Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft - Then and Now
MMORPG.com has an excellent feature up discussing the trajectory of World of Warcraft as it's progressed since its launch day. They touch on the recent honor system features, the added dungeons, and call Blizzard out on their inability to keep to a consistent update schedule. From the article: "So you may ask, 'How well has Blizzard delivered on their monthly content updates?' The simple answer is: they haven't. In fact, a couple months post launch some players challenged Blizzard as to their promise on scheduled updates. Official Blizzard posters denied making such claims but were quickly pointed to their own website where, in plain text, monthly content updates were promised. After some backtracking Blizzard announced that they would not be able to keep to a definitive content update schedule."
World of WarCraft exploded into the gaming world among copious amounts of expectations and accolades. Whether by article or word-of-mouth it's hard to ignore the blockbuster hit that carries Blizzard's signature style of game play. Now, five months into live retail play, we took a look at some of the aspects and how they've progressed since this MMO giant hit the shelves back in November of last year.
Updates! Updates?
Many gamers have been floored by the myriad elements that make up WoW, whether it's the stunning graphics, visceral sounds or fast-paced combat. Another thing that excited many gamers at launch was the promise of monthly content updates. Those who have played other MMOs know well the anticipation that can slowly turn into annoyance as long awaited updates and patches drag on for months at a time. The ambiguity of "It's coming soon," seems to have worn a permanent numbness into the gamer psyche.
So you may ask, "How well has Blizzard delivered on their monthly content updates?" The simple answer is: they haven't. In fact, a couple months post launch some players challenged Blizzard as to their promise on scheduled updates. Official Blizzard posters denied making such claims but were quickly pointed to their own website where, in plain text, monthly content updates were promised. After some backtracking Blizzard announced that they would not be able to keep to a definitive content update schedule.
What the WoW community has seen in updates since launch has been intermittent at best. Snippets of patches are shown as teasers with only the promise of delivery as soon as they are thoroughly tested. Having seen only two major updates in the five months since launch, many in the community have found their hopes for timely updates fading.
Nevertheless, Blizzard has recently gone on the record as stating that their timetable of patch rollouts up to this point has been unacceptable. Though they have committed to a more expeditious schedule for patch release Blizzard has stated that it will likely not reach the aforementioned monthly update pledge it made early on.
Even with a somewhat lackluster turnout speed for WoW's patches Blizzard has delivered rather well on the content. Each patch has seen many positive changes to the game world, including numerous bug fixes, additional quests and dungeon instances, new trade skill recipes and much more. Perhaps the most hotly debated part of any game patch is those changes that affect character classes...
A Game With Character...
One of the most compelling aspects of WoW when held up to other MMOs is it's truly enjoyable selection of character classes. From the staple warriors, rogues and priests intrinsic to fantasy to the more unique shamans and hunters WoW offers a plethora of flexibility and enjoyment to its players. Many players identify with certain character classes, playing certain archetypes over the years, from one game to the next. WoW delivers both the classic feel of fantasy with a very personalized twist. Priests that can lay waste with the power of shadow walk beside warriors who are nearly as deadly as any rogue in combat. Mages master the powers of fire, cold and arcane energies...but which one a mage specializes in is a point of personal preference, and every path offers its advantages and disadvantages.
There are as many different viewpoints on the strengths and weaknesses of a character class as there are players playing the game. The viewpoint that holds the greatest sway, however, is that of the developers at Blizzard. While players eagerly anticipate patches for improvements and variety to be added to their preferred classes there is also the sense of dread that many hold at the thought of nerfs to their class.
Overall since the launch of the game most of the class balancing has empowered the character classes. Many classes have seen new abilities and spells, most of which add true use to the class as opposed to fluff offered to assuage the player community. Some examples include new
They need to get a stable, playable environment up before they put in more content.
"Powers. I have them."
Some guy in marketing thought it would be nice to promise monthly updates without realizing that the developers didn't have the resources to deliver anything like this.
