Time is Money, Friend - Part II

Nearly a month ago, I posted an article entitled "Time is Money, Friend" asking the readers the following question:

Is there a way to market an MMO that does not require an extensive time investment to progress?

Let me go on record saying that finding a defensible prototype for a time friendly MMO has been surprisingly difficult. In retrospect, I see why. Normally, when designing an MMO, one doesn't base the design exclusively on a demographic. But in this scenario, the primary objective was to design a game that above all else, allows progression without incredible time investments. At this time, I do not have a finished product, however I do have an outline to follow with regards to the most important components for a time friendly MMO.

First and foremost, the game must be fun and the game must have replay value. While this can be said with all MMOs, the issue at hand is that a game that doesn't have huge time investments and that doesn't have replay value is doomed. Whatever is created must above all else, fit this mold.

From a game play standpoint, the biggest challenge in this game is to create tangible risk versus reward that doesn't require major time investments yet can still be entertaining, rewarding and provide a general sense of accomplishment. In traditional MMOs, players will eventually achieve their goals after sufficient time is invested. The greater the reward, the longer the quest or progression sequence necessary, from running a particular instance to dragging a raid around to complete an epic quest. Our goal with this exercise was to remove the time requirement from the equation. This doesn't necessarily mean no player loot but if everyone eventually has all the best gear necessary in a week, why keep playing? Having the infrastructure of traditional MMO player motivation largely removed is the consequence. As of now, this has been the primary detriment to creating a prototype.

A major lesson from games like Vanguard is to create a game in and of itself. There is no reason to try and become a "WoW Killer" and modeling a game to attempt such a task is foolish. The majority of the blogosphere has correctly stated over the course of the last year that WoW will die a death of 1,000 paper cuts, slowly bleeding players of the course of its lifetime. The rate at which this occurs will largely be determined by Blizzard's ability to create new content and adapt to player desires and other gaming companies ability to create games that lure the current WoW crowd to new games. Our goal with a time friendly game was not to set out to attack the WoW player base. It was simply designed to take advantage of a potential niche in the MMO consumer base.

One could make a case that Blizzard has made an effort to take advantage of this niche. Easy to complete daily quests, lower leveling curves for new characters and tier 6 quality gear for easy to obtain Badges of Justice have made WoW more casual friendly than ever before. Something I've said repeatedly is that WoW is more a marketing success than game play innovation. This falls right along those lines. The marketing team sees a potential leak in the ship and plugs it up. Nevertheless, this is good for most gamers as it removes much of the time demand needed to reap rewards.

I have two other ideas to truly brainstorm for a time friendly MMO before I throw up the white flag. The challenge of keeping players paying monthly subscriptions without forcing time sinks has been the most difficult obstacle to overcome. Once again, any input from the readers is most appreciated. I should have the final two ideas hammered out by next week and should conclude this series at that time. Until next time...

Knowing When

This weekend, we had one of the cornerstones of our guild abruptly quit playing World of Warcraft. This retirement was sudden and unexpected. He was one of our more prolific players with 3 level 70 characters and he was one of the best players on our server. He played all three of his characters at a high level, had a high knowledge of the game and was a great guy and influence on the guild. No real explanation was provided but it is presumable that something drastic took place in his life to warrant such a quick action. This brings up an interesting question for the masses:

How do you know when it's time to quit playing your MMO of choice?

This topic has been breached by most who write about MMOs but the obvious answer is the correct answer. It is the responsibility of any adult player to know when to move on.

The first skill necessary to balance real life and gaming is time management. Without time management, it is difficult to regulate game time and as a result, could infringe on real life obligations. This is a difficult task in respects to high level MMO play in that many guilds require attendance. This isn't necessarily a bad thing although it does put a minimum time expectation on anyone engaging in this content. One must ask themselves if their lives are able to balance the minimum raid requirements.

The second really isn't so much a skill but a realization. Players must realize when the game is no longer fun. I know people who played EQ long after the game held no real fun value for them and as a result, were miserable people playing a game. How utterly ridiculous! Why on Earth did they keep going? For some, it was a sense of obligation to the guild. For others, it was to maintain online friendships. For a select few, it was because they had nothing else to do. The purpose of all MMOs is to have fun. When the game no longer feels fun but feels more like an obligation, in my opinion, it's time to move on. Obligations are reserved for work, family and to one's self; not to an online game. If one holds a position of importance in a guild and burns out, then they need to take the steps necessary to fill the role and exit gracefully. Think of it as a smooth transition from one job to another. It fills the "obligation" to the guild while moving on with your time.

