UC Berkeley Starcraft Class, Week 1

A screenshot of how StarCraft looked early in development.Tonight I attended the much-talked-about StarCraft class at UC Berkeley as an observer. (Insert StarCraft joke about Observers.)

The main lecturer is the young Alan Feng. Mr. Feng is a physics student who says he's been playing StarCraft "for 2.5 years, 6 months on the pro level." He also had help leading the class from a guy named Yosh (I forget his real name, but I call people by their chosen names anyway), and a third guy who I only remember as Mumbling Guy. I would call Feng by his gaming name too, but I forgot what it was because he only said it once.

Feng and Yosh are an interesting contrast. Feng is endearingly highfalutin while Yosh is an old-timer (StarCraft-wise) who tells the young-uns how it used to be. Feng began the class this way:

There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.

There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.

There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.

In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.

--Sun Tzu

And he added:

In Starcraft, there are only three races, but more gameplay remaining than can be explored.

There was then a long stretch of

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World of Warcraft Mouse (and multiboxer highlights)

This is the new World of Warcraft mouse developed by SteelSeries. I like idea of it a lot, and I would buy one instantly if it had Mac OS X support. Yeah I know you can use USB Overdrive to get things like this to work, but native drivers would be much better and they are supposedly coming out in a couple months.

I like mice with a lot of buttons. You, the person reading this who is about to post an annoying comment, do not like mice with a lot of buttons. But you, the other kind of reader who likes to submit my articles to social bookmarking sites--you know what I mean. In fact, when I look for a mouse, the number of buttons is the first thing I look at. If it doesn't have enough, I won't consider the mouse at all. Even Apple's Mighty Mouse--that lozenge-looking thing with apparently only one button--has 4 buttons: left, right, middle, and a 4th side button when you squeeze the sides.

But Seriously, How Many Buttons?

Does this World of Warcraft mouse have enough buttons though? It says it has 15, but let's look more closely.

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World of Warcraft Arena Balance and Sirlin

Here's an amusing post on gameriotby Vir that mentions me. The comments are entertaining too. It's about the balance in World of Warcraft arenas, and making the game into an e-sport.

For the record, I'm available but I don't think Blizzard will call. ;) For one, they might say that fighting game balance doesn't apply to their game, and that I don't know their game. Shrug. The same concepts seem to apply to Puzzle Fighter, Street Fighter, Kongai, Yomi card game, and the other projects I can't tell you about. Balance is balance and the same issues show over and over.

And second, I don't think my article two years ago won me any points there. Even though much of what I complained about has indeed been acknowledged and addressed, I don't think my tone went over well.

Anyway, thanks Vir.

--Sirlin

10-Man Raiders: Second Class?

World of Warcraft has made so many positive steps since I wrote the single most read article ever on gamasutra.com (literally). Most of my concerns in that article have been addressed. Back then, the PvP's honor system was so grueling that it actually endangered players' health. These days, you can create a level 70 character with any gear you want in fair competitive tournament setting. Impressive. Back then, "raid or die" with 40 people was the overriding design ethos. Today, there are no more 40-person raids and even the 25-person raids can all be done in 10-man versions.

You can hear some information about this in this video (which incidentally has less than a third of the views of my interview on the same site, sorry for the uncalled-for cheap shot).

Anyway, I just couldn't let this video go. I don't get why World of Warcraft has taken so many steps towards being reasonable and yet can't take the last, logical few. The key point here is that 10-man raids will get worse rewards (one tier lower in WoW-speak) than the 25-man versions of the same dungeons. Kaplan (lead designer) explains that 25-man raids are much harder to coordinate, have more logistics to worry about, and are more work. No argument there, I think we all agree with that. But this is the *reason* that they need to have better rewards, he says. That sounds a bit backwards.

To put this another way, there are two versions of each raid dungeon: the 10-man version and the less fun one. If they had the same rewards, not enough players would play the less fun one. So...why even have the less fun one? Shouldn't players be encouraged to play the content that is the most enjoyable to them, rather than encouraged to play content that is more logistically difficult to coordinate? (10-man versions can be tuned to take just as long, of course.)

Kaplan has moments of clarity in this video where he explains that both sizes of raids should have easy dungeons and hard dungeons. The size of the raid is not a judgment call on your worth, it's simply about how many people you feel socially comfortable hanging out with. Either one can be hard or easy, depending on the specific dungeon design. Yep! (And either can have the same rewards? No, apparently.)

