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Deaf/Ventless raiding guild slices silently through heroic

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DeafVentless raiding guild slices silently through heroic ToT

How smoothly do you think your raid would run without Vent? The instant connection of voice communications makes short work of strategizing before an encounter. It allows raid leaders to direct the flow during battle, issuing new orders, calling out phases, and reminding players when to move. It allows for a certain amount of friendly banter during lighter moments, and it unites the entire team in whoops and cheers when the boss finally goes down.

The players of Durus Veritas make their way through the heroic raids of Mists without any of that. In fact, most members are partially or completely deaf and can’t hear anything in the game at all. Even its hearing members hear nothing, because the guild eschews voice communications. Despite that, the guild is now 8/13 in heroic Throne of Thunder, chewing steadily through every barrier and demonstrating that fellowship, like raid progression, depends on clear communication — no matter what form.

WoW Insider interviewed long-time DV leader Sarssypoo about the guild’s unusual membership and impressive record of raiding success. (Durus Veritas is currently officially led by Zoroji while Sarssypoo takes a leave of absence from active raiding.)

Main character Sarssypoo, holy blood elf paladin, long-time GM DeafVentless raiding guild slices silently through heroic ToT
Guild Durus Veritas
Realm Ner’zhul (US-Horde)

WoW Insider: Is every member of Durus Veritas hard of hearing or deaf?

Sarssypoo: Durus Veritas consists of a mixture of deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing players and is open to everyone who enjoys the community focused on Ventless raiding. Guild chatter gets intense at times and it’s fun. (Of course we prefer mature players that are open to banter.)

Has DV’s mission always been focused on players who are deaf or hard of hearing?

The guild was created in April of 2011 and has been working ever since to develop effective ways to approach raiding without any form of voice communication. I’ve been in several hardcore progression guild that used Vent, and I decided to use my skill set and experience to form a guild for deaf/hard of hearing people with a few close friends who also have similar experience.

Do any of your players use voice comms at all?

There has been no form of voice communication involved with the guild’s progression. Most of our raiders have exceptional awareness and remember the assignments given to them beforehand.

DeafVentless raiding guild slices silently through heroic ToT

Would you say that the limitations faced by DV’s raiders are more the result of not being able to hear game sounds or of not being able to hear other players? Is either aspect more difficult to overcome than the other?

I would say that one of the biggest limitations is the down time between wipes to type out explanations rather than talking out on Vent.

I don’t know about the game, as I have never experienced sounds during a raid. However, the only thing I’d imagine would shave a few seconds with reaction timing is sound cues from add-ons, but it has never been an issue. Most cooldowns can be predicted, such as tank cooldowns, and we generally study the fight as we go and fix problems that we encounter for a specific part of the fight.

I am sure on Vent it would be easier to make on-the-spot calls if a tank has used up all his cooldowns and needed extra healing/tank swap until the next cooldown comes up. Healing cooldowns are usually spread through the fight with prior assignments, as it’s ideal to use them as often as you can to conserve mana for all your healers.

Does the guild recommend a particular set of add-ons to help substitute for audible game cues?

We encourage members to use Deadly Boss Mods, but that’s the only thing I can think of other than using addons that helps players with their specializations and keeping a clean UI with minimal clutter so they can take full advantage of visual cues.

DeafVentless raiding guild slices silently through heroic ToT

What specific chat add-ons or tips do you recommend to make text-based raiding more efficient and effective?

Most of the things that we use are readily available and come with Blizzard’s default UI. Some members make their own custom UI, as long as they are made visible, as we rely on macros. Sometimes we (usually the healers) type out assignment changes or chat macros to communicate during a raid encounter.

Are there other gameplay techniques you and your guild mates have developed that make playing easier for deaf players?

The success of the raid largely depends on people focusing on survival and putting out as much numbers as they can to make the fight go smoothly. Ideally, a raid should consist of people who fully understand the fight as well as the math behind it and their gameplay skill. I’ve noticed that when we get good hearing players in with all the qualities above, they pick up just fine.

Setting up assignments prior to a raid fight is generally what we do, mostly healing assignments, to make coordination possible. Players are required to memorize their assignment and execute them to their best based on how well they can analyze the fight and optimize their performance. It’s good practice for those to brush up their raid awareness and understanding of the fight. For healers, we’ve developed our own healing channel to discuss parts of the fight where there is struggle with healing and how to coordinate healing cooldowns around them.

Every player is good in their own way, and micromanagement of their skills largely depends on the raid leader or other players to watch what everyone does, help them figure out what cooldown to pop, or watch how they died via addons such as Recount. Going in a fight blindly has almost never reaped effective results without coordinated cooldowns.