From a personal perspective, I try and play a little each night although there are days when I simply don't have the time to log in. I have a 7 1/2 month old daughter, a wife and two step children. This will often relegate playing the game difficult if not impossible. The key is that WoW is a great game but it's biggest downside is that it requires a fair time investment to progress. I know my life scenario doesn't lend itself to full time raid detail but it does allow me to play a few nights a week and I can still enjoy the game even if it means I don't get to raid Illidan. Sure, I'd enjoy the opportunity to take on some 25 man content but if this doesn't occur because I have things to do outside of WoW, then that is the sacrifice necessary. For the time being, I am enjoying the game. If there ever comes a time when I can't enjoy the game or circumstances don't allow me to enjoy the game, I'll move on. One can take a vested interest and do things right without losing touch of what is important.

I know I have written an entire article about this but it bears repeating; Once the WoW servers come down and no one plays, it doesn't really matter how much Black Temple loot has been accumulated or how much DPS can be achieved with a given spec. In essence, the games are fruitless for not the company kept during that tenure, regardless of how much time was invested. Once again, illustrating the point that the people you meet along the way are the only tangible "gain" you'll ever have the potential to keep in Virtual Worlds. The rest is binary code.

The bottom line is that MMOs are a game. And while they are fun and can be incredible time sinks, it is important to keep it in perspective. And despite what the media would like to portray with addiction allegations, it is all of our responsibility as adult gamers to set a limit or outright quit when necessary. While I am saddened by the departure of my guild mate, I hope he finds solace and success outside of World of Warcraft. I know that the guild of people he left behind will continue to keep in touch, long after World of Warcraft is no more.

Endangered Species

"A group of intrepid heroes gathers around and discusses a plan of attack for a newly unveiled evil in Magister's Terrace. A powerful fire mage, a stalwart holy priest, the cunning combat rogue and the uplifting enhancement shaman all prepare for battle. However, they notice that there is a piece of the puzzle missing; a brave soul needed to encounter the evil doers head on in melee combat. The quartet set on a journey to locate such a hero."

At first, the group starts by interviewing potential candidates for the role...

Enhancement Shaman to Random_Warrior_1223: Hey, would you like to join us in Magister's Terrace? We need a tank.
Random_Warrior_1223: lolz prot sux - i'm arms.

10 minutes later....

Fire Mage to Paladin_Bob: Hey, can you tank Magister's for us?
Paladin_Bob: Sorry, I'm Ret.


20 minutes later....

Enhancement Shaman to Dr00d_342: Hey, we need a tank for Magister's. You want in?
Dr00d_405: I'm in a group already -thx.

30 minutes later...

Priest: Afk kids

45 minutes later....

The combat rogue skulks away into the depths of the Arathi Basin never to be seen again, the priest has been afk dealing with her kids and eventually times out and DCs and the mage is trash talking people in trade channel about the most important topic in WoW; Chuck Norris. All warriors asked are dps. All paladins asked are either holy or ret. All druids asked are either resto pvpers or are already in a group. Ultimately, the band of intrepid heroes is defeated by the quest for the tank. Deep within Magister's Terrace, Kael'Thas laughs at their expense.

Sound familiar? This seems all too common on Twisting Nether. Blizzard has surely made some adjustments to the warrior, paladin and druid classes but why are people not taking this role? What is causing tanks to be an endangered species?

Let's start by saying that tanking isn't easy. There is some math involved and there are as many bad tanks in the game as there are good. Not all warriors can hold AE threat, taunt when needed or have taken the necessary time to collect the required gear for the role. This makes finding a good tank even more difficult as players have to sift the wheat through the chaff. For the purposes of this article, we will stick with examining exactly why there are so few people specced protection, the skill of the player aside.

The first reason that comes to mind for the lack of protection warriors, pallies and feral tanking druids is that a PVE tanking role is so focused that it doesn't perform optimally in the solo aspect of the game. I can't really speak about protection paladins with much expertise so I'll refrain from making any judgements about them. However, I have a 70 druid and a 70 warrior so I can comment with a fairly high degree of experience about both. With the protection warrior, I can stack Shield Block Value and grind or I can dual wield and devastate spam. I have about 600 Shield Block Value which is about average these days and grinding is slow although most mobs never hit me. Dual Wield spamming trades significantly more efficient killing with extra downtime due to eating more frequently. I normally sub out most of my protection gear and wear fury gear for dual wield grinding. Devastate scales with attack power so it only makes sense to gear accordingly. My big issue with this is that grinding becomes spamming one button; devastate. Sure, I can toss a whirlwind in but it's not required. It's functional but it's not optimal and it's boring.

