There is one undeniable fact about World of Warcraft: as the MMO ages it’s becoming less challenging. For lack of a better word WoW is being dumbed-down as Blizzard feels they must continue to attract new subscribers. MMO luminary Richard Bartle predicted this problem a few years ago so I suppose it’s inevitable. One can’t but help wince as WoW keeps continually sliding down the slippery slope of convenience driven game design in order to appease the lowest common denominator gamers out there. In the end, good game design be damned — it’s all about revenues.
The upcoming patch for WoW is just part and parcel of this trend to make their MMO more accessible to casual gamers. Hearthstones have had their cool down reduced from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. Players now will be able to double spec and have access to two talent builds at the press of a button. With every patch, life in Azeroth gets simpler and easier for those poor, overburdened 11 million subscribers. In that spirit and to poke fun at the developers at Blizzard, I’d like to offer some possible future Mad Magazine style WoW patch notes.
Patch 4.01 – All Classes to Start at Level 55
We are very pleased with the introduction of the Death Knight hero class in the Wrath of the Lich King. We are truly grateful for the overwhelming response we received from the WoW community. In that spirit, we have made all classes available to players at level 55. Each class will now have its own specially crafted quest area along with access to rare quality gear and a special epic speed mount.
Patch 4.02 – Hit Points Being Removed
We have removed the idea of hit points from both players and NPCs. We feel hit points pose too much of a burden for players as it’s not fair that NPC’s and players have different hit point levels. As well as addressing the lack of skill of many of our newer subscribers, we feel this will also solve many of the PVP balance issues we have received. We are very excited about this new development and hope that our subscribers will enjoy these changes!
Patch 4.03 – Damage and Healing Removed
Ooops! After patch 4.03 we realized that since hit points have been abolished there is really no need for health points. Therefore we have removed damage and healing from the game. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion. We are overjoyed at the tremendous response we got from the player community after the last patch. Due to these important changes, the primate population at the zoo here in San Diego can now play WoW and that is something we are all extremely proud of.
Note: please visit the Blizzard store for our official autographed souvenir “Chimps Can Play WoW Now” lunch boxes.
Patch 4.04 – Finding Quest Givers is No Longer Required
Players will no longer have to visit questgiver NPCs to get quests. Instead, the player will be able to summon any NPC to them at any time. We feel that asking players to have to travel and explore was too much of an imposition. Players will be also able to summon questgivers to their side once they are finished a quest. We are quite thrilled about the implementation of this feature.
Patch 4.05 – Travel Changes
As of this patch, players will no longer be expected to walk, run or travel. Players will be given alien technology teleportation devices that allow them to travel at will wherever and whenever they choose. While we haven’t got the lore retcon worked out yet, we do hope that Chriz Metzen will cook something up soon in his bubbling cauldron of lore. We are excited about this new development and hope that our players will be too! As a way of celebrating this revolutionary change we have created a new cooking recipe called Scrambled Molecules available from radiated vendors in Gnomeregan.
Patch 4.06 – Perma Ghosts Introduced
Players will now be able to stay dead and play as ghosts if they wish. In the past we’ve received a lot of feedback from our Goth community and even the spirit world (thanks Houdini!) and they have repeatedly asked for this. Players will now be able to access the bank, the auction house and vendors as ghosts. Player ghosts will be able to log out in graveyards for special bonuses to be determined.
Patch 4.07 – Class Choices Reduced
Due to the fact that we have been experiencing great difficulty balancing classes for PVP and PVE, we have decided to eliminate all classes but the Death Knight. Finally everyone will be equally over-powered. We here at Blizzard are delighted that this change has finally taken place and is now available to our players. Due to these exciting changes we’ve had to lay off our lead class designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street. We’d like to wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
Note: we are seriously considering eliminating the forums since 99% of the threads would be moot due to the removal of class balance issues.
Patch 4.08 – Simplified NPC Naming Convention
As you may know, our lead Quest designer Alex “Furor” Afrasiabi has been responsible for many of the cutting edge quest lines here in WoW. What you may not be aware of is that he loves to create NPCs that include his name as a way to massage his own ego. That said, he is very busy creating future quest content so we have decided to lessen the demands on his time. From now on all NPCs will be named “AFRA” in all caps order to simply things. Not only will this appeal to his narcissistic nature, it will also help expand our demographic by allowing babies and pre-school children to play WoW as reading will be purely optional in WoW.
Patch 4.09 – Experience Has Been Removed
After getting almost 11 million complaints regarding the rather onerous leveling requirements in the World of Warcraft, we’ve decided to remove the need to earn experience in Azeroth altogether. We think that asking players to earn experience is rather unfair to players and hurts the kind of meaningful game play we feel is important here at Blizzard. Players will now start at level 90 and have access to 80 talent points to spend as they see fit. We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback about this exciting new change!
