.

Everything else is pretty much fair game, so I leave it to your imagination. That being said, I am currently on a budget that’s coming out of my own pocket, so I don’t want to set anyone’s expectations unreasonably high.

Yes, that’s a cheap homemade softbox. It’s an LED clip lamp, a paper towel, and some tape (for the win)!

For the past few months, I’ve been doing some soul-searching regarding the MMO industry and how I approach my criticism of it. I’ve already stated my opinion of the situation in the MMO industry, so there’s no need to elaborate how much I hope it will change. The real question lies in how much of an impact I have. As it is, blogging is such a crowded field. You’re not going to make a huge impact, unless you enter the MMO industry directly as part of a development team, join a major publication, or come up with new ways to spread your ideas. So I’ve thought long and hard about what I can do to make an impact in some way.

Competition for Bloggers Is Extremely High

It used to be that only a few critics of the MMO genre stood out. Back in the days when Ultima Online and EverQuest were the prevalent entries in the industry, criticism was dominated by the likes of Scott Jennings‘s site, Lum the Mad. These days, however, becoming a prominent critic of the industry is an arduous task. Consider this (and this is just hypothetical, since no one has researched the subject):

• WoW has roughly 11.5 million players. I don’t know the exact number, because Blizzard tends not to release numbers unless they have an increase in subscriptions to announce. But for the purpose of this article, let’s assume WoW still has the 11.5 million subscribers they announced in 2008. (I’m sure they don’t, given the censorship issues in China and the lack of a recent announcement about subscribers, but let’s use the best case scenario.)
• Not all of WoW’s subscribers are individuals. Some players have more than one account. So let’s say 350,000 of these subscriptions are actually duplicate accounts for individual players. In my guild alone, I’ve seen three five-boxers  and several two-boxers (I have two subscriptions myself). But I’m not about to assume my guild is normal, so I’ve dramatically lowered the assumed percentage to 3%.
• Not all of the 11,150,000 remaining individuals speak English. I don’t have any numbers to support this, but considering the old 11.5 million mark also included Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Latin American and Russian players, you have to assume not everyone speaks English. Personally, however, I wouldn’t even begin to guess with any accuracy just how many of those players don’t speak English. So let’s say only 25% lack proficiency in English. That leaves you with a generous estimate of 8,362,500 English literate individuals playing WoW.
• So any blogger writing in English could have a potential readership of 8,362,500. But not everyone cares to read about a game. Some people are simply way too casual. Some only read news sites. And some tend to gravitate towards well-known communities for discussion and criticism.
  • So let’s assume about half of the English-speaking WoW players care to read news or commentary about WoW. That leaves us with 4,181,250 possible readers.
  • Probably half of those care only about news and patch notes, so they only visit MMO Champion and World of Raids. That leaves us with 2,090,625 potential readers.
  • Another half of those only care about theorycrafting and strategy, so they visit sites like Elitist Jerks, Arena Junkies, TankSpot, etc. That leaves you with 1,045,313 people who might care about commentary and criticism about the game.
  • There are some very well-known blogs and commentary sites out there. WoW.com is probably the most prominent with a broad spectrum of topics. For the hardcore arena scene, a lot of people like to read World of Ming (even if they don’t agree with him and his cohorts, they still read his blog because they discuss the arena ladders and tournaments). And then some hardcore raiders tend to gravitate towards blogs on the sites of hardcore raiding guilds like Ensidia. While I highly suspect these sites attract at least 75% of the potential readership, I’m going to be conservative and say only 50% do. This would leave any independent blogger with a potential readership of 522,656 readers.
  • As I said, there are many, many bloggers out there. I’d estimate there are at least a few hundred active bloggers writing about WoW. If you go to BlogAzeroth.com and look at the amount of blog introductions there currently are, you’ll find twenty-three forum pages at fifty posts per page. But the site only extends back to 2008, and not every blogger has made an introduction there. While probably half of those end prematurely, the rest tend to write for at least a year or so. Even if there was merely 300 bloggers (another conservative estimate), that’s 300 blogs competing for only 522,656 readers. While I know some people tend to read several blogs, if they only read an average of two blogs each, that’s 3484 readers per blog. And some readers are not daily, meaning the “visits” for a lot of these blogs each day would be dramatically less than 3484, if they even achieve that high of a readership.

