Secondly, the Arcane changes are pretty cool. I haven’t been able to see how much my dps is affected because my recount was broken, but it certainly made my mana efficiency go way, way up. Also, the slightly different rotation feels nice. I’ve just added an arcane blast, and might take out the missile barrage. We’ll see. Overall, a good patch, except the whole servers crashing thing. But everyone’s used to that.

The other part of BlizzCon that I really liked but didn’t really mention was the new Battle.net that Blizzard is working on. It sounds like they’re trying to add more social features, allowing you to do things like chat with your friends across games. For instance, if you’re playing WoW and a friend is playing SC2, you’ll still be able to talk with them as if you’re in the same game with them. Same sort of thing with the cross-server LFG; Blizzard is breaking down some of the barriers that have existed for a long time in the online game space, mostly so the players can interact with more people, hopefully improving their experience.

Of course, there is a downside. We’ve been given a little taste of the awesomeness that Blizzard plans for us in the future. But now that we’ve had that taste, we want it now. I spent two days in a world that doesn’t exist in the wild yet. And now I have to go back to doing Argent Tournament dailys. Ignorance is bliss.

It’s starting. I’m kind of disappointed that this info was leaked before BlizzCon, but such is life. The next WoW expansion is Cataclysm, it will contain goblins and worgen, and it will have new race/class combinations. Or rather, these things might be happening. But I’m of the feeling that these things are pretty much for sure. Only my opinion though.

There’s only one part of all this that was expected: the level cap will be raised. By how much though, that’s a different matter. According to MMO Champion’s source, the cap will only be raised by five levels, to level 85. This is obviously without precedent, but not impossible. The most likely reason I see is that there won’t be as much leveling content in this next expansion. It has been stated that much of the old world will be redone, even to the extent of allowing flying mounts in some areas. However, I think this revamp will take place, at first, in the areas most relevant to the expansion. Unless Blizzard is doing away completely with the first 58 levels of the game, most of the old world will have to stay the same. It says that Azshara is going to be converted into a “low-level starting zone”. I’m not sure if this means low as in level 1, or low as in level 81. It would make sense for Azshara to be the place players go to start off questing and learning about the new lore, and I can’t see why Azshara would be a starting zone for the goblins or worgen, so I’m leaning toward the 81 option.

One of the stranger parts of information was that there will possibly be new race/class combos. I really don’t understand why they saw this as necessary. We’ve gone five years with much the same race/class combos, and everyone has been mostly happy. We the players understood that there was logic behind which races could be which classes, and took what we got. Most MMO players are less concerned about their race than their class. Now Blizzard goes and does something like this. Most of them don’t really make that much sense. Orc mage? A big, burly, hairy orc in a dress slinging fireballs? Night elf I can kind of see, but orc? Or dwarves? I’m already annoyed by short Alliance fire-slingers, aka gnomes. And Blood Elf Warriors? That’s just kind of weird. Though no less weird, I admit, than gnome warriors. Gnomes are just weird in general. I guess I just don’t see the reasoning behind this change.

Finally, the namesake of the forthcoming expansion: the Cataclysm. Supposedly, Deathwing and Azshara are the main architects of our demise. Firstly, a cataclysm is defined as a huge, destructive event; in this case, probably some kind of massive magic-induced natural disaster. I’m inclined to think it will have to do with the Maelstrom. Secondly, Azshara and Deathwing. Azshara was a night elf queen who played a part in the Sundering of Azeroth. Basically, a whole bunch of stuff happened and she became the queen of the naga. She is presumed to reside in the Great Sea between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Deathwing is the leader of the Black Dragonflight, known to currently reside deep in Grim Batol. Both Azshara and Deathwing have been speculated as being part of the lore of the new expansion, but their being associated with each other is rather curious. I’m not sure if their relationship will be collaborative or by chance; either way, it’s interesting that they’ll both have something to do with the upcoming Cataclysm.

It’s strange. We’re entering a new sort of Azeroth. Up until now, we’ve been exploring new lands, new worlds even. Outland’s design was flamboyant; the developers could do whatever they liked because it was an alien planet. Northrend is more subdued, but Wrath itself has had a very purposeful feel. We’re going to finish off Arthas, this plot line that has been with the Warcraft games for a long, long time. It’s strange that we should go on after that, but it seems we are. And we’re going back to the very roots of Azeroth. I’m really excited to see what the new old Azeroth will be like. Finally, Blizzard won’t be bribing us with holiday achievements to get us to go back to old world. Honestly, the part I’m most excited about is the sundering of… the Barrens. Why that monster of a zone wasn’t two parts in the first place, we may never know.

Unfortunately, I have a problem with this. It’s boring. Blizzard is currently saying, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” and moving on to other problems, as they likely should. This ends up being boring, there’s not much way around it. I’ve been doing the same things since I changed to Arcane spec six months ago. I don’t feel as if I’m having an active experience; the hardest thing I have to do is stay out of the green goo and keep firing Arcane Blasts. My experience, as a mage, is sort of stagnating. Sure, I could switch to a deep Fire or Frostfire spec, but that’s not me. Fire’s cool and all, but blowing things up with pure Arcane energy is pretty badass too.

There is a certain logic to not fixing that which isn’t broken. Blizzard has many things to cover, nine other classes for starters. But I don’t think that Blizzard has made the most popular MMO on the market by only making the broken things better. There’s a certain value in making something better simply for the sake of making it better, to give the player a better, more varied experience. People in the Warcraft community, or in any community, like getting excited about new things. We burn out and drift away from the game because there’s nothing new to be excited about. I want to be excited about being a mage again, rather than envious of druids for their fancy new skins.