-Wolfshead
Wow. Just awesome. This could be my personal top blog entry of the week, if not the month…^^
The sad part is, many of the changes you mentioned are not even unlikely. Starting at level 55 is only step one, soon you can upgrade any char in the Blizz Store to level 80 if you already bothered to level a char to 80 before. Really, this will happen sooner or later!
Yeah, in the good, old days, where RPG gamers were geeks and fair maidens were fat geeks… erm. š I still think it was good that not everyone and his daughter was playing MMOs.
Do not forget to mention that some WoW designers have a crap fetish, as many quests involve picking up the remains of dinosaurs, humans, or my personal favorite, the toilet in Grizzly Hills that makes the nearby house shake when flushed.
BTW, 4.01, 4.04, 4.05, 4.06, 4.07 and 4.08 are not unlikely. 4.02, 4.03 and 4.09 would be revolutionary, this is why the WoW dev team will NEVER ever even consider the idea. Not unless someone else did it before, so that they can
steal/copy & polish… invent it themselves .P.S.: They are just awesome promoters, the guys at Blizzard. I wonder about their new brainchild, the rumored “next generation” MMO…
I know my opinion may not carry weight with some here after all I am just a girl gamer and I probably spend my time when not playing WoW playing Sims or Hello Kitty Island adventureā¦I mean I never was co-Guild leader of the second largest EQ Raid guild on FV or anything. š
But indulge the token chick for a few minuets while I get my rant on.
WoW was at conception suppose to be a casual MMO the very antitheist of what EQ was; a game that put aside the barriers of what made UO and EQ frustratingā¦. honestly if you would just go back and read some of the interviews with Chris Metzen and Mike Morhime (This was Pre Kaplan WoW) They made it very clear that WoW was to be a big tent game. Jeff and Alex brought Raid or Die to Azeroth simply because Rob Pardo wanted end game Raiding, and he convinced Chris and Mike that WoW would die without it, so in Mid development cycle this group of Rabid raiders changed the original concept and in the process they (Rob, Jeff and Alex) nearly killed the IP. It is a fact that the Seven million player base was there for the 1-60 game not for the end game Raiding.
People outside the industry really donāt know the panic Blizzard and Vevendi went through after Kaplans NY times interview when the cancellations were in the hundreds per dayā¦.Blizzard knew that if they continued appeasing 5% of their population the other 95% would leaveā¦.so Chris Metzen went back to the original design concept and lo and behold they offered what people who was making the peon cry were leaving for.
Blizzard like them or hate them is an intelligent company, the move from Hardcore Raid focus back to the Big tent philosophy that they originally had planned was simply because the vast majority demanded it, and we can see that it was a wise decision on Blizzards part because of the phenomenal (over doubling itās subscriber base and that is a very conservative estimate) growth WoW has enjoyed since the game has moved toward a more accessible elder game.
Is WoW a challenging game for hardnosed veteran gamers? Of course not, and to expect it to be is naive to the extremeā¦..Hell my auntie who is 67 plays WoW with my Eleven year old nephewā¦..when I log on I have funā¦.with friends and family and for the first time ever people who never quite understood why I sit at a computer and game now joins me and we laugh and joke and have fun, and it crosses barriers, cultural, old, young, rich, poor..I literally have friends from every walk of life and we all share this cool but albeit simple game called WoW now please, please tell me how (without sounding like the comic shop guy on the Simpsonās, or the Evil Child catcher) can this be a bad thing?
Horrors! There is one MMO in a sea of literally hundreds of MMOās that is family friendly, and if that puts off a bratty contingent that canāt play a game without feeling like a special snowflake and insist that every MMO service them so be it.
The problem isnāt that Blizzard made an accessible gameā¦the problem is now everyone wants to be Blizzard because the āChallengingā (You can easily interchange the word Challenge for Cblock or Frustrating itās a viewpoint kinda thing) games barely make enough money to keep the lights on and honestly it isnāt Blizzards fault that unimaginative greedy developers are trying unsuccessfully to capture what WoW is. If there was any viability for the old school MMO there would be several up and running and hardcore gamers would be off playing those and not even considering WoW.
You chide, lament and even poke fun of WoW..yet you keep playing, you keep coming back, and I know several folks will pop up and say āI donātāā¦but Blizzard knows more of you do than donāt know matter what you claimā¦..Itās okay I secretly like a couple Uwie Bole moviesā¦we all have our guilty pleasures. š
As many problems as WoW has (And god knows I have been first in line to rail about these) with itās social aspects and community issues; appealing to a large audience isnāt a bad thing people, Self Described old School Gamers (I have been a gamer since 80 do I qualify? ) complain about the dumbing down of WoW, yet they never cast their vote with their wallets by refusing to support Blizzards design decisions or by supporting the few projects that made an honest try of challenged based game play. They keep railing against a machine whoās only crime is trying inclusive instead of exclusive.
I agree that WoW was supposed to be a casual friendly MMO from the outset. My contention is that the pendulum has swung too far in the casual direction. Of course casual gamers have a place in WoW — no one is disputing that. It’s the over simplification of the genre that troubles me.
