I’ll be honest, there’s no link between the last of today’s recommended posts – they’re just all really interesting, even if you don’t play the games they’re referring to.

• Eric at Elder Game unlocks the mysterious door to MMO Developerdom again, this time exploring the reasons why MMORPG houses are so damn wierd – “I’ve been surprised by the number of people who don’t realize this little bit of MMO trickery: most houses in MMOs are Disneyland fantasy houses, tiny models that couldn’t possibly have an interior.”
• Ravious at Kill Ten Rats offers a detailed and interesting roundup of his experience in Guild Wars 2’s PvE content – “We instantly organized. The two players stayed on one front while I maintained the other. There was no question as to how we would beat this event and whether we would participate. There were no words said. We just played.”
• And Green Armadillo at Player vs Developer defends the Crew Missions in Star Trek Online, saying they’re more than just Cow-Clicker In Space – “The game where my ship and crew exist to travel the galaxy searching for things to do is both fun and original. It also feels appropriate to the lore – hijinks like we saw on the shows can’t possibly happen every single day in the 24th/25th century, or the universe would have ended by now. “

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Well, it seems that the kerfuffle over SWTOR’s Heroic Flashpoints has broadened out into a general discussion of difficulty for DPS. And at the same time, elsewhere on the blogosphere other people are musing on the overlooked aspects of DPS difficulty.

Is being DPS hard? Is being pure DPS hard? Should it be? Let’s go to the phones…

• Spinks hits back against Tobold, arguing that actually, there IS a problem with SWTOR’s Heroic DPS balance – “It’s also confusing to the player base when the gear requirements for raids are lower than for flashpoints, and if that was intended then it’s something that needs to be made clearer.”
• Rades at Orcish Army Knife highlights a little-discussed point – the fact that pure DPS need offspec sets too – “The only real solution is doing exactly what any hybrid character has to do to play their offspec – collect and prepare a second set of gear. However, this is harder than it sounds, because quite honestly, it looks really, really bad.”
• And The Grumpy Elf muses on improving his final grade as a DPS – “So when I evaluate my numbers I notice that the biggest problem with them is that I am not using all the tools in my toolbox so the fact I was doing okay means nothing. I was not doing all I could. Have to love DPS. No matter how you do, you can always do it better.”

Do you think DPS – or pure DPS – have it easier?

It’s a controversial time in the blogosphere! So controversial, in fact, that today there are multiple Strange And Somewhat Concerning things happening in multiple games, all on the same day.

So, buckle up, as we get down with the controversy goodness:

Blizzard to charge up to 83% of Diablo III RMT trades

Blizzard have revealed that the minimum price for an item on the Diablo III Real Money AH will be $1.50 – but that they’ll take $1.25 for any successful sale.

• Tobold calls it a stupid regressive tax system – “The real-money AH will resemble Tiffany’s more than Walmart, with relative low numbers of items posted at relatively high prices. For once Blizzard should have copied CCP and hire an economist before making changes like this.”
• In An Age briefly touches on this announcement, finding both Diablo III announcements recently curious – “I am beginning to wonder if these margins won’t start creating a space for the gray markets to move in.”

SWTOR customer service woes

SWTOR’s customer service seems to still be having problems.

• The Niquisition was somewhat confused when their English-Language ticket recieved a response in French – “Is your customer support team so inept that they can’t read four words of a ticket and determine the language it’s written in and therefore cannot send the appropriate response ticket?”

SOE sells EU servers

Sony have made the curious decision to sell their EverQuest 2 servers in the EU to a third-party company – and one with a very bad reputation. Subsequently, critics on the SOE forums were banned for “excessive negativity”, according to some reports.

• MMOQuests has made a rare negative post about the situation, calling for a boycott – “Put yourself in the position of the US military personnel who has been gaming on a EU server and now that they’re finally home, are unable to play with their friends because they must move to a US server, no longer having access.”
• EctMMO thinks the decision is just plain wierd – “I’m really puzzled over the company ‘selling’ off their EQ2 EU servers to what is known as a shady company that has poor support and security, thus segregating their community.”

What do you think of these ongoing controversies?

Some interesting discussions on a variety of topics today – plus more info on the game de jour, Guild Wars 2!

Oh, and whilst I’m at it – Guild Wars 2 Beta Signups are now open

On to the awesome articles:

• Tobold responds to yesterday’s criticism of SWTOR Heroic Flashpoints, discussing the crazy idea that maybe DPS could be the role with responsibility – “What if tanking and healing was relatively easy, and fails were predominantly caused by the damage dealers not dealing enough damage per second? Well, what would happen would be that damage dealers would be extremely unhappy.”
• Ravious at Kill Ten Rats gives us details of just what a Guild Wars 2 World vs World battle is like – “We just didn’t have enough players. This was a well defended keep and someone had taken the time to upgrade the NPC defenders. Every minute a swarm of hefty NPCs would appear near our siege, and we had to waste precious time taking them down, healing, and finally getting back to the door.”
• Apple Cider Mage issues a takedown notice for the tired old ‘Make me a sandwich, woman!’ joke – “World of Warcraft has a fairly even split of men and women now, if current numbers are to be believed. There’s no reason to NOT accept that at any given moment, you’ll be surrounded by women, whether they choose to reveal this to you or not. “
• And Tzufit’s “Cataclysm Final Grades” project has more-or-less come to a close, with wide selection of really interesting posts about the evolution of the various classes in this WoW expansion

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The Auction House in WoW, it may be safely said, is decidedly sub-optimal.

To put it another way – it sucks. And on a lot of realms, it’s slightly broken, or indeed very broken.

Whether you’re on a realm where it’s impossible to find even semi-rare items on the AH (my own realm rarely sees any but the most common BoEs), one where a single major AH player can seriously distort the market, or one where the AH is just plain dead, it’s a frustrating situation – whether you’re an AH PvPer or not.

But what’s to be done? There’s no easy solution, but Fox Van Allen from WoW Insider has written a thought-provoking piece on the problem today, proposing some pretty dramatic changes to the WoW Auction House as a whole –

“OK, so let’s face it — consolidating realms is unlikely to happen. But there’s another solution that can accomplish, economically, the same thing. Globally consolidate the Auction Houses.

Bigger markets are always better. They’re more efficient. More sellers means there are no worries about supply shortages. More buyers means fairer prices, more liquidity, and faster-moving markets. It’s a good thing all around.

Obviously, consolidating all the servers’ AHs into one will create a coding challenge for Blizzard. But even on a more simple level, there’s no reason why existing servers need to be split into three separate AHs: one Alliance, one Horde, and one neutral. It’s a confusing relic of old WoW, and the game would benefit if all wares were put into one, universally available AH.”

Fox isn’t thinking small here. But at the same time, the ideas he’s proposing, frankly, vary from “extremely sensible” to “absolutely necessary”.

The AH interface, for example, is beyond a joke at this point. AH play is now the single part of the game that most requires addons- even more than raiding – in order to compete.

A single, global AH – which I suspect that Blizzard may well be considering, given the Diablo III experiment – would be fast-moving and intimidating, but also far more usable for a lot of players. And whilst buy orders might be complicated, they’d also add a whole new layer of play that a lot of serious AHers – myself included – would enjoy, whilst at the same time making AH selling easier for casual auctioneers.

I hope Blizzard are considering at least some of the ideas Fox proposes here. They might be big, but big changes are sometimes necessary.

What do you think? Does the WoW AH need a change?