Heya guys!!  I missed you.

I’ve been writing this blog for quite some time now and it’s seen it’s ups and downs.

From when it started off as an unknown site with less than 100 hits a day to when this site blew up up doing nearly 100k hits on its biggest days…  I’m still blown away by that.

But out of 5 years of hardcore gaming in WoW, this past year has been shaky at best.  And that has been reflected in my website as well.

So this is the time where I open up and share.  Some of this stuff has been mentioned, alluded to, or hinted at before.  And some not so much…  But instead of continuing to care about the sensibilities of those who have impacted me…

It’s story time.

Skeleton Jack in Gaming

I was introduced to “gaming” when I was 10 years old.  One day at summer camp one of my cabin mates started running a table top RPG named Gamma World and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Conventions, LARP’s, RPG’s, console gaming, boardgames, collectible card games, pc gaming, online gaming, lan parties, etc…  The list goes on and I’ve pretty much done it all.

So while it goes without saying, I’m saying it anyways.  I’m a gamer.  Always have been, always will be.

Skeleton Jack in World of Warcraft

A recap on my history in WoW for perspective.

Original WoW

I started playing WoW over 5 years ago.  I was a hardcore City of Heroes player converted over to the dark side by my Super Group (a guild)…

My first toon was Elorien, a Fury Warrior born to dps yet fated to tank by close minded idiots.  /facepalm

But even forced into a role that I didn’t want, I had a blast.  I got to clear Molten Core, Zul’Gurub, Black Wing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj 20 and 40, and even Naxx40 Spider Wing before BC released.

It was an amazing experience and I still have my old 8/8 T2 Wrath set on Elo with an Ashkandi!  I still smile just thinking about it. 

BC WoW

With BC and the release of Shaman to Alliance I swapped mains to Bigeasy, a Draenei Shaman.  I did PvP as Enhancement and PvE as Elemental.  And I lit shit up like a Christmas tree!!

I cleared all BC content, even killing Muru pre-nerf, and got to be part of a server rank 1 guild.  It was awesome!!

Ending BC knowing that I had actually done “everything”, including perhaps one of the most difficult boss encounters ever designed, still makes me feel proud to this day.

But at the end of BC I learned of Death Knights and Skeleton Jack’s rebirth was soon to come…

Skeleton Jack’s Birth

I remember when I was playing Ever Quest way back in the day…  I was the Karanas and I saw a system wide message from a GM named Skeleton Jack go out…  My exact thoughts were:

“OMFG!!  Coolest name ever…  One day, I’m going to have a character named Skeleton Jack!”

No, the name wasn’t chosen because I love A Nightmare Before Christmas.  Though I do <3 that movie for getting me to 2nd base with a girl for the first time as a teen close to 20 years ago, heh.

I chose that name because I saw someone else use it and thought it was the best thing since sex.  (kind of lands the idea better than saying ’sliced bread’ if you ask me)

Humorously enough it wasn’t until years later that I even made the connection that the GM probably took the name from the movie.  *sheepish grin*  Even I have blonde moments…

Skeleton Jack the Death Knight was my 3rd inception of SJ.

The first was as a NPC in my table top RPG campaign world.  Skeleton Jack was an intelligent undead skeleton created by an ancient lich named Al’Ren, an infamous prophet in our game world.

He went on to become one of the most beloved NPC’s by our players and has been used by multiple GM’s in our gaming circle.  He’s that cool.

The 2nd was as a Storm/Gravity Controller in City of Heroes.  Honestly this was a black mark on the name.  Even I can come up with bad ideas…

The 3rd was Skeleton Jack the Death Knight and my online persona here at http://www.skeletonjack.com/

LK WoW

LK would be the expansion that broke the camel’s back for me sadly.  Things were just never the same.

I quit WoW twice during this expansion.  And even though I’ve done pretty much all of the content in this expansion (shy of just H LK himself and the last dragon boss release), these past 2 years do not feel as amazing or as fantastic as myprevious years spent playing WoW…

So the natural question is, “Why?”

What went wrong with WoW for SJ?

At the top of the list I can think of 3 major turning points.  While other factors did play a part as well, these three things were the “nails in the coffin”.

Number 1: Guilds

I started off on the Bronzebeard US server and joined Category 5, a casual raiding guild, for almost 1 1/2 years.  But before BC released I went to Sleepless Knights and stayed there for 3 years.

From SK I joined Paragon for a while, until my new job forced me to look off server for a guild with different raid times.  That was when I joined Insurrection on Dath’remar US.