Then in the same video Kaplan mentions that they considered solutions(?) like having the final 25-man raid on Arthas *unlock* the 10-man version. (What??) Or maybe when you get to the end of the 10-man version, Arthas just isn't there. Perhaps he left a note behind: "Hey guys, this is Arthas. I only value players who play in large groups and I'm a little grumpy about whole no-more-40-man-raids thing. I won't even fight second class citizens such as yourselves."

I think Kaplan knows on an intellectual level that 25 is not better than 10. (He flat out said it, in fact). He might also know that 10 is not better than 5, that 5 is not better than 2, and that 2 is not better than 1. They are just all different. Each one of those sizes can have tasks and challenges of extreme difficulty. Each one can have endless time-sinks. And yet the 40-man values of WoW's past still echo today. "Yeah, yeah we'll *have* 10-man raids, but they can't have equal loot!"

One last thing I'd like to point out is the years-old argument that players who enjoy large raids would enjoy them regardless of the loot. For the majority of raiders, this is false. I know it's false, you know it's false, and Blizzard definitely knows it's false. The last place I'd look to find people motivated by intrinsic rewards is a 40-man World of Warcraft raid. (Dear both of you who really do enjoy big raids for the own sake, even with no rewards. You are not like the others.) The actual case is that the vast majority are motivated by gear-rewards to spend time in dungeons that they would otherwise not choose to play in. If I'm right about this, why not let the rewards be equal so that they can play 10-man raids and have more fun? And if I'm wrong about this, why not still make the rewards equal? In that case, 25-man versions will be full to the brim anyway because raiders love the intrinsic rewards of completing a logistically difficult task, after all.

To summarize, challenge should lead to rewards. (A separate gate of time-spent can also lead to rewards since this is an MMO. I'm not ruling that out.) Challenge can come 25-man or 10-man. If you accept all that, the final step is that it's true for 5 man...and 2 man...and 1 man. You can have just as much challenge (and require just as much time spent, if you like) in any of those sizes. Different players will have a sweet spot group-size that they prefer, and no size is really second-class. The value judgment shouldn't be on group size, but rather that we judge inclusive design as better than exclusive design.

If there were challenging 2-person dungeons that I could play with my girlfriend, I'd still be playing World of Warcraft today. I get the feeling that if I made it past a gauntlet of virtually impossible monsters in a 2-person World of Warcraft dungeon that the final boss would disappear and say, "Sorry, but the princess is in another castle."

--Sirlin

"Lesbian" in Blizzard's Profanity Filter

I just learned that the word "lesbian" is in Blizzard's profanity filter on the World of Warcraft forums (in-game as well?). The code of conduct furthermore states that bypassing the filter (such as typing "L esbian" or "lesb1an") will result in a temporary ban from the forums, depending on severity.

So, why would this word be profane? It is a proper term, not vulgar. Blizzard Community Manager Tseric had this response:

The same reason any word might end up on a filter. It tends to be used pergoratively. Please stop nit-picking and trying to call me out. I'm sick of locking posts. If you want personal attention, request dialog with a GM.

I'm not sure what he's referring to there exactly, but "tends to be used perogatively" is not a very good reason. I looked up the word 'lesbian' at dictionary.com and it said to see the usage note for the word 'gay':

Usage Note: The word gay is now standard in its use to refer to people whose orientation is to the same sex, in large part because it is the term that most gay people prefer in referring to themselves. Gay is distinguished from homosexual primarily by the emphasis it places on the cultural and social aspects of homosexuality as opposed to sexual practice. Many writers reserve gay for males, but the word is also used to refer to both sexes; when the intended meaning is not clear in the context, the phrase gay and lesbian may be used. Gay is often considered objectionable when used as a noun to refer to particular individuals, as in There were two gays on the panel; here phrasing such as Two members of the panel were gay should be used instead. But there is no objection to the use of the noun in the plural to refer collectively either to gay men or to gay men and lesbians, so long as it is clear whether men alone or both men and women are being discussed.

I do not think Blizzard is intentionally shafting or mistreating lesbians, but I do think they a) are giving that appearance with decisions like this and b) are unintentionally shafting them. Putting the correct name of a group on a "profanity" filter sends the message (intended or not) that that group is a marginal, "less than" group. I ask Blizzard to reconsider this issue.

Thanks,
--Sirlin

Update on Friday, August 1, 2008 at 3:55PM by Sirlin

Lesbians can now legally get married in California. Is “lesbian” still considered “profanity” and a bannable offense on Blizzard forums and in-game?