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Ask Questions of the World of Warcraft Team
You may have already heard of Blizzard's most recent title. World of Warcraft was released in November of last year to high critical praise and a favourable player reaction. While technical issues were a problem for the first few months of retail service, prompt patching and additional world servers have left the game in excellent shape. World of Warcraft has since gone on to become not only the largest MMORPG in the United States, but also the world, with 3.5 million subscribers as of July 21st. Given all this, the likelihood that Slashdot readers would be interested in asking the development team some questions seemed pretty high. The team has kindly offered to take some time out of their extremely busy schedules to answer questions. So, feel free to ask whatever question is burning in your heart. Please stick to World of Warcraft related topics, and only ask one question per comment. We'll take the best of the lot and pass them on to the Team. Their answers will be posted when we've gotten them back.
Why did you invent something so good that it drains the life out of anyone who touches it and turns them into mindless WoW slaves? You fiends! Even crack cocaine has nothing on WoW.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Many long-term users were troubled when people like MickeyMouse publically described the the recent duping cheat. I think many WoW users would like to know what steps the administration and code gurus took to correct the problem. Do you get a call from your pissed-off boss at 3 am in the morning?
How do you guys react to all the negative press we've been hearing lately about the actions of gamers who have a severe addiction to your game?
How much economic monitoring do you do? Both in-game and on the secondary market (eBay)? Have you considered working with an economist ( Steven D. Levitt comes to mind, but there are dozens of others as well) to study some of these phenomenon?
Test your net with Netalyzr
What the hell where you thinking with the Darkmoon Fair? Can I at least get an epic t-shirt that says "I went to the Darkmoon Fair and all I got was this stupid Jubling"?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So, what was it like being the first lvl 60 Tauren sham*BLAM**THUD*....
What sort of challenges did you face in taking a universe that was always primarily for RTS gameplay, and translating it to an RPG? And how does the MMORPG setting allow you to further the story of Warcraft differently than if you'd just made another RTS (if there even is a difference)?
How is it that you have time to answer questions on Slashdot but elect to ignore questions and problems reported by paying users on your own forums?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Are there any plans in the pipe to make the game playable for "normal" people (ie: people older than 15 who do not have 10 hours day to play/cheat, etc.)? I'd love to be able to play online, but the experience quite frankly, sucks.
I don't respond to AC's.
How much play time have the members of the dev team put into playing other MMO's, either to look for features that may benefit WoW, or to look for stumbling blocks to avoid?
For example, unclear quest instructions like in FFXI or the staggered leveling system in City of Heroes, etc.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
It's the biggest MMORPG to date in terms of number of subscribers. It's easy to guess that you've encountered challenges due to scale that no other developer has before.
Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently, and when?
Are there any plans for a player hall of (f/sh)ame?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Since your game is subscribtion based, do you think you'll feel a lot of heat from games like Guild Wars who aren't charging a monthly fee to play the game?
(My personal thought is that you won't simply because a person could by both games and only pay for one. I know the reason I don't play WoW is because I would feel guilty by not playing because I know I dropped a good amount of money so I could play that month!)
How about a native Linux client? It runs great under cedega (transgaming wine), even better in opengl mode.
Look-lock is the ability to have your character's facing be tied to mouse movement without having to hold down a key or, worse, a mouse button. First-person shooters are a perfect example.
Why then isn't look-lock native to the game, requiring an add-on to implement? If I hadn't installed the look-lock addon, long ago my RMB finger would have fallen off or I would have left the game.
I would like to know what kind of servers, how many, network bandwidth, etc., for WoW.
Is there any consideration for guild halls, house or player cities in the future? SWG's had many issues but their Cities where a very interesting concept, and since blizzard is in a position to use the lessons learned is this something you guys would consider?
Blizzard is one of the few companies that distribues Windows and Mac games together on the same media. Going further, WoW allows Windows and Mac users to play together on the same realms, something which isn't done in other MMORPGS. What kind of hurdles did you have to overcome to get both Windows and Mac versions to co-exist and have you had to make any sacrifices because you were only able to do something on one platfrom and not both?