Insurrection then merged with Severed and formed Heretic just weeks after I joined, shortly before I quit WoW again…

Category 5

The GM of Cat5 gkicked me actually.  I didn’t quit.  I got booted.  I was very vocal about my displeasure with how poorly things were being run back then and the GM didn’t like that.

I caught multiple infractions where the officers had cheated on DKP, giving bonus DKP on their runs, and less than required on runs they didn’t go on.

Runs the GM went on would suddenly award items that could be sold for gold without spending DKP as well.  Meanwhile other runs that the GM was not on had to turn in all of those items to the guild bank…

The list went on regarding the shady things that were being done and I didn’t like it.  Also, apparently, the GM didn’t like me telling everyone about it…

In the end, being kicked from Cat5 was one of the best things to happen to me in WoW.

I wasn’t happy there, the officers didn’t really understand the mechanics on the class and talent structure (but then most people didn’t understand back then), and I was tired of tanking everything when I could out dps epic geared toons in my blue armor…

Two weeks later I joined SK and had a blast!

Sleepless Knights

Why SK you ask?

I was sitting in Ironforge in vanilla WoW in 8/8 T2 Wrath armor with a Maladath and a Buru shield without a guild tag.  I was in tell spam hell for 2 weeks.

Everyone was trying to recruit me and it was a pain in the ass honestly.  But this one guy from SK started talking to me one day and never said a word about recruiting…

He just chatted me up and asked me to join some pre-made BG’s with SK peeps.  I was down.  It was PvP…hello?!  I LOVE PVP!! 

A week later he mentioned I should app if interested, and I was.  SK was the only guild that just asked me to go out and have fun when everyone else just wanted to nab the untagged geared out tank…  That said a lot to me.

I loved being in SK, but don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t all rainbows and bunnies…

Not that I like rainbows and bunnies being a Death Knight and all…  Uhm…  o.O

DEATH TO BUNNIES!!!!

Moving on…

I was originally recruited as a tank, but they had 4 tanks already who had been in the guild far longer than me.  So things didn’t start off too well at the beginning of BC.

I didn’t have the gear to dps, their DKP system didn’t support gearing out toons in off-spec gear, and I would get sat often due to too many tanks.  It was frustrating.

Later I was even pressured into taking dps gear even though I wasn’t being brought to dps.  Subsequently I couldn’t win any tank items because I got pushed so far back on DKP that SK actually restructured the entire DKP system to support off spec gearing.

Pretty awesome right?!

And that was where SK started showing how it could shine.  Their ability to adapt.

In addition to reworking the DKP system for the guild, they also supported me rerolling to Shaman and being a dps.

Finally!!  People online would let me fucking skill shit!!!  FINALLY!!!! It only required me giving up my main character to do so… *wry smirk*

The first two years rocked.  There were issues of course, but when is everything picture perfect?

SK became kind of my “online home”.  I looked forward to talk to my friends there, playing with them, and just hanging out.  It was a lot of fun.

But as with all things in life…things changed.  It started during Sunwell in BC, but didn’t become a problem until LK.

The GM of SK was taking on far too much responsibility and many of the old guard “core” members of the guild started falling to the wayside…

The officers in SK never really did all that much to begin with, and it only got worse.  I still don’t understand why they never put together a new Officer Core, but I wasn’t in charge…so no idea.

Regardless, this lead to our GM being stressed out to all hell and back again.  Which meant that a lot of things were not really being run well.

Don’t get me wrong.  Our GM had been running the guild for years and is one of the best GM’s I’ve ever met.

But when you pile enough crap on top of one person and they don’t get the assistance they need, they will begin to crumble under the stress…  It doesn’t matter how awesome they are.

Then add into that other issues…

I was saving DKP because I had no idea how to spend it with the new normal and heroic difficulty loot tables.  So my numbers dropped in meters while everyone else geared out and I banked my points.

So while my performance was there, I didn’t have the gear to back it when we were entering Ulduar Heroic content in my Naxx gear.

And I got judged on the basis of my new dps numbers in Ulduar.  My previous performance and history in the guild for the past 2 1/2 years didn’t seem to matter and that really pissed me off.

In addition to that there were several guild members “coming into power” whom I did not like, nor did they like me.  That didn’t exactly add to the “fun” factor of WoW.

SK was having a lot of turnover as well, with new members and new cliques.  Which only helped create divisions and fracturing that sense of community that had been there for so long that I loved.