Never before has a MMO been easier to play. We have gold and leveling guides now. We have interface mods like Questhelper that take all the guesswork out of playing and destroy the sense of discovery. Gold, gear and Experience have never been easier to accumulate. What is worse is that the sense of accomplishment has been cheapened.
Interesting. I’d like to know where you got that inside info? It seems to me that Blizzard has always advocated their donut theory that has placed the hardcore gaming experience in the middle and the casual gaming experience on the periphery of the donut.
No doubt that Blizzard is smart and savvy company. I don’t really care about their profits, rather I care that they are making good MMOs. I’d like to see them focus on making good MMOs first and profits second.
I’ve always said that the casual nature of WoW was a good thing. My problem is that the transition from casual to hardcore is not very elegant or cohesive. Soloing to the level cap is one thing. Grouping and raiding are completely different.
Hundreds of MMOs with the quality of WoW? I don’t believe that. I would not bother with WoW if there was a viable alternative. Comparing WoW to those other MMOs is like comparing watching the TV fare of the 1950’s on a black and white television set compared to watching Lost in high definition.
I believe in the concept of merit and skill. I do not believe that people should be coddled or made to feel “special” just because they pay $15 a month and spend a few hours playing. At it’s most basic level WoW does not require any semblance of skill from it’s players. That’s not a virtual world, that’s a software toy.
Fair point. However players that long for a virtual world with some actual immediacy, danger and fear don’t have many alternatives to WoW right now. We don’t have an indie scene like the movie industry. It’s like we are back in the 1950’s to use a television analogy again. We only have 3 channels. If you don’t like it then what alternative do you have? Turn off the TV set? No choice is really not a choice at all.
To make an analogy, lots of people didn’t particularly like the last president of the USA but they stayed in the country — they didn’t leave — despite their objections to his policies. There’s nothing wrong with being a vocal critic of Blizzard. In a sea of true believers and a weak MMO press we need people to be calling Blizzard out when they stumble.
It is the fact that Blizzard has taken inclusiveness to brink of absurdity. When concepts like skill and challenge no longer mean anything due to Blizzard’s fear of alienating new subscribers (a MMO without new subscribers dies) then it should not be an affront to point that out. š
I spoke with my brother a few days ago. He used to play WoW quite religiously. He quit a few months ago. He confessed he was not happy with the new expansion. It just didn’t work for him. He lamented that the MMO has become far too easy.
One interesting thing that he said speaks to the dumbing-down pattern of WoW. He noted that when he arrived in Northrend, he noticed that all of the profession trainers were standing in a circle. It seemed rather childish to him. No longer do you even have to expend any effort trying to locate a trainer as they are all conveniently placed in one central location.
I’m not sure whether there is general MMO fatigue or players are just getting tired of WoW but I sense a malaise out there in the community. Lots of MMO bloggers have closed shop. MMOs are just not exciting anymore and there’s not much to talk about. People are troubled and they can’t quite put their finger on what’s wrong. I think it’s partly due to how MMOs have become very pedestrian in recent years. Just my opinion.
I don’t! Haha, I jest- I really don’t still play it though. I don’t have any great insight regarding the issue at hand, but I have some small thing to say nonetheless.
My play style fits perfectly in the midst of this transition between casual and hardcore. I feel the pull of swift leveling and it seduces me with its promises of my newer “crap” gear being light years ahead of my old “uber” gear from only ten levels ago- and so I level swiftly and do not spend time smelling the flowers. But then I am totally unwilling, and often incapable, of living up to the demands of the endgame intense raiding/grouping (This is why I play LOTRO. Since the endgame is far more group-focused than raid-focused it fits better with my preferences- Oh, and combat is round-based, so I feel that my skill and intelligence is more valued).
In this way I am pulled back and forth between the two ideologies and eventually become dissatisfied with the game. I wonder at how many players like myself instead become hardcore players rather than let their time spent leveling go to waste, and how many people don’t play for my same reason. I feel very much that to play WoW you must be hardcore or extremely casual in your playstyle.
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This is never a bad thing. Games (glorified to the status of “Sport”) have been crossing cultural boundaries for quite some time- The Olympics and The World Cup just to name a few – and an MMO is becoming yet another way to do this. But how often is this happening with the average WoW player? I hold fast to the notion (perhaps inappropriately?) that the WoW community is rotten to its core (generally speaking of course, there are always exceptions) and to the notion that an MMO is a game built around a community, not the other way around, and that WoW has utterly failed to provide the framework necessary for reliably rewarding social interaction.
Having said that I feel obligated to point out that obviously the game and community are extremely interdependent; it’s impossible to have a good community playing a game that no one wants to play, and people will not play a multiplayer game where there is no meaningful interaction. WoW has succeeded in creating a certain type of community that keeps people playing its game, but we tend to see only two types of people playing- Raiders and Soloers. I applaud those that seek (and find) enjoyment inbetween those two extremes, you have some stuff inside of you that I lack.
whoops, forgot to tag that quote up there- there aren’t even quotations!