The druid is in the best position in solo content. Currently, my druid is a resto healbot however she was leveled primarily feral and did a fair amount of tanking at all levels of play. The major upside the feral druid has over both the prot warrior and prot paladin is that Mangle, the primary feral tanking tool, is also a hell of a dps ability in cat form. All the druid needs to do is collect a feral dps set and he's good to go. I'll go on record and say Mangle is the most overpowered ability in World of Warcraft. Sure, its a 41 point talent but the degree of flexibility it provides the feral druid is something I'd just kill for on my warrior. Clearly, if shield slam was doing bloodthirst kind of damage, there would be QQers crying about "balance" issues but druids can get away with it, primarily because there is nothing to compare with Mangle. Each druid talent tree is so different from the other, it makes any sort of "balance" issue without tangible comparison. I don't have concrete math to back this up with but I'll guesstimate there are more tanking druids at this point then there are tanking warriors or paladins in part due to this issue.

Another issue with being protection specced as a warrior comes when involved in world PVP. With the druid, I have far better success simply because mangle can pump out some respectable damage and whenever a feral druid is out soloing, he is normally equipped in cat dps gear. Druids also have a significantly better survivability rate as well as more escape methods (root, Cyclone, cat form, dash, prowl or simply run in travel form till out of combat and fly away). However for the warrior, players see a Kings Defender and some Tier 4/ZA tanking gear and they smell an easy kill. Some protection specs are more PVP friendly then others but if a player has one of the two most popular choices for PVE tanking (12/5/44 or 8/5/48) neither are designed for PVP. This makes the solo experience even worse. Resilience is now the primary survivability PVP stat, rendering the high armor and HP values protection gear less useful. Players with high resilience will be nearly impossible to damage down with the mild damage protection outputs. Thus, as a protection warrior, players have very little strengths in PVP and a high volume of shortcomings. Players on PVP realms usually feel better with some degree of confidence that they can fend off a ganker. Most protection specs don't provide that confidence.

These two issues result in the worst case scenario for Blizzard:

In the many aspects of the WoW experience, particularly on PVP realms, the protection warrior in it's current manifestation has too many instances where the spec is simply unfun.

In a nutshell, this is why there are so few tanks, let alone good tanks.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Here is the natural response to this is:

"So, if it's not fun, don't play protection. Go respec arms or fury and enjoy the game."

This line of thinking is flawed in that, this is what the warrior community is doing and it's why the same people spouting this dribble are the same ones begging for a tank and crying that there's a tank shortage. Hypocrisy? You bet. Let's try a more proactive approach.

There are some options to work with the strengths of the spec or overcome it's disadvantages in various game play scenarios. The first is obvious; respec when required and use a dps spec when grinding solo. This is all well and good but even with the plethora of daily quest gold in circulation, this could potentially get expensive. The second is a bit more difficult. If possible, be proactive and get involved with an active guild or a small group that plays together regularly. This ensures an instance group for every evening and a group doing daily quests together on a PVP realm is a much safer group then the players who goes it alone.

The lesson is that for the foreseeable future, there will be a tank shortage, particularly on PVP realms. There is nothing from Blizzard in the way of change as noted by the minimal changes for warriors that came from 2.4. Remember to take care of the warriors in guilds who tank often as it can be a frustrating experience. This is why tanks burn out so quickly. Keeping the game fun is the key. The consequences for not doing so may be the difference between tank endangerment and tank extinction.

The Concept of Balance

Perhaps the most discussed forum topic with regards to World of Warcraft is on or focused on the concept of "balance". This primarily has to do with PVP but can also spill over into the PVE experience. Many of these advocates of "balance" have some legitimate disputes but a larger portion are QQers, asking for a specific class to get nerfed, most likely due to their inability to adapt or the inevitable frustration of losing. In World of Warcraft, the concept of "balance" should be metaphorically compared to Captain Ahab and the White Whale. The lesson being that obsessing over such a glorified ideal to a degree where one begins forsaking everything else will inevitably have this coveted experience be their demise.