It just didn’t feel like “home” anymore…

When I left SK I was number 1 on DKP and could have won multiple items and still stayed in the top 5.  I still left anyways and didn’t stick around for epics before I left.

Loot was never why I was in SK, but there were people who still thought that even after I left without using any of my DKP.  /sigh

Paragon

Paragon was the 2nd ranked guild on my server at the time and I knew some of their old members from way back in the day during original WoW.  So I figured why not join Paragon?  I liked them before…

Big mistake.

There are some exceptional people in Paragon from both sides of the coin.  Some of their members are very cool people.  And others are some of the best players I’ve ever met in WoW.  But that was not the standard, only the exception.

It was eye opening and shocking to me to see massive drop off in player skill and knowledge joining Paragon.  I was raiding with people where I knew more about their class than they did.

And spending nights wiping on encounters and struggling to learn tactics and strategies when I was used to my guild picking them up in just one or two attempts was painful at best.

This lead to me quitting WoW the first time during LK.  A lot of it was due to burnout from having played for so many years already and spending so many hours each week on both the game and my website.

But the shock of dropping down to such a lower standard of performance on top of everything else just made the game unbearable.

However a few months later after a much needed break I came back.  And with a fresh perspective drove right back in!

I adjusted/altered my mindset and got back into raiding on a more casual basis.  The people in Paragon were cool and they were still clearing nearly all of the in game content.  So I decided to stick it out.

So my routine was back, things were good, and I was enjoying the game.  What could go wrong?

Nothing.  Things went right!  I got the job I had been after for over a year…  Woot!! 

However the new job also meant new hours and no more raiding during prime time US hours…

Insurrection

I eventually realized I had to find a new server.  And Oceanic was looking like the best choice since it’s raid times were not ever during prime time US hours, which is when I work.

After some in depth research I settled on Insurrection.  And it was awesome!!

The people were awesome, the sense of community rocked, the skill level was amazing, and I felt like I had found the home that I had been missing for so long!

But the new found happiness was short lived.  After being in the guild for only 2-3 weeks they informed us that we were guild merging with Severed (Horde side) and transferring Horde side.  /facepalm

First off let me state up front that I told them in my application that I was *not* even looking at Horde guilds because I did not want to play Horde…  Fucking shoot me.

So there I am in a new new guild named Heretic.  Severed and Insurrection together, the two top ranked guilds on our server.  What could go wrong!?

Hmm…everything?

The new guild leadership was utter crap.  Within two weeks they had managed to alienate or lose a ton of players.

Among them were about 5 players who were quite possibly the best players I’ve ever met in WoW.  No seriously.  Like in the top 20 players I’ve ever met.  Among them, two of the best I’ve met at planning and designing strats for raid bosses and also the best healer, hands down,  I’ve ever seen in WoW.

How stupid do you have to be to not be on top of players like that in such a massive transition?  And that’s not even all of it.

The officers from both guilds had obviously not bothered sitting down and working out the differences between the two guilds until we were actually in raids.  So divergent instructions, strats, loot policies, and more were all becoming issues during raid time.

We had more people than we knew what to do with, and the methods of swapping people in and out were not working well.  Some of the best players I’ve ever met in WoW moved on or quit.  Major issues were not addressed.  There was no raid leader who actually did their homework and knew what we were getting into before we entered raids, etc…

It was a huge cup of flaming fail. (Read a big ol’ cup of shit set on fire and placed in front of your face…yum!)

And on top of all of that crap, then there was my sleep issue as well.

4 nights a week I was interrupting my sleep to make raid times.  It wasn’t possible to even get a full 6 hours of sleep before or after raids.  So 4 nights a week I was basically getting two long naps.

At first I didn’t think it’d be an issue.  However after several weeks I realized it was a HUGE issue!

I was grumpy and irritable, snapping over minor things.  The second time I snapped at someone in raid because of not getting enough sleep I realized that this wasn’t working any more.  Not even counting being irritable at work.  Which was far worse of a problem and had to be fixed.  End of story.

So what happened?  I just kind of walked away from WoW…

Number 2: Blizzard

But Blizzard is who makes WoW…how can they be the problem?  They made the game you love!

Yes.  And no.

In everything that follows you need to keep 2 things in mind. 
STOP SKIMMING AND READ THIS PART.

1) There is what I want from a game.

2) There is what Blizzard can change to make more money as a business.

I am aware that #2 is a driving force behind Blizzard’s decisions.  But as they make smart business moves to gain more consumers, they risk alienating those who loved what their product used to be (that’s me fyi).