'Same speed C but faster'
It depends, will I get an answer? When I use the Blizzard technical support forums, they don't answer there.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
SOE has been in the MMORPG business for quite some time. Everquest (version one) is even the largest game in the world, I'm told. Why do you think WoW turned out to be more successful than SOE's Everquest 2?
Did you base everything around the gameplay and try and increase server capability afterwards, or did you try and create the gameplay to the capacity of the server's that you wanted to use?
I've been into video game editing for some time, with mods and stuff like that. Now I've pretty much given up on it as a viable career, due to the instability involved with trying to obtain (and most of all SECURE) a good video game designing career.
I have had a few interviews, and some really bad experiences with video game companies out there who shall remain anonymous for the purpose of this question.
In once instance, I've been lied to by HR directors on the annual salary, told it was around $65k and it turned out to be $35-40k (which must have meant $35k right?). In another instance, I was strung along for months by a company who decided at the last minute to drop me as a candidate. What a huge waste of time that was. I've been promised before by a designer from a major company that we would do a big project together and get funding for it, only to have the guy over for a steak dinner (filet mignon no less), and a week later he went off and took a job somewhere else, and dropped the project.
What do you say to someone like me who has had ONLY these kinds of experiences with the video game industry?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Whats left in this game for the casual power gamers? We did the 'end content raids' like MC and Onixia and BWL...over and frickin over. PVP got old after a month, it wont matter how many extra pvp maps you throw in. So whats left? For the love of god is there only Treadmill Level Grinding (TM) and then your off to Treadmill Equipment Grinding (TM)?!?!?
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
Really what where you guys thinking when you layed this class out.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I would love to play WoW, but there is not freely downloadable client. Further, a friend gave me the trial CDs that came with his collector's edition, and quit after I determined that even though I had a fully functional, legal copy, I couldn't upgrade to a paid subscription without going out and buying another box.
This seems to be a problem with most of the genre. I haven't played City of Heroes (no free trial), and I didn't follow up the Star Wars: Galaxies free trial because you have to go buy the full box even though you already have the full client installed.
I cannot justify spending money to buy the box for a game that CANNOT be played in an offline mode without a subscription. Why do MMORPG developers and publishers think this is an acceptable practice?
What are the factors in your decision to support Linux? Are future projects going to be built for Linux?
Are there any plans to introduce accounts that cost less?
I'd like to try out WoW, but I don't have a huge amount of time and paying the high up front and monthly cost seems excessive to me for the amount of time I would play it. However if there was some form of time restricted cheaper account I think I would try it out.
...who would you be looking for, in terms of technical skills, and what sort of background would you be hiring from?
Informatus Technologicus
When are our complaints that have existed since retail going to be resolved?
I love my class, but have a few issues.
1) soul shards - We are the only class that must go grind and collect reagents to go about daily functioning. Make them purchaseable, or perhaps give us a trinket that lets us summon one for free once every ten minutes.
2) escape spell - Mages get Polymorph and Ice Block, Priests get Insta-cast AOE fear (ours takes 2 seconds) and mind control. Please give us something to stop us getting repeatedly raped by rogues. Perhaps give us banish back like it worked in the beta, useable on everyone, perhaps cost a shard, with a cooldown
3) end game pets - Make the infernal not cost a reagent, it's a nice pet no doubt, but gets expensive. Also the cooldown time is ridiculous, how bout 30 mins. with guaranteed 10-min enslave? The doomguard is nice, but please give us a reliable way to get one. Waiting for curse of doom to proc sucks.
4) Enslave demon. Far too short to be useful for the danger envolved.
5) Voidwalker - please buff his dps - hitting for 20 is seriously gimped. Also I can break is agro very easily with a shadow bolt or Immolate crit.
6) Invisiblity - why the hell are mages getting invis. back. If they get it back, all the other casters are entitled to it as well - they already get portals and free food, water, and mana pots.
Yes i know this is more than one question. Thanks blizz.
Oh yes, nerf shamans.
