Why Call to Arms will work

I've come around. Jinxed Thoughts describes a scenario that will play out over and over once Call to Arms is in place:

There are a couple of features that I am looking forward to a little extra in this patch, for example I intend to start burning through instances like there was no tomorrow (aliens attacking?) with my dk, maybe even my warrior, due to the new Call to Arms. I like tanking - I just need a little more incentive to stand the douchy pugs. Maybe this will be enough, we'll see

I previously pointed out that players already have a tremendous incentive to enter dungeons as a tank, so if they are going in as dps nonetheless then no reasonable cash bonus is going to change it. However, I overlooked that there's another source of tanks than people who would otherwise have queued as dps. Alts!

Warcraft is an alt-friendly game, and many people create alts once they have their main character maxed out, for some definition of "max". When people decide what to do with their time, they choose between things like daily quests, taking an alt into a dungeon, playing the auction house, working on achievements, and so on. Call to Arms will tip the scales of that decision toward running dungeons as a tank, and the scales there are already pretty balanced.

I predict we will see a lot more tanks in the dungeon finder. We'll also see a lot fewer people doing dailies, participating in battlegrounds, and all the other things people would otherwise spend their time on. That's really all fine with me. I find dungeons the best part of WoW. It's not a very good PVP game, but it's a wicked cool multi-player PVE game, and nowhere do you see more multi-player PVE goodness than in dungeons and raids.

Getting more tanks into the Dungeon Finder

Blizzard just announced that they are adding Call to Arms as a way to entice more tanks into the dungeon finder.

To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you'll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount.

By the way, I disagree with the premise that the current queue times for dps are crazy. They are long, but they aren't crazy long. So long as you have something else to do (quest, gather, dailies, ...), the queue times are just right to give you a pleasant alternation between two kinds of activity.

Nonetheless, shorter queues would be better. What can be done?

I suspect Call to Arms won't make much of a difference. Already, tanks can queue instantly, so they have a very strong enticement to queue as a tank instead of as a healer or dps. The additional benefit of getting gold out of it is swamped by the benefits they already have.

A better angle, though one much more difficult to implement, is to make it less onerous to tank. This can be hard to do, because tanking is much more demanding than the other roles.

One possible solution would be to lower the gear requirements for tanking in heroics. Make the mobs hit less hard, so that characters can queue for heroics with less fear of wiping the group. As the game is balanced right now, tanks that meet the minimum ilvl requirement are fairly squishy. Some might say this is making the game too easy on tanks, but if we are seeing tanks not sign up or heroics, the game must already be fairly hard for them. A nice thing about this solution is that it only affects heroics. As far as I know there is no shortage of tanks for raids.

Another possibility would be to make tanking rotations even simpler, or at least, make a simpler rotation be sufficient. I find that when tanking with a new class, there's a tanking equivalent to grid lock where you get so focused on your threat rotation that you lose track of where all the mobs are. If tanks had a couple of fewer buttons to worry about, then they'd find it easier to focus on all the other things tanks do. This strategy, granted, can easily backfire. Many complained in Wrath that tanking many fights was terribly boring, and that's why Cataclysm tanks have so much more to do.

A third possibility, and not something they can implement immediately, is to reduce the ratio of tanks that are needed for a group. Why not have 8-man dungeons with one tank and one healer?

Overall, it's a tricky problem. As usual, it's gratifying to see that Blizzard is thinking about these game design problems instead of just raking in their dough. I don't think Call to Arms will solve the tanking shortage in Dungeon Finder, but it's a simple thing that is easy to try.

UPDATE: Jar on Rank 4 Healing Touch takes up the same question.

Talking in random dungeons?

Jinxed Thoughts has a great article up on individual play versus group play in Warcraft. It's an important topic for making Warcraft a great game. If anything, I lean toward thinking it is too far toward the individual side. If I really wanted to play a single-player game, there are vastly better options out there. The reason to play Warcraft is the social interaction.

One point I'd emphatically agree with is this:

I socialize as much with my random pugs today as I feel like I did a couple of years ago, and believe it or not, people are as prone to act as morons now as they were then. To me the random dungeons are the same, but without the 1-2 hours wait of collecting people for the run and having everyone travel to the instance. Seriously guys, do you miss that?

Gathering groups for a 5-man was just terrible. It's good to be reminded of this before complaining about the groups the Dungeon Finder assembles.


One question is one I've been thinking about lately:

I've got a friend who, without any special reason, doesn't say much in instances. He never has. I on the other hand talk all the time, even when tanking and healing (which has lead to some wipes). It is naturally a little difficult to do a good job tanking/dpsing/healing if your keyboard is busy typing words. So if you do a smooth run, ie stay in combat alot, there might not be much typing and not much "talking".

I wouldn't say it's wrong to be silent in a random. I used to stay silent during most randoms, and I don't think that was necessarily a bad thing. For other people, I'd rather shy folks come along than that they sit out. However, lately I've personally started making an effort to say hi to everyone and get a little small talk going. If nothing else, it makes things more fun than if you grimly march through and blast pixels to bits without a word. As well, sometimes something really interesting or funny will come up.

As well as those advantages, however, it also increases your chances of success. Suppose you wipe on a boss due to miscoordination. Suppose you see that the tank isn't using cooldowns. Suppose the paladin has a weird choice of auras up. Your group will be better if you can share your insight. When you get ready to share that insight, it's going to go a whole lot better if you have a talking relationship with them. If you don't, then the first words out of your keyboard are going to be criticism, and players will have an initial reaction to blow you off.

Normals dungeons are for learning?

Icedragon writes:

I’m fine with newbies when they’re in normal instances. Some people prefer questing all the way to the level cap, which isn’t a bad thing. You’re new to the dungeon? Use your map and ask questions if you don’t understand a mob pack or boss strategy. Communicate with your group. For the most part the newbies I meet are open to learning how things work, and some are even nervous about their performance. I’m a regular poster in the Newbie forum and it’s satisfying to help someone out.

It is a pretty theory that people should practice in normal dungeons and then go do heroic dungeons. However, it doesn't work in practice. I've tried getting people to crowd control in normals, and they complain it is too slow. They're not wrong, either. If it weren't for the aspect of trying to practice for heroics, there really wouldn't be much point in crowd controlling in most normals fights.

As a result, the only way to practice the new things you need for heroics--crowd control, damage reduction--is to actually run heroics. As such, I don't see a way for Icedragon to attain a mythical world where other random people he meets through the Dungeon Finder are going to know as much about Warcraft as he does. Everyone starts out not knowing, and then mostly learns from doing it rather than reading about it, and since they are all in one pool, they are just going to be a lot of groups that mix old hands with hopeful newbies. Personally, I kind of like that mix in general.

The closest thing to a good answer I can come up with is to drop the valor-point bonus for running daily random heroic dungeons. The valor point bonus was initially put in so that people will have a reason to run heroics after they outgear them. However, it's not needed any longer. Meanwhile, the heroic dungeons are clogged up with people who totally outgear them. If they dropped the valor-point bonus, then the only people in heroic dungeons would be people who have some heroic gear but are hoping for a little more. Groups would have a consistent gear level, and they'd also have a more consistent level of newbiness. The feel would be more like with levelling dungeons, where three out of the five have no idea and the other two are levelling alts and can contribute a lot of pointers.