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NYT on World of Warcraft
The New York Times (registration required) has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales. The article also examines the design processes that go into the game, and the artistic outlook of the WoW live team. From the article: "From around a dark, windowless room, nine young men peered into the unfinished virtual interior of Karazhan, a haunted tower set in a forlorn mountain pass that will open later this year. 'As you can see, the architecture is a little ornate, a little Gothicky,' said Aaron Keller, a 29-year-old designer, gesturing to the 3-D model on the computer screen before him. 'We're thinking about turning these arches into horse heads.'
I though we were still boycotting Blizzard for what they did to our friends. What have they done that they are good again?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
And to beat the inevitable rush of complaints, the Hardware issues are much improved over release. When speaking about the World of Warcraft everyone seems to have selective memory. There hasn't been a majorly anticipated MMORPG launch in the history of internet gaming that didn't have bottlenecks.
This is completely offtopic, but when will WoW and others sue the crap out of IGE.com? IGE is a company who sells virtual equipment and accounts for popular MMORPGS. Isn't that against TOS for most of these games? How long will they stand for it?
w00t! They must be talking about Medivh's Tower in Deadwind Pass! A lot of us old beta hands have been waiting to get in there. Given Medivh's prominence in the history of Azeroth, it promises to be an absolute bounty of Warcraftian lore!
Plus, Deadwind pass is just spooky. I mean, it just reeks with atmosphere =) How can the big instance in that not be cool?
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
While it would be unfair to say Blizzard's art department doesn't receive enough acclaim, I think they deserve every ounce of good press and more besides, Blizzard is one of the few developpers out there that uses the quality of their art to act as a central element of their game engines. While the game does sport some noteworthy techical specifcations (pixel shaded post-processing, dynamic distance polymorphic (no pun entended) LOD, and some very sharp specular lighting effects) it is far and beyond their unique art style that makes it such a beautiful game. And style needs no hardware requirements, only taste =)
I've heard of countless horror stories about people getting perma-banned for becoming bugged than immediately appealing it. I've heard they are worse than sony/verant in this respect.
has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales.
:)
A few of the things I like about World of Warcraft.
1. It's not a real 'grind'. You get an experence bonus for being offline, so you don't have to feel like you need to play all the time to 'keep up' if you are the keep up type.
2. There is a good questing system, that offers rewards that are at least as good as the rewards (ie drops) you would get from just farming mobs.
3. Decent PvP system. Those who want PvP join PvP servers, and PvP combat is limited enough to not scare off newbies, but prevalent enough to be enjoyed at higher levels.
4. Things aren't too hard. Most of the professions (ie crafting) aren't too comlicated which is nice for a casual player like myself who has a full time job.
I think WoW is the first MMORPG to really reach out to and reward casual players, and it's succeeding.
People tend to get confused and think that what IGE is doing is illegal, when it is not. What IGE does is against the Terms that you agree to when you play the game. From the terms I have read from a few MMORPGs that I have played, the only way they will/can do to you is cancel your account. And it is rare that they will even do this.
It is rather hard to prove that any single player is involved in the sale of in-game money. The only for sure way I've ever heard of would be to have the company (Like Blizzard), buying money from a site like IGE, then when the money is delivered, they cancel the account of the person who sent them the money. I don't see many game developers doing this.
Plus, IGE is only the middleman in the deal. IGE doesn't have anyone directly work for them that farms money to be able to sell to other players. IGE pays people as those people sell the money to IGE, then IGE sells that money to some other person. This makes it even harder for them to get caught.
Its not what it is, its something else.
...but it doesn't really go into the massive problems that people have been having with server stability, join queues (apparently queues on Blackrock are still quite long in peak times).
If I was a casual gamer I would have read that article and run out and bought a copy and then probably been frustrated to the bejebus if my server kept crashing, or whatnot.
On a related note, the european version of wow opened today, see http://wow-europe.com/en/.
Everything went smoothly when i registered in the morning, but i hear the servers are totally bogged down now, especially the registration-server.
Wow, what a groundbreaking story. Where was the NYT when Everquest was becoming a juggernaut? Where were the NYT stories on Meridian 59 or Shadows of Yserbius? Where is the NYT interview with Richard Bartle? Where was the NYT when Habitat was around? (Compute! knew it was a big deal, so it couldn't have been out of ignorance)
Hopping on an obvious bandwagon which everyone is already aware of is not "reporting" the "news". But then again, the NYT also just did a big story on Britney Spears' makeover -- so maybe it's just that they have no common sense or standards of what content, out of the constant turmoil going on in the world, should be included in their tabloid rag.
And hell, why wouldn't you want Blizzard "listening in"?
Why wouldn't you want someone to search your house if you're not doing anything illegal? What have you got to hide crimi^H^H^H^H^Hcitizen?
Not to mention the fact someone might like to hack their version and play on a highly modded server... Oh, but I'm sorry, only rich guys in suits and ties have the right to create, and then only if it's for a profit.