The Lava Lamp

[tim]

Let's take a moment to relax and let our minds drift back to the time of Diablo II. Wonder at the greatest action RPG of its time. Loot at every turn! Swathes of monsters! (Relatively) imaginative classes! Difficulty settings only the most monumentally committed of players would see to the end! Customisable skill trees! Awesomeness!

But wait... I built my character terribly badly. I put all my points in <gimp skill X> when I should have put them in <uber skill Y>! Now I can't continue with the game, and I'm going to have to start again... See the skill trees in Diablo II controlled not only what you could do, but how well you could do it. Do you want more abilities or more powerful abilities? I hope you didn't sink a lot of points into making your low-level abilities awesome when you could have been spending them on new, uber abilities even one point in which was better than any number of points in the fluff...

Roll on a few years and the influence of Diablo II on World of Warcraft is clear to anyone who has played both. The skill trees are back, but now they're "talent trees" which allow you to specialise your character rather than control what they can and cannot do. Characters of a particular class receive a huge number of tools with which to do their job - every priest can heal, every warrior can scream a battle cry - but talents allow you to be just a little bit better at one aspect of your job, at a cost of being just a little bit worse at the others.

Of course, endgame MMO play being what it is, the gap of "just a little bit better" might as well be a yawning gulf for all the difference it makes. If you want to push the hardest content available to you, you need to be specced for it or suffer a noticeable drop in performance. Hard endgame content in WOW is designed to test people who are specced and geared for the job - there are those who do it otherwise, but they're either very, very good, or very stupid.

A "spec" is a combination of talent points some approximation of which is necessary to compete in the higher levels of play, or which less skilled players will need to compete in the lower levels of play. A typical class has a PVP spec and a couple of PVE specs specialised towards different goals. Some PVE specs are more suitable for solo play, small group play or large group play. Some PVE specs are more suitable for an earlier or later level of progression through the endgame. Some classes have multiple roles they can perform in PVE, and a spec appropriate to each role.

Enter Diablo II's spectre. Oh noes! I'm in the wrong spec! My guild wants me to tank Gruul/heal heroics/pvp/farm motes and I'm specced incorrectly! Will I have to start the game again at level 1? No, of course not. Based on Diablo II you might have been misled, but Blizzard are in fact not mean-spirited crazy people. If you're specced incorrectly you can just respec for a small "donation" of money, choosing again where to distribute your talents.

This allows for a couple of things which might be unintuitive at first. One is the notion of a "levelling spec" which would be useless for approaching endgame content in, but which speeds your transition to the endgame hugely. The other, and the actual subject of this now rather extended explanation, is choosing to alternate between game roles. My contention is that WOW is currently totally incoherent at this.

See, it makes sense on paper. Blizzard clearly have a goal in mind with the whole idea of talent trees. They don't want everyone of the same class to be the same. They want you to have to *choose*, thematically and mechanically, what your character can and can't do. They don't want you to be the best at everything. Great. This is the foundation of RPG goodness for many players, distinguishing yourself, being different. Of course people should specialise their character.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. See Blizzard also have another design goal. They want people to enjoy all aspects of their game. They subtley or overtly encourage people to PVP, solo and group. In some cases these tasks are compatible, in some they are complementary and in some extreme cases (for example, Feral Druid itemisation) they are bordering on mandatory. Great! Of course people should enjoy all aspects of the game.

It's a classic incoherency trap. Two sets of mechanics, one pushing one way, one pushing another. Choose. Do both. Choose! Do both! Of course you *can* do both, and that's where the problem lies. See the restriction on respeccing is a simple gold total that (for the regular respeccer, such as someone who raids every week and PVPs every weekend) ends up being exactly 50g per respec. That's 100g/week assuming you spec for PVP at the start of the weekend and spec back for PVE at the end of the weekend.

At level 60, 100g was a sufficiently intimidating sum of money that only those who really knew what they were doing economically (or had excesses of time to burn) could realistically do it weekly. The integrity of character specs was preserved and people were, on the whole, specced for (and participating in) PVP *or* specced for (and participating in) PVE. At 70 the story is somewhat different. The introduction of and rewards from the Arena makes PVP a significantly more tempting proposition for even the most dedicated of raiders, and the overall boost to the economy makes 100g not such a large sum of money any more.