Item Duplication is something all online RPGs are currently dealing with, what are you going to do to fix this situation before it gets out of hand?
Which one of you is Caydiem sleeping with, to make druids so powerful?
Let me be up front: I don't play any MMORPG's...probably never will. I'm sure WOW is fantastic, but I generally stick to console games.
Which sort of leads to my question. How in the world did the decision for a Warcraft MMORPG get made? I mean, I know it seems like a great idea now but at the time that idea represented a huge amount of money to invest in a new area of gaming Blizzard had limited experience with via Battlenet. The new game also faced the once (and possibly still) formidable Everquest juggernaut. When I first heard about WOW, the general rumors going around were that it'd be an action adventure title about a single Orc in the style of say, God of War or Prince of Persia. I'm just curious who first said at the weekly staff meeting, "Uh...dudes? Like, let's totally go all MMORPG with this biatch and like stuff!" and what was the reaction of the staff and Blizzard overlords.
I have heard tales of accounts being banned for using game exploits (mind-controlling mobs in UBRS to give a special fire resist buff for use in MC) to me, this seems like it is just a part of the game. How do you determine what is an exploit and what is not, and how do you handle the closing of an account that a player has spent potentially months playing and building?
or
What is your take on Chinese farming? It would appear that a lot of people are making thier livelihood dealing in virtual goods in your worlds. Do you account for such things in your continued development of WoW?
Will it run Linux?
Fixed: Will linux run it?
I guess more appropriately, since Cedega runs the game without many major pitfalls or bottlenecks, does Blizzard plan to officially support a natively compiled- or at the very least cedega-wrapper compiled- version of WoW, including but not limited to patch testing on cedega, closer integration with linux-based systems (or even XFree in general. Yay for OSX!)?
I haven't bought the game yet partially because I hear it's addictive like crack, but mostly because I'm not completely convinced of the functionality on my linux system running cedega. I would love to see a native linux build (which may also further the use of linux as a gaming platform)
+5, Truth
I've noticed that "bot"'d characters programmed to do nothing but farm money and items has become a growing problem in WoW. Farming bots can frequently be spotted in the game, and I have evern personally recieved in-game mail spam advertizing mmobay.com . What do you plan to do to curb this issue that is eating away at the economy and atmosphere of your realms?
Marukah
24 night elf Druid
Silverhand
What is the process the dev team goes through for balancing character classes, items, NPCs, etc.? Seemingly minor changes can have a huge effect on gameplay, how do you avoid unwanted negative effects on the overall gameplay experience with each content patch? Also, How much of an effect does feedback from the community have on this process?
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
I'm stuck in Arathi Mountains (in the wilderness outside of Hammerfall)... can you warp me to Stromgarde Keep?
Get your Unix fortune now!
How do think you are doing keeping long term players interested in the game whilst making it enjoyable and worthwhile for new (or short term) players. Isn't the problem here is that you have to proportionally repay the effort and time that players have put into the game, but at the same time you want to allow people progress without devoting their entire lives on WoW [or getting their backside continuously kicked by the more devoted(obsessive)]
Bonus question: What do you think/compare/dislike about StarWars Galaxies? I'd also be interested to know whether you think the combat upgrade for SWG was worthwhile or whether they should have rewritten the game from scratch i.e. SWGII. Any interesting lessons for WoW to learn from this?
With so many improvements in EQ2, it is clear that they have surpassed WoW in terms of quest content. EQ2's quests require creativity and ingenuity to solve, while WoW's feel like I'm working a 2nd job (just kill X numbers of monster Y)...
How do you plan to catch up?
Earlier this year, the WoW servers were encountering numerous problems. Some servers crashed and the load was so high that you even has to suspend new subscriptions for a short while.
So, how does today's WoW server infrastructure look like? Did everyone take precautions? Do you use a load balancing system to equal the loads? Did you create more optimized patches? What kind of server hardware do you use?
Thanks,
Paulius
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
Many WoW players are familiar with the activities and roles of the CMs on the forums; what is unfamiliar is the process by which you gather the information they collect. What is the organization by which you gather information and act and, perhaps more importantly, what factors do you use to judge user suggestions in light of game balance?