It’s important to note that none of this is factual. This is entirely estimated. That said, I’ve been extremely generous with the numbers, and I personally suspect the actual readership for moderately successful blogs is only a few hundred per article.

Factual Assessment

What I do know is how my blog has fared in its brighter days. I’ve had seven of my articles linked by either Massively or WoW.com. And, each time, those links have resulted in spikes in readership. But these spikes are almost always temporary. They do result in the addition of some long-term readers, but nothing from which I could actually make a living. Hell, my most popular linked entry (the article which previewed Wrath based on my experiences with the beta) only generated about 9,000 unique views. But if you were to look at an average day during the blog’s heyday, you’d see a unique view count ranging anywhere from 50 and 250.

I should note my blog is definitely not the most successful independent WoW blog. I’m not about to claim that. I don’t even come close. The most successful blogs have a higher frequency of updates, a more focused subject, and a more user friendly design. Some simply go the distance to make sure the presentation of their content is incredibly unique and intuitive.

I came into blogging thinking I could generate a huge readership, but when I realized just how competitive the field was, I stopped caring about that and started caring more about what I wanted to say. So I dropped all inhibitions and simply wrote what I wanted when I had the time. I wasn’t going to generate a living, so why bother sacrificing portions of my life to meet a deadline? That being said, I did want to generate an impact. I’m not sure whether or not I did, but it is pretty ironic to know you’ve written articles about something like reshaping old world Azeroth and then seeing it happen in a new expansion. I don’t know whether some developer caught wind of my article, but you’d like to think you at least influenced players’ thoughts about the prospect (even if that’s not really the case).

That said, I was one of the more successful independent bloggers during the site’s peak, in the late summer to early fall of 2008. As you’ll note, however, the numbers for even a moderately successful blog like mine are not terribly impressive. I certainly could have built a larger audience than I did, but I was still leading a hardcore raiding guild when Wrath was released, and that demanded my full attention. So I lost much of what I’d built.

What Are You Getting at, Lume? What Should We Expect?

I’m going to be rather vague, because I don’t want to show my hand. I’m going to say my interest in commentary has recently been renewed. With so many MMOs hitting the market these days, my optimism has not died entirely. I also want to make more of an impact than I have in the past. Having faltered in a recent attempt at doing so, I’m going to go in a new direction. So you can expect me to be shifting my commentary to something different. It will still be focused on WoW, but the style will be different. It is going to be very experimental. When I’m ready, I’ll announce it. In some ways, my experience writing Lume the Mad will have been a launching pad for what I’m planning. However, I need to do some planning and setup. So it could be up to a couple months before I begin regular production.

That’s all for now
–Steve (aka Lume)

I’m not going to deny that information from the Cataclysm alpha has been leaked. It’s all over the web, including on some very prominent WoW sites. In a sense, it’s almost unfair to those of us who want to act responsibly to have to endure these leaks. There’s a lot to say about them, but we’re afraid of the consequences and what they could hold for the future. So we keep mum and lose out on an opportunity.

With so much information regarding classes and systems being revealed by Blizzard, it seems Cataclysm is pretty far along in terms of conceptual development. So I just wanted to take some time to briefly address what has been announced so far. I also want to take the time to express my hopes and desires for things that haven’t yet been announced.

Regarding Class Changes

It’s difficult to criticize or evaluate the changes coming to every class without really seeing how they compare and play against each other. So I’m not going to comment until we actually see the changes. I realize I already commented on druids, but I have since changed my mind, because the healing mechanics are changing too much. That said, I’d still like a new utility spell, even if its impact is incredibly minor.

Regarding PvE Information

The first of the refinements being made is that we’re combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout.

…

We’re designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we’ll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty.

