Reviewers Pile On World Of Warcraft Beta

Thanks to GameSpy for its 'Pile On!' feature discussing Beta impressions so far on Blizzard's long-awaited MMO title, World Of Warcraft. Reactions range from the effusive ("I'm more convinced than ever that this game may finally be the first truly mass-market MMO") through the delighted ("I'm... completely in love with World of Warcraft"), to the ecstatic ("World of Warcraft delivers just what people are expecting: a tight, fun MMOG from a trusted developer.") Elsewhere, a WorldOfWarcraft.com forum discussion has a Blizzard representative mentioning release estimates of early this summer are likely wrong: "Definitely not July. As you know, we never set release dates, but you can expect the beta to run for another 5+ months." But, more importantly, does anyone _not_ like World Of Warcraft?

Comments

Re:I don't

[Godeke]

Not even "old school" pen and paper RPGs are balanced when you look at distinct classes. Frankly, the issue of balance is usually an overreaction by the players. Having coded for Muds for many years, everyone wants the advantages of their class *plus* what everyone else has.

Running a mud for some time, our technique for determining balance was pretty simple: capture the "time between levels" of the players. Simply log the play time between each level for each player, and number of player deaths during that time. Sort them out by level achived, race and class. A little bit of statistics will show any unbalanced classes pretty quickly. It will also show your better players: they will level any class faster than average.

After doing this for a few years, we could calculate the level rates like clockwork. Yet, even with this "level playing field" the whining continued. My final realization: there is a level of "background whining" which reflects upon the players personality, not upon your game. Learn what this level is, and you only have to worry when the whining breaks that level.