Happens in every company, and the marketing guys should be held accountable for making such stupid promises.
Speaking as a former WoW player, the server outages were a far bigger issue than content updates. Constant lag and queues made me quit playing WoW. I think that the servers are the issue that they are currently focusing on more than content updates.
First, the article is wrong about Battlgrounds. Blizzard has recently stated that they WILL be in the next patch, not the patch after next. My guess is that means ~3 weeks; figure a week or two before we see the test servers back up sporting Battlgrounds, and a week or so after that for the patch to go live.
Second, while stability is still an issue where large scale PVP is ocurring, overall stability has been pretty good in my experience. I'm on Arthas -- one of the most populated servers -- and it's been at least a month I think since I wasn't able to log on immediately. I had a server reboot in the middle of an instance run about a week ago, but that's been it in the last few weeks.
Frankly, I think the ungodly lag in places like Tarren Mills will slowly decrease as people piece together how little honour they get from large scale, one-sided town-raiding. It's far more efficient to form small posses and find a decently populated area to 'farm'. It's tricky though, since killing anyone a second time is worth next to nothing. Once people realize that too I think we'll see people sweeping the globe rather than haunting a particular quest area (unless it's a throughfare that promises a steady stream of new victims).
I haven't seen a serve queue in even longer, though I hear queues were cropping up on the new servers they just opened yesterday. Apparently that's typical on new servers for a day or so though.
Anyways, YMMV, but that's how I've had it lately.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
Let me preface this by saying that I play a couple of hours a day (more on weekends) on the Earthen Ring server, which is hardly low pop.
The WoW service frequently has unplanned outages, slow performance, server crashes, rollbacks (where you lose X minutes/hours of play development), and occasionally actual bugs.
I have never had the service go out on me or the server crash. Ever. They've had extended downtimes with their routine maintenance at times, yes, but other than that nothing unplanned. There are the occasional bugs, yes, and they are usually of the broken quest variety or a talent not working correctly in a certain instance. Hardly anything show-stopping.
Anyone who denies this or defends Blizzard's track record here simply doesn't play often, or plays on one of the rare low-population servers.
As I stated above, I play regularly almost every day and heavily on weekends (when the servers are most stressed) on a fairly high population server, and I have experienced none of the major issues you reference.
And despite seeming like an obviously useful option, Blizzard has been extremely reluctant to allow character transfers. At this point I believe that's because their game is very poorly designed, at least with respect to how they manage character data.
You have a point here. It looks like they are starting to get better about the transfers, but as of yet, it still looks like it's only for VERY high pop servers. At some point, I think it would be nice if they allowed you to transfer to any server you like. They would have to limit the number of transfers you can make, of course.
There is no valid excuse or defense against the claims I make.
Yes, there are. Blizzard can not anticipate every end user's situation. Many crashes, network stability problems, etc occur because of problems on the CLIENT SIDE. Whether someone has a crappy internet connection, a slow computer, or is infested with spyware are surprisingly never mentioned in any of these articles. For some reason it seems it can't ever possibly be the fault of the consumer, and yet I bet you that a LOT of the problems that come up are because of those things that I mentioned.
My experiences are mirrored by thousands of other players.
Quite possible, given the sheer number of WoW players. However, 15,000 of over 1,000,000 copies sold is a very small number.
Anyone who isn't experiencing these issues simply isn't playing often, isn't playing on a moderate/high pop server, or isn't willing to concede that a previously high quality game company has slipped.
Again, pure rubbish. Re-read my post to see why. I'm not saying you aren't experiencing these problems; I'm sure you are. But to make it out like EVERYONE is in your situation is just naive.
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
First, let me say right off, I haven't played WoW nor do I plan to (too many games competing for my time as it is). But I have been playing City of Heroes and Guild Wars.
City of Heroes has instanced missions, but there are other zones that are free-for-alls. Works relatively well, I guess.
Guild Wars has instances for everything other than city zones and PVP areas (I guess, I've only been playing a little while).
