New Basic Template!

Hey, as you may notice, I changed the site design, from a pretty awful looking premade thing, to a less awful premade thing. Whoop-de-do! I may, at some point, try and write up a personalized theme for this blog, if I ever get inspired to do so.

A Brief History of Phasing

Hey all, I'm back and better than ever! Oh, and welcome to all of you that found this site through WoW.com, it's good to have you here. A few bits of info before I get to the meat of the post:

First, this is now my dedicated WoW blog. Tangential postings will be limited.

Second, I think I'm going to keep to a posting schedule (gasp!) that will prompt further ramblings and helpful advice. So, you can check back here on Sundays and Wednesdays for posts which may intrigue the mind and inform the unknowing.

Third, my guild (finally) downed Arthas on Saturday! I must say, it's one of the coolest fights in all of Wrath, and it was triply awesome in that it was one of the last things on my checklist to do before Cataclysm! Anyways, on with the post.

Ah, Phasing. One of Wrath's biggest selling points - letting the world evolve in accordance to your actions, demand and create new challenges, and build an interactive story. One of the most hyped features by the fans, too - and yet, one that (in my opinion) fell all too short. Except perhaps on one account. But we'll get to that later.

What is phasing, anyway?

Phasing is, first and foremost, a shifting of your character from one 'phase' to another. Think of it as jumping sideways through time - something any quantum physicist can understand quite well. Essentially, you can see and interact with objects and players in your 'phase', and can't see or interact with things that are outside of it. It attempts to solve one of the greatest challenges in the making of any traditional MMO: player interaction with the world. By doing things, the world changes around you - if this were completely true, you would be left something like LOVE (not entirely feasible for a game like WoW) - but by using a structured approach it enhances player investment without an exorbitant amount of effort or re-designing things.

In the beginning...

In a couple of Blizzard podcasts, developers have noted that phasing began with a fun little quest implemented in patch 2.4 (Fury of the Sunwell/Isle of Quel'danas) called 'Intercepting the Mana Cells', which was the daily that initially opened up the portal to the Isle from Shattrath. The quest has you jump from one phase, where you can see mobs that have an item which lets you jump phases, to another, which has the objects in it but not the mobs. It was a neat idea, and made for an interesting daily (the first ten or twenty times). But 'phasing' as it is called began much earlier, with a quest I have written about by the name of 'You Are Rakh'likh, Demon', where, at one point in the chain, the questgiver (The Fallen Hero of the Horde) gins a new dialog option that allows you to summon a tauren who continues the chain. This early instance doesn't have the fancy triggers we know today, and relies on dialog trees to solve the issue of world-changing: clunky, but effective.

Dialog was lot the only way of escaping the staticness of WoW - another major way was using items as a trigger. Simple things like the Argent Dawn Commission 'phased' you into the loot phase where the argent dawn rep bits exist. It seems like a stretch, true - but when you extend this to look at things like the Spectral Essence of Caer Darrow, you can see half of phasing is present - you do a quest, getting an item thereby producing a trigger, and then can see new things and even access new vendors (a repair guy).

The phasing also existed in some more core ways: first, invisibility! It only shows you people that are invisible too, and effectively phases you 'out' of the rest of the world. Second, and most like the phasing we know today, is Death. When you die, you jump out of the 'Living' world of units and items and even abilities, into a 'Dead' world with units like the Kodo Spirits in Desolace or Gaeriyan in the Un'goro Linken quest chain. Whole quests had you jump between phases, including BRD's Shadowforge Key - this being the true birth of phasing. But there was only 1 of these 'true' phases, with dozens of half-phases, like the instanced Corrupted Ashbringer event. But the triggers for jumping phases were limited to these annoying events - instances, equipped items, death, and a painful dialog system.

Enter Wrath.

The Death Knight zone exemplifies Wrath phasing. It really is the shining point of Questing in general, but in this region it shines especially brightly. Units and items progress, it is true - but Blizz stepped it up a notch, providing phased units, items, speech, animations, events, skills, light masters, buildings, teleporters, events, ui (maps), group-events (like the Battle for the Undercity or the Fall of Zalazane), and much more. From being a cool on-death way of spicing up a fedex quest, to a new and interesting way of using consumables for Sunwell Dailies (or finding mobs in Shadowmoon Valley), it became a full-fledged zone development system.

And with Cataclysm introducing 'Terrain Phasing' - basically, not only units, structures and items changing, but the actual ground and foliage too - it only furthers the scope of possibility.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not 'phasing' as a core mechanic that really developed much at all in Wrath, but the successful use of new triggers and new things effected (yes, I mean effected). It is interesting and exciting to see what they can do with all this new technology in Cataclysm and beyond - and, I mean, the Emerald Dream is the obvious next step.

(And I promise to update this with shiny pictures soon.)

Of MICE and MMOs

I'll dive right in to this post, because I want to. The Scourge cannot be stopped!