The last nail in the coffin is the introduction of the daily quests. Daily quests are fairly simple tasks that can be completed once per day for a reward of about 10g. You can only complete 10 such quests per day, and depending on your class and the quest in question they take 5-25 minutes. It averages out at a rate of about 50g/hour. Whereas mote farming (thirty motes is worth about 100g) has unpredictable returns and depends heavily on how suited your character is for farming elementals, daily quests provide a much smoother, predictable income for all characters. A character who is barely capable of killing anything can still make 100g in less than two hours by completing the two bombing run dailies five days each week.

This allows us to put a cost on respeccing in hours of your life. It's not a complex equation. Respeccing (and back) costs 100g. 50g can be earned in one hour. Respeccing (and back) therefore costs *two hours of your life*. Integrity is now gone. Every warrior in the game is an two hours away from being able to imitate any other warrior in the game for a short period. You might choose never to respec, but really all it would cost you is two hours of your life. Those who *do* choose to respec only have to give up some of their time. Remember that this time isn't devoted towards fun. By the time you're entering into these equations you've completed the daily quests so often that they're not a novelty any more. You're doing them because they're the most efficient way to make money, not because you enjoy them. Moreover, you're not working diligently towards some goal (which is one of WoW's strengths, and not something that should be changed) but working towards being able to play in the way you want to.

Let's get this absolutely crystal clear. Respeccing can be earned by working for two hours. Not playing for two hours. Working for two hours.

So now we have to ask, who benefits from these two hours worked? The player doesn't. He wants to enjoy all aspects of the game (being able to PVP effectively and PVE effectively, possibly in more than one role) and he doesn't benefit from having to work for an hour in order to be able to do so. Blizzard don't benefit - the player is motivated to keep playing (and paying) by the content available to them, not by the promise of being permitted to work for an hour. They don't benefit from players logging on more often every week. In fact it costs them fractional amounts of money every time someone uses their services. The players who like character variety or character integrity don't benefit, because the barrier of entry to respeccing is now sufficiently low that only those who can't or won't devote an hour or two to grinding the gold are prevented from doing so.

It's possible to draw an comparison here with farming gold to pay for repair bills, or crafting or purchasing consumables for use in raids, both of which are necessary to compete in high-end content. Note the difference, however, which is that your repair and consumable costs scale somewhat with your skill as a player and the competence of your guild. Poor players are "punished" for repeated wipes with higher bills. Whether or not you think this is a good thing, your respec cost does not depend on your skill as a player, simply your desire to experience different aspects of the game.

Expressed in this way, the 50g respec cost seems absurd. It's accessible enough to not provide a deterrent for the more time-blessed or work-ethical members of the community and high enough to deter players without much time from experiencing some of the available content. This is without even mentioning the ever-present problem with locating healers and tanks for instances. While not a problem for all players on all realms, it comes up often enough to be readily mentionable. When a PVP warrior is asked "will you tank this instance for us?" he now not only assesses the costs involved with the instance (one or more hours and many potential wipes) but also the cost of respeccing and back again (about two hours).

Lowering the respec cost to 1g, 5g or 10g makes the cost present but negligible. 10g takes 5-10 minutes and can easily be obtained while performing most other game activities. At 5g or 10g a player could readily afford to respec for an instance run that doesn't wipe too much and still come out ahead on money.

Why would Blizzard *want* to introduce a mechanical disincentive to performing critical group functions? Why would they want a disincentive from participating in PVP? Blizzard want us to make meaningful choices. Well, they are. Right now you every player has to make the meaningful choice between working for two hours, or passing up half of the content in the game.

One final note about character integrity. If you're looking for a tank for your PUG, and you whisper a warrior saying "Will you tank for us?" and the warrior replies "No, I'm specced for PVP", do you *really* think "I'm glad his character has lots of integrity" as you spend the next two hours sitting in Shattrath rather than playing?
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"Now I'm really confused. You're looking for someone who has a flaming head but also doesn't have a flaming head?"