World Of Warcraft Alpha Explored, Blizzard Quizzed

Thanks to GameSpy for its two-part tour of World Of Warcraft, as they "got the chance to get our hands on... [an] early 'alpha' build" of the eagerly-awaited Blizzard PC MMORPG. The author praises the "incredible atmosphere and game speed... solid interface [and] fun quests", while expressing a few reservations about the "[lack of] character customization options" and the "racially restricted zones" in which "NPCs...would automatically attack any members of another race." The preview is closely followed by an interview with designer Jeff Kaplan, in which he addresses questions on design philosophy ("It's very important not to fall into that trap of trying to manipulate your community as if you're trying to run an ant farm") and in-game housing ("We do not anticipate that our player housing system will ship with the initial product.")

Comments

Re:Another new mmporg

[Colazar]

In my opinion, this is one of the things that Shadowbane got right. There is a small newbie area with no PvP, and 3 safehold cities with no PvP. Everywhere else, anyone can kill anyone. At any time, for any reason.

But...

The penalties for dying are few. And you get full information on the person who killed you, and their guild.

So if you've been griefed you just round up your guild (and maybe some others) and go after them. Maybe right then, maybe later. Pretty soon, respectable guilds don't put up with loose cannons. And PK guilds end up seeing a lot of combat...which is what they wanted anyway.

For the first several months, there were some things that got out of hand, but now there are some real community "norms" set up. Guilds that go beyond those eventually get slapped down. The self-policing aspect actually works. (However, you *have* to join a guild. Otherwise you have no one to police on your behalf. But there's plenty of choice there.)

There are plenty of things about Shadowbane that are broken. It's sad to me that this part of things, which actually works well, will probably be ignored by future designers, because of all the other things that went wrong with the game.