I enjoyed reading this humorous post by the way, and as I began to write my response (which I intended to be FAR shorter than it was) something sparked in my brain and i’m going to go write it out on my own blog since it’s a bit off-topic for this post.
Good debate so far…a couple of clarifications on my end. Wolf asked where I received my information; Mostly from Dave Parker who now works for Bioware and Bill Faulkner who now is on the STO team at Cryptic. Both were at Blizzard during Kapalns NY Times Interview where he basically told folks to raid or quit. They pretty much said that Chris and Mike were livid over the forum fallout, and Vevendi was even pushing for Kaplans resignation….Metzen bought in Tom Chilton shortly after that…and if you look back at the interviews you always saw Tom or Tom with Jeff and Tom did all the talking. That (to me at least) pretty much throws the whole Doughnut theory out the window.
On other fronts of Wolfs reply…
Quest Helper and guides are optional no says you have to use them, and I never quite got people complaining about there availability…use them or don’t no one is forcing you. But WoW isn’t the first MMO to have this…EQ and DAoC was made a lot more simple by the guides that were offered…I would hardly equate that with Dumbing down.
On the whole merit and skill thing, that honestly is a personal preference. I have to ask who is anyone to force what some would call an archaic rule set on other people? Just because one person feels that you need to jump through a set of frustrating hoops to feel challenged shouldn’t mean that everyone has to hoe that row, or that some people should be punished and be denied end game because they choose not to put on the Hair shirt of the old School gamer… I like what Chris told the hardcore gamer at the last Blizcon.
Do you have all the achievements?
No…..
Do you have the absolute best gear in the game?
No…..
Have you done all the heroics?
No…..
Are you a master craftsman?
No……
Come back and tell me the game is too easy once you have done all of this. There was a thunderous applause after this..it shows you where the minds set of the average WoW player is..they are happy they want what Blizzard is providing so why force someoneās draconian sense of merit on them?
And honestly there is a darker side to all of this and it goes back to the serious Community Issues that Blizzard has. This whole war between Hardcores and Casuals that Jeff and Alex started is the cause of 90% of the nastiness and cruelty that exists in the community and on the forums; Scrub (Which is a term that elitist originally used to described the working poor that immigrated to the United States in the mid 1800ās) Bad, Baddie (all terms which the powers that be at Blizzard detest) are thrown about with zero regard to anyoneās feelings, and all of this is the language that Jeff and Alex used to describe those that the felt were beneath them during their EQ Raiding days. They bought this Lord of The Flies mentality to a gameā¦a game that was meant to be an diversionā¦not a job, nor the equivalent to the High School lunch room cool table. At the end of the day Wolf your guess is as good as mine perhaps it is MMO fatigue for someā¦I still donāt think that those of us (all 11.3 million) that are happy with the direction of WoW should pay for others burnoutā¦I think WoW still has a lot to offer many different types of players, and it can do that without denying the full wow experience to anyone.
Idle thought: Shouldn’t “inclusiveness” include the hardcore raiders? I suspect it should, purely from a definition standpoint… but that doesn’t mean that the game’s focus needs to stay with that relatively small contingent.
Just a few things I’d like to address here:
Thanks for the inside info! I’ve never heard this. Blizzard is very secretive and we rarely hear of any internal squabbling due to NDA’s I’m sure. š
I just re-read the NY Times interview with Kaplan and I’m not really seeing the part where he says that WoW is primarily a raiding game. Maybe it was from another interview? Could you clarify that please. In fact he seems to claim the opposite:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/technology/10warcraftqa.web.html?pagewanted=1
At the time they were about to release their much ballyhooded 40 man raid Naxxaramas which I think was a complete and total waste of resources and ultimately a failure as virtually nobody got to experience that content. (Note: they since re-purposed Nax in Wrath of the Lich King…lucky for them).
But I do recall at the time WoW was in dire straits as it was basically a “raid or die” game at that point. It was a mess until the Burning Crusade was released with saw the end of 40 man raids and the introduction of easier/faster 6 man content.
According to MobyGames Tom Chilton got a developer credit on the original World of Warcraft (2004) so he could not have brought in as you say from another company as he was already on the team.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,42812/
The fact is that they do exist and with Blizzard’s permission which in a way gets Blizzard off the hook as they have all these 3rd party people doing their dirty work for them. It’s like telling someone who is bothered by chat harrassment that using general chat channels is optional as well. Those guides and addons *do* contribute to dumbing down WoW regardless of whether they are optional or not.