I'm sure someone who hasn't played WoW, or tried to get a real answer from someone with a clue on the forums will see the parent as a troll.
/. in this way before their actual users makes me feel even more justified in canning my account.
IT IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT! I left WoW because they made it obvious they didn't care to give me customer service, and blocked every attempt at getting a question answered by an actual developer. Seeing them catering to
Can you please elaborate on the ingame tribute to one of your fallen comrades.
Many of the past MMORPGs (UO, EQ) went through a peroid in which their respective games were changed in order to market them to new players, and to show they were open to new ideas submitted by their player base. Unfortunately some of these changes had detremental effects on the current playerbase, as some thought the companies were "ruining" the games and left.
My question is how do you plan to please your current player base when things change to the point they are not happy anymore (Ex. Pre-patch servers)? Also, what are you thoughts on the "free-server" community, which is has become popular among many "legacy" MMORPGs?
What other (non-Blizzard) games do your designers like?
Computer games? Console games? Table-top RPGs? Chess, Go, Bridge?
What are your favorite german board games?
For those not familiar, in Warcraft ranged weapons have a minimum range of 8 yards (24 feet) and cannot be fired any closer than that. This leads to the interesting game mechanic wherein players actually charge up to people with guns, hold them in place, and stand 20 feet away destroying the gun user while the gun user is powerless to stop it.
The question then is what inspired such an odd distortion of reality? Was it a traumatic incident involving gun use and a dev team member, or simply an attempt to instill in young game players the idea that guns are very limited and should not be used?
Incidentally, this limitation has made the gun using class ("hunters") the worst in the game, and it is currently being redesigned because of this...
In the WoW community, we have "community managers" that continually insist "sometimes the devs don't tell us" or "we need to check with them", etc. Why don't the devs speak for themselves? On many (most?) other MMOs, the developers (even down to the programmer level) speak for themselves on the boards, and are often VERY open on the direction they are thinking of going. Then even if the players disagree with what occurs, they at least understand it, and know that SOMEBODY is listening to what they say.
But not in WoW. Apparently the community needs to be "handled" by go-betweens. I don't blame the go-betweens as much for this, as this is their job, but why not be as open as others? Feedback could actually come on ideas BEFORE they are implemented on a test server (of which I have yet to see anything NOT implemented on there, INCLUDING bugs), and result in a more streamlined process overall.
"Community Managers" just seem like a way to keep the community away from making the game better, which seems like a mistake. The cries of the majority are RIGHTLY not always heeded, but never knowing the direction of the development at all is far more frustrating from a player's perspective. Why can't the development team speak for themselves, and forget about keeping secrets? We all want to know the future of our game.
With games like City of Heroes, there is an effort to revamp not only upper-end content, but also (importantly) lower-end content as well. Having run over 6 different players through levels 0-40, over a 9 month period now, I can say fairly accurately that there have been virtually no changes in the low-level quests (let alone additions).
Worse, the Battlegrounds/PVP changes have made crafting virtually useless - even at higher levels - because player-crafted items are inferior to drops in instances, which are ALSO inferior to hardcode PVP-earned items.
So with the exception of long-term players, who play hardcore PvP virtually every day, there is little new to enjoy.
What then do you say to a nine-month subscriber who is looking at alternatives (SWG, CoH) that are doing those things better?
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Why does it seem there is a bias towards quests and the Alliance side? I play Horde and I would like to get keyed for Onyxia but I don't have the time to run a 5-man 4 hour instance run. And all I hear is how the Alliance version of getting keyed is much easier. This seems to be a general theme I've heard about alot of the quest chains between each side to side.
World of Warcraft was the first MMORPG I gave more than a passing play. Everquest, Asheron's Call, Ultima, SW: Galaxies; none of those interested me, because I saw and read about the endless toil and trouble just to gain numbers on your character stats. WoW was different - I saw the simplicity of Diablo/II in it: easy to play, rich in content, and with a wide world to explore.