For those who are unaware, The aforementioned reference is that of Herman Melville's classic story Moby Dick. The story revolves around an obsessive sea captain, driven to slay the elusive and vicious white whale who maimed him on a previous whaling venture. The whale is named Moby Dick (duh). The captain's pursuit turns to obsession and eventually leads to the destruction of the ship and the death of all but one crew member. The same fate would befall World of Warcraft if many of the forum goers would have their way by the sheer fanaticism some players have with "balance". I am here today to clarify exactly why WoW is as balanced as it possibly can be.

Let's start first with an actual definition of the word, Balance courtesy of http://www.dictionary.com/:
Bal·ance –noun

1. a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.

2. something used to produce equilibrium; counterpoise.

3. mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc.

4. a state of bodily equilibrium: He lost his balance and fell down the stairs.

5. an instrument for determining weight, typically by the equilibrium of a bar with a fulcrum at the center, from each end of which is suspended a scale or pan, one holding an object of known weight, and the other holding the object to be weighed.

6. to bring to or hold in equilibrium; poise: to balance a book on one's head.

There are several other definitions of Balance (mainly from the world of accounting) but the definition we are interested in is listed here, most notably number 6; to bring or hold in equilibrium. While Blizzard isn't holding a book in balance, the concept of balance in this context is simply a level playing field where both sides involved have an equal opportunity to win. This seems simple but in the realm of MMO's it becomes a massive undertaking. The issue is with MMO's, there are an incredible amount of variables. These variables create disparities between game mechanics and the art of balance is managing these disparities to a degree where one side does not have an overwhelming advantage over another.

The first variable on Blizzard's list would be character level. There is little in the way of regulation with regards to world PVP but from a controlled PVP aspect, arena combat is only available in the live game servers at level 70. This removes the level variable from competitive based PVP.

The second variable is the easiest to conceptualize and sadly remains the most important with regards to PVP in WoW. That variable is gear. Gear is nearly impossible to regulate on an individual basis. Blizzard can't control how much time a player invests into each character. In a sense, the amount of "work" a player invests usually pans out in more options for equipment. So what does Blizzard do for balancing a variable that seems relatively uncontrollable?

As most are aware, Blizzard didn't throw WoW together haphazardly. They took their time and did a fair amount of research. Not only does Blizzard balance the gear issue but in a way, they use it to their advantage. This started with Burning Crusade and it's the answer to a very poignant question that burns the forums frequently. That question being what's the point of resilience? As most know, most PVP gear includes healthy amounts of Resilience. This statistic reduces damage from critical hits and has segregated PVE gear from PVP gear. This statistic provides a distinct advantage in PVP combat but most classes and specs have very limited options with gear that includes resilience. This limitation is done to a degree where most of the geared PVP players are wearing roughly the same equipment. By limiting the options available, Blizzard indirectly balances gear by pigeon-holing every class/spec into roughly the same equipment, effectively neutralizing the gear variable from the equation at high levels of PVP. This culturing of gear has limited effects at the lowest level of organized PVP (battlegrounds) and resonates further as players advance into higher PVP brackets, with the pinnacle of arena combat, sporting players in virtually identical gear.

The third variable seems to be the variable Blizzard has the most control over however the complexity of this variable makes it nearly impossible to perfect. This variable in and of it self is a collection of variables. This has to do with the individual class match-ups in PVP as well as the two versus two, three versus three and five versus five arena metagame. The amount of testing in this aspect is mind boggling with a high degree of personal variance, circumstantial interference and luck. There is no real exact science to this but its apparent that Blizzard does test the metagame. The changes to mana drain and resilience reflect that Blizzard felt mana drain teams were overpowered if done correctly so a change was made to keep the field level.

The final variable has to do with individual skill. Skill in this sense is knowing what abilities to use when and the reaction times and recall memory of keybinds dependant on the scenario. This is the one variable Blizzard doesn't really attempt to balance. Instead of balancing, they simply reward players for success by awarding more arena points. If you lose most arena matches, you just gain arena points slower.

The forums are a bust with players crying for changes, adjustments or flat out nerfs. These days druids seem to be the most complained about class with warriors and warlocks second and third respectably. The issue is that this persistent QQing does nothing. Not only does it do nothing but it makes the average WoW player who posts on those boards look foolish. Worse yet, the balance that these players crave would be catastrophic to the game.

