Enchanted Trading R.I.P.

Hey, as amost of you know, I wasn't able to make it to the Ravenwood Ball last night. I had a great time with Philly, etc yesterday though. (I'm going over David's to chill with just him and Philly tonight.) But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

I want to discuss the loss of our ability to trade enchanted cards. I'm sure many of you are very dissapointed in this collosus-sized event in the history of the Spiral. But is it really such a bad thing?

Let me start with a quote from via Friendly's blog:

"The trading of enchanted cards was never intended; it was an error on our part that players were able to use this system to gain access to spells they were never suppose to receive. Yes, this has been an issue in PvP, but that's really a minor part of the overall problem (as PvP is a relatively minor part of the overall W101 experience.)

Please understand that we went to great lengths to craft and balance the difficulty and "fun factor" of our game. We spent thousands of hours pouring over spreadsheets, implementing, testing, and then repeating that process until we got it right. We planned for players to have "easy" fights and "hard" fights. We planned on solo areas, and areas where we wanted them to ask other players for assistance, fostering social connections. As part of this process -- and to make each class feel special -- we created a handful of custom, unique spell that were restricted to each class. We wanted each player to feel like they could do something that other players could not. Each class was engineered to have areas of strength and weakness, so that the style of game play (and strategy) would different from one player to the next. We wanted to foster a sense of identity, to make the game interesting (and different) based on the path that the player chose to follow, and (of course) to make the game balanced across 300+ hours of gameplay.

After all that effort, we made a mistake, one which allowed player to use 50 gold enchantment cards to circumvent these class restriction. Oops! I wish this mistake had never been made in the first place; had the class restrictions been properly enforced from the beginning, players would have thought "well, that makes sense" and not given it another thought.

The problem is, this may seem like a minor issue, but it is not. This one oversight fundamentally dilutes the unique nature of each class. Replicating these spells creates a huge imbalance in our system, not just in PvP, but in the overall play cycle and in the experience of the game we spent so much time and energy crafting. If everyone can cast everything, what's the point of having classes at all? To borrow a phrase from The Incredibles, "When everyone's Super, then no one is." In my eyes, being able to mass produce a collection of class-restricted, high level spells for a trivial amount of gold falls pretty clearly into the category of stuff we should fix. And so, we are fixing it.

I certainly realize that you may not agree with this decision. Much
like a parent sometimes the "right" decision is not necessarily the most popular one. In this case, I recognize that some people will be unhappy with this fix. But as the director of the game, I have to look out for the health of the game as a whole. It's my call to make, and I stand by my decision. You may not agree, but I do hope you will understand."

~J. Todd Coleman

Ok, let me try and sum up what you just read: They didn't originally intend for us to be able to trade crafted cards because they wanted some spells to be school only spells. Thats why there are cards that don't drop from enemies. KI wanted there to be something special about each school, but if everyone can cast every spell, then what's the point in the different schools?

That's right, Syndrome. When everyone is super, no one is.

The special spells that were meant to be school-specific were really cool ones, like the lvl48's, Judgement, Satyr, Earthquake, Wildbolt (<--PvP will be better now), all the buffs, etc. PvP will be much better now, because only diviners will cast wild bolt, (we won't be beaten by n00bs with orthrus anymore ;D) and only life will be able to heal.

And once again, Balance will be brought back into the Spiral.

Because of this huge part of the update, about a week before it went live, I gave Emily some cards:

• 1 Cyclops
• 1 Humungofrog
• 1 Orthrus
• 1 Death Trap
• 1 Ghoul
• 1 Vampire
• 4 Skeletal Pirate
• 2 Wraith
• 1 Scarecrow
• 1 Strom Trap
• 4 Wild Bolt
• 1 Kraken
• 4 Stormzilla
• 9 Triton
• 7 Storm Lord
• 10 Judgement
• 6 Krokotillian
• 1 Locust Swarm
• 8 Hydra
• 25 Power Nova

Now, you're alll probably wondering, "Blaze, what the heckhound were you thinking, giving away all those cool cards?" Well, one of my very first posts was about how much I care about Emily, and how important our friendship is to me. Now, I'm almost a grandmaster (I dinged 49 the other day. I'll post some screenshots later.) I'm very confident in my casting abilities, I don't need any of those cards. My dad won't give me money for them in the bazaar. (He says it's against the rules. Otherwise he would take them, but Professor Drake would be very angry I:) So, why not give them to someone that can use them.

Now, I know Emily isn't a n00b (she knows a lot about the game) but she is at a low level still. I'm positive these cards will be of use to her, and I'm sure she'll save a Judgement as a sentimental thing. My last gift to her, you know? (I remember when I gifted her that bandit suit. And I'll be sure to gift her more items that she'd like, once I get more crowns.)

Again, I apologize for making such a lengthy post, but oh well.

I'm going to head over to the Spiral (I finished my science project finally.) until I have to head over to my 2nd house. ;D

Happy Gaming