…

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you’re able to gather the people. (Source)

The separation between twenty-five and ten-man raiding will still exist, though the disparity will be less severe and focused primarily around quantity of loot (which is important for any progression guild). This doesn’t give due credit to the fact that ten-man could be just as difficult, lest people have forgotten Sartharion already. Mobilizing a higher number of people is a challenge, but only if you’re comparing the effort of an individual trying to handle each version. Most twenty-five man guilds have multiple officers, however, so the difference is hardly striking.

If I were to consider TBC, Lunacy had between two and three people leading at any given time. From Karazan through the end of BT, we primarily had two people, though we did have a third person for a short while acting as a tie-breaker for loot decisions. During Sunwell, we definitively had three people leading the charge. I handled recruitment, interviews and keeping people focused. Silver handled strategies and keeping people calm. Siafu managed the guild bank, took interest in loot, and kept track of loot. All three tasks aren’t easy for a twenty-five man guild, but I do stress the work is spread out in this regard.

Now that Lunacy is merely a ten-man guild, it’s really just me leading things. I’ll admit it’s a lot less stressful than leading Lunacy’s old raid, but that’s not because of the smaller number we have to work with. The only reason it is less stressful is because our expectations are a lot lower and we don’t strategize to the same extent as we did when we were hardcore. If we were set on clearing heroic ICC10 with a fury, the work would be roughly the same. I’d be evaluating people more harshly and maintaining higher standards. I’d be promoting recruitment more actively. And I’d be pressuring people to improve more than I do. I’d also be keeping closer track of loot to ensure the distribution is more even.

There is a similar comparison with large and small businesses. At a small business, one person could handle business decisions, bookkeeping and ordering, while another person handles hiring, marketing and event planning. A larger company, meanwhile, would have a CFO overseeing all things monetary, a CEO to make major business decisions, a board to provide input, and then a bunch of individuals to handle tasks like hiring, marketing, and planning events. But in terms of the effort put out by an individual, it’s rather similar. That being said, I understand it also depends on the demands of an industry. So it’s considerably more accurate to compare a family-owned grocery store with the likes of Ralph’s, Safeway, or whatever major supermarket chain a given area has.

We do like how gating bosses over time allows the community to focus on individual encounters instead of just racing to the end boss, so we’re likely to keep that design moving forward.

I and the majority of my friends vehemently disagree. If the idea is to keep people from racing to the end boss, then simply put a gate before the end boss. Otherwise, the instance feels less epic when you’re forced to do it in small fragments. It’s like watching the first sequence of a movie repeatedly before finally moving on to a subsequent sequence, only to watch both of those sequences repetitiously until moving onto the third, etc. In the end, you’re left with an unsatisfying experience, which is why so many people will only watch a movie when they can view it in one sitting. Dungeons are experienced similarly, unless they are episodic in nature. And by episodic, I mean to say each gated wing would have a self-contained plot. That being said, I’m fine with gating the final boss for competitive reasons. But gating an instance to death bothers me for the reasons stated. And I’ve already made my argument a number of times.

Also, does it really matter if it’s gated if the ultimate goal for the hardcore guilds is clearing it on heroic?

Hero Points — Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)

Valor Points — High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)

This is basically the same as the current system, which I like. I would very much rather see the daily heroic ditched, however, if simply because there are some days I don’t have time to do a heroic. I’d much rather you be able to obtain valor points from seven heroics in a week, instead of a single heroic each and every day.

Regarding PvP Information

Honor Points — Low-tier, easier-to-get PVP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most PvP activities.

Conquest Points — High-tier, harder-to-get PvP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, and a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from winning Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. (currently called Arena Points)

I like having a two-tier system that motivates people to continue competing. I also like how rated battlegrounds will be a secondary option to arenas, considering I much prefer battlegrounds.

That being said, I do have my hopes and reservations about how rated battlegrounds should be supported. Simply put, I hope to be able to run fully-organized groups once again. The excitement involved in organized play is simply too good to pass up, and it will be the thing that keeps me playing in Cataclysm, should other areas of the game falter.