DeafVentless raiding guild slices silently through heroic ToT THURSDAY

What about hardware and technological solutions?

I have tried to use a video system such as an iPhone video Skype/Facetime to communicate with one raid member, but it is far too distracting to watch someone communicate in sign language or even reading text and watch the encounter.

I’ve also tried to livestream myself explaining the assignment before the raid, but it takes more time to make sure people alt-tab out to watch and understand what I am telling them. It would be possible if everyone in the raid had dual monitors, one for raid and one for livestream, and they can use the chat option in the livestream website to discuss their duties. Preferably, a LAN party would fix a lot of issues with the downtime we have between wipes to make sure adjustments are in place.

What options has Blizzard included in the UI and game that help?

Options such as raid markers and world raid markers as well as chat macros have been a huge assistance to raiding without voice communication. I wish that markers would be available in PvP as it is in PvE, because deaf players struggle to get in Rated Battlegrounds or Arena due to the fact that voice communication has a huge advantage over playing blindly without icons over players or an effective means of changing strategies on the spot without typing it out.

Durus Veritas has recently done some shuffling and re-shuffling of guild size, isn’t that right?

We have two core 10-man [teams], but the second 10-man has a more casual schedule as well as casual raiders, which caused some of the people who were serious about progression in that second core to be frustrated, so we discussed going 25-man. Once we went 25-man, it was difficult to manage, as we didn’t have a strong enough roster to manage progression into heroic content.

So I made the call to go back to our respective cores, and some players from Core 2 decided to take a break from World of Warcraft. Because of this, we were able to jump from 1/13 HM to 6/13 HM, and Core 2 has been slowly developing their roster. [The guild is now at 8/13 heroic.]

It did not help that we’re on a medium populated server with people who are concerned about joining a guild that does not use voice communication. …We were able to get back on foot with the new recruits this week.

When you’re not playing WoW, what do you do?

I currently work as a teacher’s aide for sign language classes at an university. Mostly, I just have WoW-on-the-brain syndrome, and I theorycraft for several elements when it comes to the game. I’d imagine the next level of challenge for deaf players would be a coordinated Rated Battleground.

WOW:So what’s in WoW’s item store?

Yep, still the worst visuals ever

The World of Warcraft item store is a thing now, of course, but what exactly can one purchase in said store? Blizzard answers that question with a new dev blog that mentions pets, cosmetic odds and ends, and even a seesaw. There’s also an Iron Hitching Post that allows you and up to 24 of your friends to charge into raids, battlegrounds, or even small party content on a “unified front of ghost horses.”

Blizzard declines to offer any sort of release date for these items other than to say that players can expect to see them in the “near future.” Do you want to learn more about wow power leveling support ?

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vormeob vormeob

After seeing what their parent company, Vivendi is trying to do to them, it makes sense they are trying to pull this. Kinda sad, but also hilarious.
“One possible scenario would have Vivendi forcing Activision to borrow around $5 billion dollars. The publisher already has around $4 billion on hand. Vivendi would then, in this scenario, force Activision to pay out a one-time dividend of $8.5 billion, which would leave the game maker with $500 million to make games and inject $5.2 billion of cash directly into Vivendi’s balance sheet.”

WOW:Pandora adds Blizzard soundtracks to its library

You might even hear these guys. Whether or not that's a good thing is left as an exercise for the reader.

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Whether or not you’re currently a fan of World of Warcraft, odds are good you’ve played it and can still recognize some of the music. Blizzard Entertainment has always paired its games with some impressive soundtracks, after all. So whether or not you’re in the game, you may be happy to know that you can listen to this music on Pandora, as the popular music service has added tracks from all three of Blizzard’s major franchises to its rotation.

The tracks are all available on the Video Game Music station, which can be streamed in a browser or via one of the many mobile Pandora clients. It’s also mixed in with several other tracks from games, and Pandora allows the creation of custom lineups and stations for user preference. Whether you’re in love with the game right now or just want a dose of nostalgia from the main theme of The Burning Crusade, you can listen right now for free.

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RobertRose

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Canada (your IP address appears to be snip). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please email us.If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.Sincerely,
Tim Westergren
Founder

The World of Warcraft to decline

Blizzard’s turning heads that probably shouldn’t be turning today off news that World of Warcraft – the most successful online roleplaying game in history — lost 14% of its subscriber base over the past three months. Make that 1.3 million players.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Even with that sharp drop, the not-so-little fantasy MMO that could still has over eight million subscribers worldwide; most MMOs these days, say Star Wars: The Old Republic, are lucky to swing a million. With the next expansion possibly coming later this year (and surely by the next), it’ll surely make its historic 10-year anniversary (November 2014) intact.