Picture WoW in a state of balance that these QQers want. Either they wish a certain class to be blatantly over powered or another class nerfed into irrelevance. Why not just make everyone on even ground, same spec/same class/same level/same gear? That would achieve the complete and total balance that these forum QQers whine about, wouldn't it? The issue is that taking all the variables out of an MMO render a game uninteresting. WoW in that state would be exceedingly vanilla and would render the game to an incredible bore. Games in the 21st century have options and are complex and with complexity comes small degrees of imbalance. In the long run, these small imbalances average out. In some instances, players will have an advantage and in others, the opponent will have an advantage.

In Moby Dick, Ahab wanted control over nature and his obsession cost him everything. For World of Warcraft forum QQers, craving balance at all costs will ruin the game because it will never meet their self-poisoned expectations. The game is as balanced as it can be. It's a game. Enjoy it. Stop crying for a white whale that's neither attainable nor desirable. Let it go.

Blizzard Announces New Progression Based Servers

This is cut and copied from Blizzard's website. Enjoy!

[Irvine, CA] Blizzard is proud to announce the introduction of a new type of World of Warcraft server called Progression Based Servers or PBS for short. We have been given permission by the developers to provide some information regarding how these servers will work. We do not have an ETA as to when these servers will go live however we do anticipate the first set of PBS servers to activate prior to the expansion, "Wrath of the Lich King".

• PBS servers will come in all current server formats PVE, PVP, RP and RP-PVP
• Characters created on a PBS server are identical to current World of Warcraft Servers except that the level cap is decreased to 60 upon server conception.
• Characters must progress through the game to unlock content. For example, defeating General Drakkisath in Upper Black Rock Spire will allow players to begin the quest for Molten Core attunement.
• Various Milestones exist throughout the game and further game content will be unlocked at each interval.
• NPC's at each major city will allow players to track progression.
• Quests have been added to unlock each Battleground. A very special reward awaits the first player on each server to complete the quest for each Battleground!
• New progression encounters have been added to provide a dynamic feel to the world of Azeroth.
• New rewards await the victors!

We believe these new servers offer a fresh and exciting new return to previous content as well as alllowing new players to experience game play that may have been missed. For more news, log on to http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev

WoW Perspectives #3 - 2.4 Patch Changes and a Personal Crossroads

While continuing to work on a follow up for my previous column, Time is Money, Friend, I wanted to provide some thoughts on some observations over the past two weeks of my WoW experiences. I know that a few select bloggers such as Tobold have been given some degrees of negative feedback when discussing his characters and his experiences in the game. I really have no idea why people would get so hostile about his observations. Observation provides insight and without asking questions about these observations, one can never better themselves. This rings true in all aspects of learning, from WoW to University studies. As a corporate trainer by profession, I can say with a high degree of certainty that people learn in various methods and if Tobold wishes to use his blog as a sounding board for learning, then I'm all for it. Those who feel otherwise should simply stop reading his blog. The same will apply to my blog for this article. This article will be as personal as it is editorial.

Of all previous WoW patches, I have to say this patch has been the most exciting for me since the game started. The addition of a multitude of daily quests, non diminished returns for battleground combat, a new instance to explore and new 25 man raid content for raiding guilds make this patch a complete winner in my eyes.

The first major observation I have is that it is quite clear Blizzard is making a major step in eradicating or at least severely damaging RMT activity with regards to coin by adding super easy and relatively fast daily quests that require no prerequisite reputation grind. In most instances, all that is required is any flying mount. I have always struggled saving coin as a protection warrior due to potion costs, rep costs and a sheer disdain for anything grind related as the lack of efficiency combined with the lack of PVP survivability means a frustrating and unfun experience. In just a week of daily quest grinding, and when I say daily quest grinding I mean, I log on, do the dailies and log off, I've made about 1,200 gold in a week. This is roughly 90 minutes each day and I usually do it in small bursts between dealing with my daughter and work. This includes some primals from the Throne of Kil'Jaeden and Blade's Edge dailies and many greens turned Arcane Dust or Planar Essence from Sunfury Supplies. It's really hard to place any negatives with this for all players. Hardcore players can burn down as many as 25 dailies a day. I normally get 13-14 done depending on the Battleground daily (for whatever reason, my Battlegroup never wins WSG but nearly always wins Basin). With the new gold available, I can now afford to finish Blacksmithing and an epic mount in a reasonable time frame. If I ever get some extra time, I could even grind the dailies on both toons. From a math standpoint:

14 daily quests per day at roughly 10g per quest = 140g

Value of miscellaneous items accumulated through daily quest circuit = 25g

165g per day times 7 = 1,155g

Doing this with two toons per week = 2,310g per week using two toons. This is an epic flyer in less then two weeks.