Hardcore vs Casual

Who hasn’t heard some version of this debate, discussion, argument, yadda, yadda, yadda…

The definition of “hardcore” has sadly been diluted by this point.  Hardcore means so many different things to so many different people that you can’t actually stand on that one word anymore to describe an aspect of play style.

But the title “Hardcore vs Casual” does convey a rough idea of what I’m getting at here.

WoW is easy now.  It just is.

You can go look up on the web exactly what gear to pick, what spec to use, what rotation to follow, which mods to get, etc…

That aspect of discovery, personal testing, and player skill that would set the great players apart from the average players doesn’t exist anymore.

This isn’t just about the game, but also the community.  I would even be part of  that “problem” telling people exactly what to do without them having to discover it for themselves.

But that’s not all, it ties into the mechanics of the game as well.  Many class/spec rotations have moved towards “easy mode” where player skill level means far less so long as someone told you the proper rotation to follow…

/sigh

What is easy or difficult is subjective.  What’s easy to me may be ridiculously difficult to someone else.

But this is about me.  And WoW has moved to the casual market imo and has lost that more difficult and challenging aspect that made me love it so much!

But what about Heroic content?

What about it?  It’s fucking stupid and lazy.

Yes, from a business standpoint is sheer brilliance.

Blizzard can make encounters really difficult for the more skilled, or “hardcore”, players while still having easier versions of the same encounter for everyone else.  It’s genius!

They get to double dip, using the same resources for the 2 major factions in their player base.  They not only save money, but get to share their content with the entire player base.

I cannot fault this movement by Blizzard from a business perspective.  It’s like printing your own money.

But as far as me the player, it’s horseshit.  I don’t want to do encounters twice.  I don’t want to go into a raid learning encounters and doing it on normal and farm gear to then turn around and do it all over again on the same damn bosses, but just more difficult.

Do I have “STUPID” written on my forehead?  I already did those bosses.  Give me some new ones.

If I wanted to play through Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties then I’d go play Diablo.  But I’m not.  I’m playing WoW.

And while Diablo makes that concept work really really well for some reason, it fails miserably in WoW.

Raid Content

Blizzard’s become really greedy if you ask me.  And since you’re reading this, you asked me.  It’s my personal opinion! 

They pushed out less raid content in LK than in BC (counting just bosses), and appear to have no plans to change this new model.  *shrug*

I always felt like I was working towards something new in BC that I wasn’t ready for yet.

But in LK I felt like I was always farming old content waiting for the next patch to release a new raid.  How is that fun?

Would you rather be working on content and know you have another raid waiting for you on the horizon?  Or would do you like to farm old content while you wait for the next raid to be released?  Fuck that.

5 Man Dungeons

5 man dungeons, something I love, are just meaningless and watered down shadows of their previous glory.

I love dungeon crawls!!  But all they are now are short, dumb, and annoying daily requirements in order to get my “insert correct name” badges…

The gear is meaningless, and that’s just fucking stupid.

If a boss can be skipped, just to get to the end of the instance boss quicker, then we do that.  Just so we can be done and get what we’re really after.  The quest reward.

How is that a good design?  It’s stupid.

I’m not saying 5man loot should be equal to raid loot.  But why not close?  Or comparable?

Blizzard is obviously aware of this concept, just look at the 3 5mans released with ICC.  Why not design tiered 5man dungeons in a similar fashion as those?

They drop loot that is better than some raid loot.  Why not design dungeons to follow the raid model?  Progression in both difficulty and reward?

The majority of 5man runs have nothing of value to offer you once you get into raiding (outside of trinkets, and that’s a totally different hell).  Note that the daily quest is what people actually value, or rather the reward.  The dungeon itself offers the player nothing on its own.

F&F Alpha/Beta

Yeah, I’m still fucking bitter about this one.

Blizzard:  Oh noes!!  Skeleton Jack?!  He writes a blog about WoW!  We can’t let him in, he might be bad!  Take him off the list.

Assholes…

Blizzard’s Target Audience

Long story short, it ain’t me.

They are revamping WoW for a new generation of players.

Cataclysm is just nice way of saying, “Hey a lot of our starting content for new players sucks.  We need to change this to remain a driving force in the MMO market.”

Smart decision again, don’t get me wrong.  But Blizzard’s new targets are not the old school gamer like myself who has been playing for years.  They are going after new blood.

For new players this was pretty much a necessity.  Low level WoW sucks.  But what about people who already play WoW?