WoW Achievements were introduced in patch 3.02 which was Oct.8, 2008 which *after* Blizzcon 2008 which was held in August. So he couldn’t possibly have mentioned achievements.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.0.2
My contention is that WoW lacks a sense of challenge in it’s main form of gameplay which is solo play. For example I just finished the Grizzly Hills in Wrath of the Lich King. The placement of mobs throughout the zone is so far apart that I almost fell asleep at times. I felt more challenge in low level Moonbrook in Westfall then I do in Northrend due to this horrible design.
I do not present hardcore raiding as the answer to a lack of challenge in the game. Therefore I do not want to force everyone to be a raider.
You seem to be fixated on equating the demands of hardcore raiding with challenge and then saying that challenge like that is frustrating and archaic. That’s a bit of a straw man argument. Let small minority raiders raid if that is what they like. All I am saying is that we need more challenge in the main part of the MMO which the majority play.
I want to be rewarded if I am a good player — not just because I show up and pay $15. Good game design rewards merit and skill. Bad game design showers players with rewards for doing nothing. Case in point the Invasion of the Undercity: it’s a farce. You follow King Wrynn and Jaina Proudmoore. The outcome is guaranteed regardless of whether you assist them or not. That’s garbage.
The answers given by the Blizzard rep are disingenuous. It’s far too convenient for them include a few super hard uber boss mobs that are designed not to be beaten (Sony and Blizzard have done this before…) and then claim that the game is “not easy”. Also it’s very easy to include some hard achievements and reputations that keep people mindlessly grinding. Grinding does not require skill or present challenge.
The issue at hand is the fact that WoW as a MMO requires very little skill. Blizzard knows this as they designed it that way. What Blizzard hopes that you the player will do is start proceeding to the middle of their “donut” which is grouping and then raiding. If that Blizzard rep was honest he would have said that.
I do sympathize with you that from your point of view that kind of skill would possibly preclude your aunt and other casual gamers on the fringes from playing. My opinion is that I don’t want the tent to get any bigger because the quality of players is terrible right now. I would gladly pay $30 a month to tighten up the caliber of players in a MMO like WoW.
Lastly, the cheers of the rabble at Blizzcon don’t impress me. It’s easy to preach to the converted. People that attend Blizzcon are fanboys and true believers. They would probably lap up pig swill if Blizzard produced it. Everyone thinks they are a game designer these days. Everyone has an opinion. Go to the Fires of Heaven forums for a perfect example of the idiocy of armchair game designers.
Sounds like a fantasy novel: The War of the Hardcores and Casuals š
I completely agree with you regarding the inherent unfairness of the casual vs hardcore situation which existed in MMOs for years. I lobbyed against this myself (read my Open Letter to SOE at EverQuest Guild Summit). WoW was a MMO designed by raiders for raiders, yet it was always very easy and accessible for soloers. My concern is that they have utterly failed to provide a good way to bridge the gap for players wanting to transition either up or down to both play styles. WoW has always been 2 MMOs in one: the easy solo game and the raiding game.
I would like to ask you a few questions:
How much easier can and should MMOs become?
How many millions of subcribers would you feel comfortable with and would you be willing make the tradeoff (easier MMO which requires less skill) to make a more inclusive MMO to get those numbers? 20 million? 50 million? 100 million?
How easy to they have to get before even you would throw your hands up in disgust?
Is skill important?
Is status important?
Should we reward merit and punish failure?
I don’t think the doughnut theory ever worked all that well, honestly. Equating “hardcore” with “raiding” isn’t broad enough to make a game community work. If anything, it’s that focus on raiding that has begotten the entitlement elitist mess that parts of the game have become.
Now, if the doughnut were meant to represent a pure function of time sunk, that might be something to hang design on. I’m not convinced they did that, but even if they did, I’m not comfortable with such a focus anyway. It’s more inclusive than “raiding=the Goal”, but it also begets grind in the most horribly abusive manner.
I wish that devs would jettison the sub model and concentrate on providing and selling quality content, rather than devise ever-increasingly strong ways to suck people in.
Great point! This is exactly where I am right now and that probably explains why I’m so conflicted about WoW. Last year I was main tanking for a raiding guild then I got burned out and left. This year I started soloing on a RP server. Honestly I have found both extremes to be unsatisfactory and somewhat lacking.
Well said! Very insightful.
The WoW community has always been rotten as you say — remember the Battlenet community? That’s part of the unfortunate legacy of Blizzard.
After years of playing, thinking and commenting on this subject I’m completely convinced that community in virtual worlds and MMOs can only happen through necessity. People in real life band together when it’s beneficial for to them to do so. From the dawn of our history as humans we’ve banded together — strength in numbers against the forces of adversity.
But if we find that we do not need other people (which is rare) then we keep to ourselves. We are independent by nature and social when it’s convenient.
With multi-player games and MMOs human interaction *is* the point. Therefore the designers have to find ways to facilitate in your words meaningful social interaction. WoW does not have this right now. It has a pittance of social interaction where the players act as advanced NPCs albeit with more personality. Social relationships profit you nothing in WoW. You don’t need people to play the game and that’s it’s fundamental problem.