What if we did all 25 dailies per day?

25 daily quests per day at roughly 10g per quest = 250g

Value of miscellaneous items accumulated through daily quest circuit = 45g

295g per day times 7 = 2,065g per week

Doing this on two toons = 4,130g per week. This is an epic flying mount in roughly 9 days.

The second major change I took with the onset of 2.4 is for the first time in at least a year and a half, I respecced out of protection for over a one day time frame. For a while, I was toggle respeccing for arena using an arms build but that was just to grind points and return to the land of tanking once 10-20 matches had been completed. This week, I respecced 17/44 fury and stayed that way for an entire week. The results were mixed to say the least.

Positives

Even with a marginal array of fury gear, grinding mobs has never been more fun and easy. Having been used to devastate dual wield or sword and board for so long made seeing four digit white damage swings and 2k bloodthirsts just awesome.

For whatever reason, a protection warrior in the world environment seems to attract gankers, particularly casters. Resilience renders high hp and armor values useless in PVP thus taking the only real strength a protection warrior had out of the equation. My spec was also highly PVE focused and as a result, I would take a long time to kill, but inevitably, I would die versus most classes simply because I couldn't damage them enough to make a difference. While fury specced, the number of gankers even in Quel'Danas was down and the wins and losses were much, much better simply because even with people in full resilience gear, I could do enough damage to dent their health.

Negatives

In the last year and a half of being a primary tank, I have received a very small number of those infamous tells with the words "R U tank?" or "Tank?". However, I've had 14 of them in one 90 minute span and at least 30 of them this week alone. The saddest part was, over half were from other warriors. Clearly this was because people wanted to run the new instance Magister's Terrace and needed a tank. Needless to say, I have yet to see Magister's Terrace as a result of my week of fury fun and I find this as the only negative but this day qualified two concepts that were otherwise rhetoric spouted through various blogs without much in the way of qualification:

1. There truly is a tank shortage on Twisting Nether, if at nothing else, in the warrior population but likely applies to Paladins and Druids as well.

This leads me to believe the following is also true:

2. The mechanics of the protection warrior, while improved, are still flawed given the small percentage of players involved in this role.

Perhaps I will write an entire article devoted to it but it would be third on my list of projects at the moment. Regardless, I think this will be a topic at some point in the future.

I think it is safe to say I hit some tank burnout in the last few weeks. This is due to two primary reasons:

Lack of Guild Progression: One of my previous articles asked the question progression or preparation. Unfortunately, the disappointing lack of guild progression has me thinking that at this point, it is probably better to simply gear up for the impending level grind versus improving tanking gear via badges. At the rate of guild progression, gearing with t6 quality badge gear will render itself pointless. My gear as it stands is good enough to tank anything up to Halazzi in ZA, much less what we currently raid on a weekly basis. In all likelihood, a mix of badge and Karazhan gear will suffice for the first instances of WoTLK just as PVP/tier 1 served for BC. Using that logic as a basis for gearing, I am better suited buying t5 and t6 equivalent fury gear to allow the easiest level experience possible.

Lack of Diversity: Farming as a prot warrior can be done in one of two ways. If the gear is available, stack Shield Block Value, hit shield slam with a bunch of devastates and win. The other option is to equip the highest top end damage one handers available and spam devastate ad nauseum. From a practicality standpoint, stacking SBV is difficult without access to tier 5+ gear so that only leaves the dual wield devastate spam option. From a tactical standpoint, devastate spam is just miserably boring. It would be like moving the same pawn every move for every turn in chess indefinitely. At least with fury, I have to be cognisant of my Rampage timer, my whirlwind cooldown and my flurry procs, not to mention its just better for farming anyway.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I currently have more fun playing fury then protection. This is likely due to being protection for so long and seeing how easy it is to farm the daily quest circuit using a fury spec. So, for the time being, I will most likely split time between the two specs; Protection for raiding when necessary and fury for fun outside of raiding. The cost to respec given the amount of gold I can make per day is trivial. From a gear perspective, I will begin focusing on fury gear for the level grind, seeing that additional protection gear isn't necessary until further progression is made. I certainly still enjoy main tanking and if gear upgrades for main tanking present themselves, I'll pursue them; I just wish I could expand horizons with regards to the content I tank and at this time, I don't see much chance of that happening before WoTLK.