I realize there is some small minority of players out there who enjoy leveling new toons up.  To you I say shut up and sit in the corner.  Disclaimer done with…

Who in the hell actually *likes* leveling a new toon?!

I’m not asking you who likes to have multiple alts, or play multiple toons in raids and pvp.  I am talking about the act of leveling itself.

Every person I’ve ever talked to about it tries to get through the leveling process as quickly as possible.  And if someone will power level them, they always say yes.

And I’m not referring to when you level a toon with a best friend, girlfriend, etc…  The fun aspect there is sharing experiences with someone close to you.

Don’t even try to pretend that “leveling” is fun.  It was spending that time with someone you cared about that made it fun.  It sure as hell wasn’t fun filling up blue bars with imaginary points that are holding you back from end game content.

So Blizzard is throwing tons of resources into development for leveling characters.  Again, smart business move for bringing in a wider audience of players.

But as a player I just see it as all of the resources, time, money, and development that could have gone into new raid content, bosses, armor graphics, pvp improvements, class balance, etc…

Sidebar Rant

Leveling in MMO’s is an antiquated mechanic that seriously needs to go the way of the Dodo.

That’s crazy right?  OMFG, no leveling?!!?  Who the hell cares about leveling?  Seriously.

Fantasy based MMO’s are not about leveling.  You level up to to max level so you can then actually play the “real” game.  What is referred to as “end game content”.

Developers talk about the 3 pillars of MMO’s: Exploration, Progression, and Combat.  So let’s talk about “Progression” shall we?

What is progression in a fantasy based MMO?  It’s gear ya stupid developers, not levels.  Bloody nut jobs.

All leveling does is teach you how to play the game.  Know what?  You could develop starting areas in a similar fashion to the Death Knight starting zone in order to teach players how to play their class.

The experience would be far richer, and you could then spend resources on the actual game that people play.

People have characters that have 100 days played, 200 days played, and more!!  And they probably spent 2-10 days played leveling up depending on their play style, tops.

Think of it from just the perspective of money.  Blizzard approached my raid content from that perspective.

Why spend so many resources on leveling up, when that usually accounts for only a minor fraction of a player’s play time?  It’s a waste of money.

And I tell you what.  If every class had their own starting area like Death Knights do, and the focus of these areas was to teach you how to play, people would far prefer that.

Number 3: Burnout?

That’s kind of a cop out honestly…  I don’t know if I have the words to properly express this because I can’t quantify this feeling exactly.

In any given week I probably spend 50+ hours on “fantasy/sci-fi”.  Whether it’s talking about gaming with friends, watching a movie/show in that genre, playing a video game, etc…

Whether most of that time was spent on WoW, or now on other topics, I still spend that time on fantasy and sci-fi.  So burnout isn’t right exactly…

WoW has stopped being Fun

There are things about WoW that are still a blast, like murdering people in PvP!! 

But for the most part WoW really has stopped being fun.

Part of what makes a MMO great is the people.  It’s about grouping with like minded individuals.  And I don’t have that right now.

Raid content has largely been a joke for this expansion, and that has always been my focus in WoW…

It’s just not fun…for lots of reasons really.  Some big, some small.  But when you add it all up, it translates into me not playing.

So what then SJ?

No idea!! 

I’ve started working on the 4th edition of the table top role playing game I wrote with a friend years ago (I wrote the 2nd and 3rd edition).  I’m hoping to start Alpha testing it with my gaming circle some time within the next 6 months.

Ironically the name of the RPG is rather iconic.  No, I’m not sharing. 

It’s just a hobby project for now, but if it works well I’m going to look into selling it down the road.

I’m gonna take a peek into DC Universe when it releases, but I don’t really expect to get hooked.  It’s got some nice toys, but it still looks like their developers missed the mark still…

That said, Star Wars the Old Republic has my eye for Spring of 2011!  That has serious potential to hook me!  We’ll see.

I’m keeping my website.

Moar postz?!!

Not sure.  I am going to continue paying for the site though to keep it under my name for any future endeavors.

I’ve been checking out some great games that I missed due to WoW though.

Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and others…  It’s been fun!

Hey SJ!!  Coming back for Cataclysm?

My initial response is no.  But you never know.

My biggest regret about not playing WoW is no more PvP…  I really, REALLY miss BG’s!  I could possibly get suckered back in by that…

But I’ve said I was quitting before, and sure enough I ended up right back where I started from.  So I’m not saying it this time.

I wish you guys the best though.  I really do.  It has been a fun ride, and the ups and downs only made it that much more enjoyable.

Suffer Well.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…