Still, at its peak, WoW could lay claim to stratospheric subscriber numbers: 12 million back in October 2010 (oh heady days). By August 2011, however, that figure had fallen back to just over 11 million, and in November 2011, it fell again to just over 10 million. At roughly 8 million after this latest plunge, we’re talking a 25% slide down from the mountaintop, and — this is important — one that’s occurred despite Blizzard’s attempts to rally players with WoW‘s third and fourth expansions, released in December 2010 and September 2012 respectively.

Blizzard hasn’t announced what comes next, though Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said the game still had “long-term value” during an earnings call this week (via Seeking Alpha):

It’s important to note that the nature of online games has changed, and with the environment becoming far more competitive, especially with free-to-play games. To address this, we’re working to release new content more frequently to keep our players engaged longer and make it easier for lapsed players to come back into the game. We believe in the long-term value of this franchise and will continue to commit substantial resources to World of Warcraft.

Noting that any game has a shelf life is a little like trend-watching seasons or sunspot cycles, so let’s focus on the less obvious stuff, like that a significant portion of WoW‘s subscriber base has been in the East, and that a substantial portion (“a majority,” says Blizzard) of the 1.3 million subscribers just lost are of that demographic (the BBC reads this as a failure on Blizzard’s part to appeal to that market with recent game upgrades). Activision’s also saying to expect “further volatility” (read: subscriber base erosion) because of market competition and the time between expansions. Kotick noted the next content update, though not an expansion, arrives later this month.

Part of Kotick’s strategy to reinvigorate WoW involves somehow wooing lapsed subscribers, who, like me, tend to come and go, signing up to play for a bit when something new comes along, then hopping off the wagon for months or years at a time. To remedy this, says Kotick

…we’re examining ways we can ease the transition back into the game for returning players. We’ve always seen players come and go from World of Warcraft. Smoothing out that transitional period is something we’re studying, as we adjust our approach to player behavior and preferences.

Three words: seeing is believing, or these four: easier said than done. You don’t often encounter the analogy, but sometimes I wonder if Blizzard hoped WoW might become a kind of online Disneyworld, an exemplar fantasy-verse players could sign up to ride the rides and see the sights indefinitely. And yet the game lives on a platform in slow decline, one that faces increasingly stiff competition from tablets and other mobile devices. It’s practically impossible to know how much of this rapid platform shift accounts for WoW‘s subscription declines, here or elsewhere, but whatever the company’s next MMO (codenamed “Project Titan”) — “World of Warcraft 2″ or “World of StarCraft” or something completely new — it almost certainly won’t be PC-only.

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World of Warcraft Patch 5.4 launch

Blizzard will add Connected Realms to massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft some time after the release of Patch 5.4.

A Connected Realm is a set of two or more standard realms that have been permanently linked and behave as if they were one cohesive realm.

If you’re playing on a Connected Realm you’ll be able to join the same guilds, access a single Auction House, run the same raids and dungeons and join other players to complete quests.

Blizzard said it decided to add the feature because, over time, shifts in player population have created a “less-than-optimal play experience” for those on less popular realms, making it tougher to beat group content.

“Our goal with Connected Realms is to give players on lower-population realms more opportunities to group up, compete, and connect with other players to take on Azeroth’s bigger challenges,” Blizzard said on Battle.net.

“That sort of interaction is a big part of what makes World of Warcraft fun, and this feature will help us deliver that experience to even more players.”

Last week Blizzard announced that the number of World of Warcraft monthly subscribers had dropped to 7.7 million – comparable to the audience the MMO had in 2007, shortly before first expansion The Burning Crusade helped it break the eight million million mark.

The figure marked a notable decline for World of Warcraft in recent times, having fallen fairly steadily from a highpoint of 12 million subscribers in October 2010 – two months before Cataclysm.

Blizzard said it took the decision to add Connected Realms now because of improvements to its cross-realm tech.

“Our cross-realm technology has continued to evolve since it was first developed for joining players in dungeons,” Blizzard said. “It’s now at a point where we can create seamless worlds made up of multiple individual realms, and we think there are some really positive benefits to that.”

Blizzard is yet to decide which realms will be made part of a Connected Realm, but it has decided to connect realms only to other realms of the same type, so, PvE to PvE and so on. It doesn’t know how many realms will make up a Connected Realm, either.

“There should be no limitations,” Blizzard added. “We want the experience to be seamless, and we expect it work as if you’re suddenly part of a much more active realm.”

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