Nintendo was the first to “change the way we play video games”. They attached to it the fact that “Wii” should play games together. The new technology and ideas that Nintendo used made their new console appealing to a huge audience, one that was previously completely untapped by the gaming community. Sony and Microsoft stagnate somewhat in their same old same old market while Nintendo reaches out into mainstream society. Obviously, this has turned out to be a massively lucrative strategy for those at the Big N.

Sony saw this coming somewhat, and at the last minute, created the Sixaxis controller. They wanted in on the new motion control hooha, so they threw a little gimmick in with the PS3 and hoped somebody would notice. They now know that they need to do something big and flamboyant, just as Nintendo has done, in order to break into that same market. So that’s what they, and Microsoft, are trying to do.

All that is awesome for them. More varied audience, more paying customers, everyone wins. But it hasn’t seemed to have happened that way. Take Nintendo for example: I had high hopes for the motion control concept, and defended the idea in my head when game sites decried it as abandoning their core audience. Now, the Wii has become a console to scoff at for hardcore gamers. The console has very little to offer by way of meaty, serious games. Go into the game store and the shelves are littered with games made by no-name companies looking to make a quick buck off of little girls and their mothers. Sure, Cooking Mama is great to play with friends, but it’s not something the gaming community can really sink its teeth into. Once again, the best games on Nintendo’s console are the ones they make themselves: Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda, etc. My Wii languishes in the corner, collecting dust while I play WoW and PS3 games, waiting for the next Mario or Zelda game, since those are the only ones I know are actually worth buying and playing.

This, I fear, is the route that Sony and Microsoft are now headed down. This year at E3, we saw more and more motion control, more and more casual games. All because they know that is what’s going to bring in the money. I much prefer a stance like Blizzard’s: make a game in an established form, but make it 300% better than anything else that’s ever been done before. Yes, innovation is something any company needs to keep on its feet, but perhaps our favorite companies are looking at this the wrong way. So many games have been made that have had wonderful sounding concepts, but soddy execution. Nail that down, and you’ll have great games that many will want to play. Hopefully I won’t have to flail around on my living carpet to play them.

Second Skin is a documentary about gamers. Specifically, MMO gamers. Sounds like a cool premise, right? From what I’d heard about it, the movie sounded like something that might show us as we are: a little crazy, but altogether likable, and usually completely sane. I thought perhaps it would show the vast array of people who play MMO’s, people from all walks of life. I thought it may be similar, in theory, to the podcast How I WoW, which interviews interesting players of all types. Sometimes, they aren’t players at all. This is not how the Second Skin went down.

Second Skin focused on those people who people think of as hardcore gamers. The stereotype, so to speak. There were a few different people they interviewed, all of them overweight, probably hadn’t showered for the cameras, their basement dens littered with energy drink cans and vacant chip bags. A few of the couples had met online in their respective games (either EQ or WoW). Most were struggling with real life catching up to them: most had lost their jobs, one of the guys was getting married, one was a new father. Most of them were jobless. Most of them didn’t care about being jobless. They just didn’t care. These are the people that society has ignored and given up on, and they want to escape the world they were born into. There’s one interview with the mother of a guy that got addicted to EQ and ended up commiting suicide. Of course, she blames the game.

The whole thing just made me angry. As Patrick of How I WoW tweeted in reference to the mood of the film, “Rock & Roll is the devil’s music, I tell ya!” To me, Second Skin did not show the entire picture. The filmmakers found the lowest of lowlifes, the hardest of the harcore, and made it seem like that’s who every gamer could end up as. They made it seem like every single one of WoW’s 12 million subscribers was either a bum in the basement or a Chinese gold farmer. It shows all the pitfalls of MMO gaming and only some of the benefits.

They show how people get addicted. They show how people waste eight or twelve hours a day in front of the computer. They show a reformed player, one who is angry at people who still play because he thinks they’re wasting their lives away. When really, he’s angry at himself for wasting his own life. I will grant them that they showed the good parts too, even if they were slanted. They showed the camaraderie of a tight knit guild, the ability for malformed people to truly be who they aspire to be in the virtual world. But they still make it sound like these people should be able to do without.

Yes, these people exist. But I exist too. I exist in that precarious place where most gamers live, between the basement bum and the non-player. We exist in the corners of society, not sure if we want our identities as gamers to come out, precisely because of movies like Second Skin. People immediately assume that you are on that downward spiral to joblessness, homelessness, and addiction, when most of us aren’t. They mention suicides and gaming widows, all along blaming the game and the game companies for keeping their gamers hooked. Yes, they’re trying to make money, just like you’re going to advertise and hope some people give you their money. The problem is not the game. The problem is the person. The mother who lost her son blamed the game, saying that he had all these problems because he played EverQuest. It’s really the other way around. Those problems are always there, and they always have been there. This guy was depressed, socially awkward, unable to function as a normal person. So, he goes to this game. This place where he can be who he wants to be. He would rather be a “resident of the virtual world”. The misfits come here because they can be part of a community, something they don’t have in the real lives.

I agree with the point that I think this movie tries to make: that society should be ashamed for driving these people to such measures as finding a different world to live in. This does not constitute demonizing gaming. Most MMO players do not play to completely escape life. Of course, we desire diversion from everyday life, but so does everyone else. Why do people watch movies or read books? To escape their existance for just a little while. We find our entertainment in slaying dragons and other wayward entities, you find your entertainment in a bar. Both can be unhealthy. Neither should be condemned.

And from what it sounds like, Verizon is the party resisting. Apple wants their shiny hardware in every single hand possible; as soon as they can legally do it, they’re going to want Verizon and T-Mobile and anyone else selling service for their baby. And honestly, if Verizon wants to make good on their boasts and actually be the largest 3G provider in America, all they need is the iPhone. End of story. Get that chip off your shoulder and give your customers what you want. Booo.