I guess I don't get why people would want to play a MMORPG, but also want instances to make it into more of a Not-So-Massively-Multiplayer ORPG. I always thought that Everquest was kinda cool in that everyone was competing/cooperating with one another (and yes, I know the inherent problems that come with that: camping rare spawns, etc).
Guild Wars seems to go even further, basically making a game that has a bunch of different lobby areas (Cities) that allow you to join up for adventures (with up to 8 people). Is Guild Wars really a MMORPG, then (discounting the fact that no MMORPG is actually a RPG, really)? Now, I haven't done any PVP, so maybe that's where the MM part comes in, but it seems a little odd to me.
Not that I'm not enjoying the game: it's nice, simple, and cheap.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I would assume some might point out the content's being paid for by the gajillions of monthly payments being deposited into Blizzard's account.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
World of Warcraft is doing alright. Ive played SWG, EverQuest, and Ultima Online in the past, and honestly the biggest response people would get from those games is a big TS. Blizzard has been pretty damn generous with giving people extra days when the servers are having problems, and server stability *has* improved. And the amount of content so far delivered is nothing to sneeze at, its a lot more than Ive seen in the other MMOs Ive played in a six month time (SWG has basically been in beta since the game launched ~2 years ago, so I dont really count it, WOW was in much better shape). I really think Battlegrounds are gonna change the dynamic of the game, and almost give it a Planetside-style capture/control gameplay element. I really cant wait for it to happen.
I dont play 24/7 so the highest player I have is a lvl 30. So the lack of monthly content is not hurting me. I am sure there are many more like me.
Now for the servers, they do seem to be down alot, keep them up and lag down and I will be happy. I am 90% happy now.
And manybe work on the honor thing somemore, Its not honorable to gank low lvl players doing there quests.
I've been a WoW player since it came out, even an officer in the 4th largest guild on the Bloodhoof server. I play a Rogue with a warlock alt and a new druid.
Being a horde player you have a smaller population, so less people to instance with. And the change of getting ninja looters, who will steal on bosses, hench the change to master loot on all bosses.
PvP is lagtastic, and offsides. Alliance normally has a 2:1 ratio, but with guards, help kinda helps. And when a true zerg 5:1 sometimes, they just storm tarren mill and take the city and camp the graveyard. So, at times, it really is crap.
Highend instances are not Rogue oriented, so after spending 5 months getting my guy to 60, I find out that I should of rolled a Priest or Warrior is rather depressing. But time will tell, but blizzard doesnt answer questions much, other than making people change names. They actually made a guy named "Hellcow" change his name, and disbanded a group called Euthanasia. Rather nazi like behavior of the GM's lately.
There is no player growth other than reach level 60, farm your armor/weapon, reach 300 on your 2 selected professions. The include cooking, firstaid and fishing for everyone. Boring......
No trophies, everyone looks the same, they are trying with new weapon graphics, which is helping some. But it would of been nice if at least some of the taruens the size of houses where not all the same size.
So, it has major issues, balance between horde vs alliance is a big problem. Also not being able for you to see friends on other servers is a big problem. Since it seems everyone I know is on a different server. Really its 2005, the technology exists to have people across servers play together. And before someone says they cant, I work at a telco, ive use and seen technology that can do this. Its possible, some MMO's already do this.
What I like, good graphics, good movement and fighting combat. Even if the lag sucks, its good. Not total FPS style, you dont aim as much.
But, I'm gonna try guild wars, and got a free EQ2 account in the mail from fileplanet.
BTW, other than patches breaking cosmo's a UI addon, they have added most of its functions, other than a CLOCK (With localtime), and a RAID addon, you almost dont need them anymore.
They are trying I give them that, I just wish they would of explored more than the really boxed in RPG feeling you get. Great graphics wont keep people around when every new game has great graphics.
Who know, time will tell how many people churn. (I like using a telco term for MMO's, YEA)