Very well said!
I think we have finally hit the nail on the head with the source of the problem. Hardcore endgame raiding is the pot of gold at the end of the MMO rainbow. That “goal” has been a mistake all along — a mirage. It’s just that MMO designers don’t know any other way other then the formula from their EverQuest days.
The problem is that these endgame bosses are the foundations for their expansions and the lore. Both the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King had uber bosses as the main protagonists who’s defeat are the entire premise of playing WoW. I think that designers are afraid if they take away the endgame that they will be left with a shallow meaningless MMO. Given the current “kill the boss” and “let’s kill stuff” mentality of MMOs they’d probably be right.
The answer is that we need to get beyond this and introduce other meaningful ways for players to express themselves and interact within a virtual world. I think most MMO designers have hit a roadblock right now and have resorted to endless polishing of existing mechanics instead of trying to create new ones for players.
Indeed, Wolf. The current DIKU design is a terribly shallow experience, compared to what an MMO *could* be. The best in-game memories often just come from other players, not the content itself. That’s even true for me, a stalwart soloer; my favorite memory in WoW is when I found a panicked “baby” gnome running from a cat near the second Dwarven town. I was a hunter, conveniently looking for a cat to train, and that was the only one I’d seen for a while. I immediately targeted the cat, started training it, and when the gnome realized what was happening, he turned around to watch, tossed out a “lol” and we both went on our merry way, he without teeth marks, me with a nice pet cat.
Regarding the “bosses” in the lore, I’m increasingly convinced that story has little place in an MMO. Bioware is barking up the wrong tree. MMOs are places for people to tell *their own stories* in an interesting world, and to interact with other players. If devs want to tell strong stories, they really should be making single player RPGs or adventure games.
I’ve written for a while now that I’d play a single player offline subless WoW *because it’s perfectly possible and enjoyable to do so*. If the game design functions that way, market it that way. If the endgame is group raiding, make it an optional multiplayer module.
I see many of the current MMO design problems thusly firmly rooted in the subscription model, and a very fundamental misunderstanding of the potential of the genre. (Those are two different things, but they do reinforce each other.)
Okay I wish I could spend more time on this thread because it is one of the best discussions yet but work is crazy right nowā¦..to address wolfs response. No I believe it was an Earlier Times interview 2005 maybe?
I donāt have time to search for it now but it is basically where he tells the interviewer that end game Raiding was a design decision and the Ultimate of achievement in WoW and the interviewer says, so youāre saying if you donāt Raid you should quit
Yes Chilton was a designer in Vanilla WoW my mistake, that doesnāt detract from the fact that a couple ex Blizzard employees say that he was put in his position to make the game more casual friendly and to keep Jeffy from sticking his foot in his mouth.
In closing Wolf could you clarify pleaseā¦are you saying that you want WoW to be without Quest Helper, without and option for Hard Mode Heroics and more casual Big Tent Raids for the masses? Are you saying that WoW at itās elder game should only be for those who are āSkilledā ? Maybe Iām misunderstanding you because this certainly doesnāt sound what you have advocated in the past.
I think there’s room for a wide spectrum of gamers and abilities in WoW. From solo to group to raid. From casual to hardcore.
Skill and challenge should not be only offered to exclusively to heroic groups and guilds who raid. This is what I would say at a potential Blizzard interview if I wanted to get a job there. Every player and MMO playstyle should have challenges offered to them at every level.
For example lets take a look at the design of most outside encounters in WoW right now. Outside encounters have non-elite mobs and are primarily content for soloers and small groups.
What is the advantage of being a good player if all I have to do is kill mobs — usually one by one? In WoW currently in these outside encounters I don’t have to be a good player. I just show up and kill most mobs with zero effort.
Now if we take a camp of non-elite gnolls for example. You often see back in vanilla WoW camps of 3 to 4 and even 5 gnolls. What is the reward for me for clearing that camp without dying? Nothing. If there’s no reward for having the skill to clear a camp then why should I bother with it?
Occasionally you’ll see a treasure chest or some kind of ore vein or herbs growing there but in most cases there is very little point to play *well*.
Let me ask you, as an adult do you like playing against weaker opponents in a game like tennis (could be any game)? For me it’s not fun at all. I don’t grow as a player. The only time I get better as a player is when I’m challenged by playing slightly superior players.
I think good game design means that you should be challenging your players. Reward them for excellence and merit. Reward them for clearing out a dungeon and making it to the bottom without dying.
For me there’s nothing like the feeling of elation and exhilaration when I have survived impossible odds. You know when a group member has gone linkdead and your puller brings back too many mobs. You are all about to die but suddenly somehow you find the “zone” inside you and you are victorious.
Good game design means that you are challenging your player so that they should be getting better. Players should be eventually become more skilled. The beauty of MMOs is that players can always find more challenging content.