I recently read a book by Orson Scott Card, acclaimed science fiction author, about Characters and Viewpoint. I hadn't read much about the science of writing novels before this, so even the basic concepts it talked about held my interest for a while. One of the points he makes, early on, is about the four different kinds of stories, specifically novels, that exist. They follow the acronym MICE, and I'll briefly sum each one up:

Milieu stories are those that focus on setting and the world the characters exist in beyond all else. It can house such things as poems, recipes, songs, as well as extraneous and unrelated plot points, just to convey the setting (or Milieu) of the story. Examples of this are Lord of the Rings and Avatar.

Idea stories are written to push across a single thought, element, or idea. This can be something relevant, such as the intricacies of modern evolution or gender roles in American society, or something as fantastic as posing the question 'What if a giant lizard attacked Tokyo?'. Inside this category falls all Speculative fiction, and so a great deal of science fiction can be housed here. Examples are Waterworld and the Left Hand of Darkness.

Character stories are just made to show, reveal, and explore different characters in different situations. Most modern drama television shows fall under this category, as well as a few comic books. Examples are Firefly and the Dark Knight.

Event stories simply chronicle one event, one point in time, whether a conflict or a simple day at the park. Nearly every short story has to fall in this category because, you know, they're short. Narrative poems are usually here too. Examples include Poe's The Raven, and the first 20 minute opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.

A short disclaimer:
Yes, I know every single novel has every one of these ideas. But did anyone go to see Avatar for the characters? No. How about watching the Dark Knight solely for the events? It just doesn't make sense. The novels, or movies, we view as amazing, take Lord of the Rings, are strong in three of the four categories, but one truly shines above the rest. You can't tell me that the Battle of the Shire was for anything but more interactions in the world, nor Tom Bombadil, (which is in fact why both were cut from the movies). The characters, the events, the ideas, they all back a strong world that it is housed in. Some are ambiguous - Firefly had a very strong world - but in general, both movies and novels stick to these lines.

Now, you say, what is this doing here? On a blog so previously dedicated to events in the video game world? I'll tell you. Calm down. Relax, man, you're two tents.

I would argue, or at least postulate, that games follow a similar structure. Not quite the same, as they are two (very) different storytelling genres, but they share similar structures. While this could, with a little extrapolation, cover all games, I will focus on my MMO genre rating system that I call SPAM.


Sandbox/Social games take one category. They are not built by developers, but the players that play it. They may have a plot, or a world, that forms around it - even WoW has a massive following of machinima and comics - but true games in this category have all the following categories made up of the people, by the people, and for the people. EVE, Second Life, and LOVE all are versions of this.

Plot games follow a (usually linear, but not necessarily) plot that goes from point a to point b. They have a defined starting and ending, and whether DLC or expansions increase this, its is still a game driven by a single goal. (Every game made based on a movie, ever, in the history of ever, has been this type of game. Some of the blandest, most boring, and lamest games have fallen here too.) For MMOs, plots have been harder to come by - though we see major signs of plot- centric MMOs in Wrath of the Lich King, with Arthas's storyline, and (of course) in SW:TOR.

Amusement games are just made for gameplay. Combat, racing, puzzles, riddles, exploration, minigames, boss fights, sports, whatever you fancy - the developers had an idea for a fun game on the forefront of their minds when they built it. You, naysayers, may say that everything falls in this category. All games have to be amusing, or else they wouldn't sell! But I am using amusement in a "shallower", or more "accessible" sense. Free Realms and the majority of Kids' games fall right here. There are others here too, and games that make excessive use of combat can be tossed into this category. I know a number of people name Aion, but I'm reluctant to take a stance seeing as I've never actually played the thing.

Lastly, Milieau games are all about the world you exist in. In fact, they are very similar to Milieau stories, in that they push worlds in front of them. However, this also encapsulates the Character piece of the novel - because either you are a character, or the character is part of the reactive NPC world. I can't think of an MMO that doesn't, or shouldn't, fall into this genre. World of Warcraft (esp. Vanilla) is most definitely in this breed, with its voluminous lore and all sorts of unnecessary background. Another example would be Star Trek Online, and indeed most franchise settings (because people who pay to play one of these games will leave disappointed if they don't feel entrenched in the world). Avatar: The Game should have been in this category. It wasn't.

And, to end, a brief hypothetical summary. I feel like this makes sense. If not to you, or any developers, then to me. Good MMOs, like good Novels, highlight one of these aspects beyond all else, and use the other aspects to foil that piece. I'm not saying that anything should be done to lessen how well each is executed, just that a game needs to bring the other genre's up to par. If you want to immerse your players in a world, that's fine! Just don't tell them that it's also all about a single plot. Want it to be a very community game? Neat! Just don't waver between a world you build and a world your players build. SW:TOR chose story. LOVE chose gameplay. EVE chose sandbox. It's those other games, the EQ2's and the AoC's and the STOs and oh so many more, that don't (to me) have one outspoken genre. By no means diminish what you have - all pieces, from community to world, are necessary for a successful MMO. But without an point of contrast, the whole masterpiece fades.