WoW does this very poorly right now. For example there is no benefit to killing a red con mob that is many levels above you. So why bother then? This forces players to focus on a min/max playstyle that emphasizes a “rate of return” investment of their time. Players then start farming green con mobs which in WoW makes perfect sense.
So skill in WoW for the soloers means that you become a more efficient “farmer” instead of a better player. Do you see what I’m getting at? WoW teaches us all the wrong things.
In the vanilla WoW you can see glimmers of great mob placement and actual evidence that the designers were trying somewhat to create a sense of difficulty but with the Wrath of the Lich King it’s almost evaporated.
So just for me to recap. Skill should not be something that is only required of heroic groups and raids. Skill is something that should be rewarded across the board. Casual gamers and soloers can still have their easy content but at least include some content that bridges the gap between the solo/casual demographic and the hardcore demographic.
I have often said that the solo to level cap part of WoW is a terrible boot camp for the endgame of WoW. It’s like having a child stay in kindergarten for 18 years — never challenged, never learning and suddenly they are faced with the rigors of college. That is exactly what WoW is right now. The gap is too wide and disharmonious between both playstyles right now.
Thanks Rebecca and everyone who’s contributed to this discussion for some great thought provoking debate š
Let me tell you a story about the time I met Brad McQuaid at Las Vegas a few years ago. I posed a question to him about EverQuest: “Isn’t EverQuest really about nothing?” At the time I felt that EQ was too open ended and that there was very little story in the world. He replied something to the effect that he felt players should make their own stories and memories.
It took me a while to *get it* but now I agree with him. After playing WoW for over 5 years, I am no longer impressed by story lines in MMOs where I’m forced to be an actor in the game designers quests. Most quests are just a means to an end now and I skip the dialogue. Brad was right all along.
So you are absolutely right, the most memorable times I’ve spend in virtual worlds are the intangible unpredictable things that have happened to me and they almost always involve meeting people.
I think there’s a certain sense of ego involved with these companies. They want to tell *their* stories. They want players to experience *their* content. As you have intimated, they are completely missing the boat. MMO companies should be giving players the tools and mechanics to create their own stories, memories and relationships.
Player Story > Quest Designer Story
There is a very telling thread going right now on the forums http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=FAEE8EE18153F9A61B664513978C5F70.app23_06?topicId=15660808329&sid=1 It isn’t so much telling from the players point of view because you have to wade through all the idiotic trolls that you usually have to…but for once Blue is actually responding, and you can finally see where Blizzards minds is in all of this.
Now moving on. As much as I respect Wolfs opinion, and reasoning (and trust me I do guys…we see man things eye to eye and have had many convos outside the Blog arena) however; for every one player you have like Wolf that sincerely wants a challenge you have ten that can only enjoy the game if the vast majority is denied content. In the above thread one even talks about the good old days when he was worshiped for his epics…I’m sorry but that is probably the single most pathetic thing I have ever heard in gaming.
We also have a Genie out of the bottle situation…and this is the way Billl Faulkner explained it to me before he left Blizzard. WoW for good or bad is now the Wii of MMO’s…..if Blizzard took away that accessibilityā¦ that Big Footprint there would be a huge mass exodus that another developer would attract….Blizzard as I said previous is an intelligent company they have done demographic after demographic and they all pretty much come up the same conclusion . WoW’s insane popularity is due to the fact that you can log on for an hour and still feel like you have advanced your character and to many (especially those who just don’t have that much time) that in itself is an accomplishment…is it for an old school gamer? No…but lets be frank, Blizzards target demographic as of point now is Joe Average, not Joe Gamer and by doing that they are making Joe average a new breed of Joe Gamer, my Husband calls them the Popcap crowd.
The question is, is all of this good or bad? Well it depends what side of the fence youāre standing on I guessā¦. I see it as (at least for WoW) good, because while Iām no longer tracking my DKP in major Raids I also have a closer knit group than ever before and am constantly meeting new playersā¦yes some of them arenāt particularly skilled but they are grateful to understand an aspect of the game that they didnāt beforeā¦maybe that is a chick thing I dunnoā¦..I really donāt think however Blizzard is going to radically change the game anytime soonā¦so here we all are Casuals Hardcore and me Ex-hardcore converted casual I guessā¦ā¦.So now what? This debate has been going on for yearsā¦I am reminded of Captain Barbosa
So what now Jack Sparrow? Are we to be two immortals locked in an epic battle til judgment day and the trumpets sound?
There are no easy answersā¦
From a financial point of view Blizzard is doing the right thing for their shareholders. However, are they making a good game? Are they making a good virtual world? I would say no.
I predict that eventually WoW will turn into another from of social networking like Facebook or MySpace. You show up and play with your group of friends. As each passing year goes by there is less emphasis on gaming fundamentals. Strangely enough I find very few reasons to socialize in WoW which is what bothers me. As others have noted there is not much of a community in WoW in a MMO that rarely requires you to reach out and make any kind of contact with your fellow player.
As for the calibre of people in WoW, I’m finding that it’s been getting worse — not that it ever was that good to start with. WoW breeds selfishness and aloofness among players whereas in EverQuest people actually had to be kind and civil to each other. Combine this with the inherent anonymity of the Internet and you have a recipe for disaster. Andrew Keen made a great point that if you forced people to use their real names you’d clean up the the Internet and make it more of a rewarding and civilized experience. He’s very right on this.
It seems that if a player wants to be challenged in WoW with PVE content then they must join a heroic or raiding guild. It’s almost as if it’s the last refuge for old school players like myself as the casual part of WoW gets bigger and bigger.
Thanks Rebecca for the great insights into Blizzard’s development process. I’m sure that the accessibility of WoW is the big tradeoff that the hardcore raiders who work there (Rob, Jeff and Alex et al) made in order to get WoW to the level of mass acceptance it is currently.
My greatest fear is that WoW continued lust for new subscribers will end up in the ultimate demise of MMOs or they will just turn into a social toy like MetaPlace. As Blizzard de-emphasizes and devalues the game part of their MMO it will have the effect of providing less of a context for players to get involved. It’s like burning the furniture to heat your house. It’s unsustainable.
Rebecca I was wondering if you could try reposting that link from the official Blizzard forums? It’s not working for me right now. Thank you.
There were many wrong statements in Rebecca’s post, but this was my favorite. Rebecca, you really should broaden your horizons a bit. In the grand scheme of online gaming, WoW is just a small part. And I mean all of online gaming – not just the few that get included on Bruce’s MMOGchart.
Runescape, Habbo Hotel, Puzzle Pirates, Club Penguin, MUDs, Ikariam, Travian, and tons of other games out there have many tens, if not hundreds of millions of customers. Those games vary widely in difficulty. Some of them are easy, like WoW, and some of them are very challenging.
I agree with you that WoW nearly went off the deep end with their heavy raid focus. I have slammed the raid-centric game design of WoW many times on my blog. But do not confuse that error with a general lack of interest amongst gamers for challenge. People hate raiding not because it is challenging, but because it is so incredibly limiting and elitist due to its mechanics. I won’t go into detail in this post. Read my anti-raiding rants on Muckbeast, or I can elaborate more fully in a later post.
There are a lot of gamers out there who still enjoy a challenging game. Look at Left 4 Dead.
Oh I protest!
http://www.frogdice.com
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Quest helper (the yellow arrow mod)’s mere existence is a total mockery of WoW as anything but a pure time sink. I loved my time playing WoW (well, some of it), but they have gone way off the deep end at not rewarding skill AT ALL.
I do not object to a game being casual friendly, or a game that anyone can play and make progress. Those are good things. But that is no excuse to strip the game of ANY SKILL REQUIREMENT whatsoever. I don’t mind when a game does not REQUIRE skill to play, but it sure as heck better REWARD skill to a worthwhile degree. A highly skilled player of WoW can perform maybe 10-20% better than an average player with the right add-ons installed. That is downright ridiculous.
Uh……… None of those things require skill. None of those things are challenging. All of those “accomplishments” require only one thing: time.
That is like me saying Tic-Tac-Toe is a boring and unchallenging game, and someone responding “Have you ever played 20 million games in a row, on notebook paper, and bound them all together in a library full of binders? No. Come back when you have.”
It doesn’t matter how many times you force me to play Tic-Tac-Toe, it is still a pointless game that requires no appreciable skill. Don’t make your mark in the 8, 3, 6, or 2 spot unless you are blocking someone. There you go. Tie every time.
You are confusing hard core raid-elitist losers with people who simply want a game that rewards skill. They are not the same types of people. I think most of us here are totally with you that the “worship me for my epix!” crowd are total garbage. Any MMO that caters to them will fail, because they are not only few in number but also fickle, immature, and disloyal. Furthermore, most heavy duty raiders I know are not actually all that skillful. They just live their entire lives online and succeed through time and the occasional use of exploits or unbalanced gameplay elements.
What folks like Wolf and myself are talking about is the total divorcement of skill from the game design. WoW totally hands everything to you on a silver platter. It is barely more than ProgressQuest now, and that’s a darn shame.
I do understand your points Muck…but respectfully disagree about WoW handing you everything on a silver platter. If it’s true then where in the hell is my Barons mount? and why Have I been working my ass off for my Proto Drake? If it’s handed to me why don’t I have them and why don’t I see everyone using them? (These are just a couple examples.)
And while we are on Skill if we are going to Pigeonhole like this did WoW ever require skill? I mean what folks are calling the panicle of WoW (Vanilla) was simply gather you forty closest friends together and wade through trash mobs until you get to the Boss…does any MMO actually require true skill? And while we are on this subject define skill for me…is it micromanaging your character? Is it knowing which button to click? You said it wasn’t time..so what is MMO gamer skill? From my experience skill is one of those squishy terms like sandbox it has no real or many meanings. If I am wrong please enlighten me.