But then I got to level 60, and all that ended. Now, instead of being able to do most things alone or with a small group of friends, game accomplishments take a full raid of 40 people? You need someone to plan it all out in advance, you need everyone to agree to common rules and to get along with each other; and you need everyone to be coordinated in order to defeat ridiculous enemies. With this, the challenge of the game ceases to be learning techniques and honing skills, and becomes social. The difficulty is not in playing, but in making sure everyone else is playing.
Endgame is a different game, and I don't care for it. It's not the game I bought. Rather, it's the games I declined to buy in the past. Friends of mine who played Everquest and Final Fantasy XI are right at home, but I'm decidedly out of place, and don't really want to invest hours, days of my time on goals with exponentially increasing difficulty and exponentially diminishing rewards.
The early game is brilliant, and playing it was a joy. Why is that so hard to retain in level 60 play?
Glog!
As a developer and / or game designer on an MMORPG, you will always experience an extreme amount of negativity from the very vocal minority of players who seem to be displeased with every decision that is made with regards to the game.
That said, how are decisions made with regards to these "suggestions" from players? How do you decide the difference between "You can't please everybody" and a suggestion with merit?
First off, as a Mac user who loves MMORPG gaming it was an utter delight to be able to log on the day of launch and play with my brother who is 1800 miles away and running a Windows machine. The way other MMORPG vendors talk this was an impossible task. I thank you for making it either looks so easy, or calling BS on those who said it was hard.
My question is:
What challenges did you/do you face in bringing together clients from different software and processor architectures on an ongoing basis? I'm working off the asumption that the graphics content is similar if not identical and really it's the data translator that sends/receives information from your servers that does most of the client interaction.
Thanks, looking forward to more things to come.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
World of Warcraft is an excellent game, but at the same time it tends to have a "canned" feel about it. What I mean by that is that it seems as if almost everything that a player can achieve has been expressly thought of, balanced, tweaked, and timed by Blizzard.
This is good in a sense--it makes the game simple and somewhat predictable, which is one truth that has made Blizzard games so appealing to the mainstream in the past.
On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if the game would benefit from more depth in some ways.
For example, it would be interesting to have a Morrowind-style enchantment system, where certain (possibly rare) "base items" can hold varying degrees of enchantment, and enchanters can assign a wide variety of abilities to those items. If a player chooses to have an item hold two different types of enchantments, each will be far weaker than just having the one.
In order to prevent extreme specialization, it may then be necessary to implement some sort of penalty for having multiple items with the same enchantment. For example, it would be a BadThing® if every single item on a warrior were enchanted with +1% chance of critical hits.
Another important item, at least important to me, which I believe to be missing from WoW is the role-playing. WoW is classified as a role-playing game, but there really aren't any moral choices of any kind as most RPGs would include (and make an important part of the gameplay).
For example, many of the quests are "good deed" quests, but there exists no option to do the quest "out of the goodness of your heart" or to have to choose between "evil" and "good" quests.
I suspect that perhaps a good way to implement this would be to have an attribute like "virtue", similar to faction "meters."
The benefits of this attribute would be up to Blizzard of course, but a few possible suggestions might include: 1) Requiring that warlocks maintain a fairly low virtue and and that paladins maintain a high virtue (or have penalties).
2) High virtue may lead to a discount at stores
3) Virtue effects faction
I am sure the creative minds at Blizzard could come up with good uses for this idea without ruining the simplicity and streamlining of the game. I hope they do!
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Why bother? Mares are much sexier.
World of Warcraft comes from a line of games with not only amazing gameplay, but an incredibly rich backstory (spanning excellent novels, in my opinion, as well as games). How much do you find yourself reaching back into this existing base of content for ideas for quests, zones, etc. and do you feel at all "locked in" by events/ideas that appeared in previous games?
When can we expect an actual full blown expansion with possibility of new levels, new talents, new PVE content? Any idea on cost?
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
One of the first things that struck me as I played WoW, (other than, "hey, this is a lot of fun") was how sophisticated the server-side code had to be to cope with various tricky things like instance dungeons, visibility, etc.
Assuming it isn't a trade secret, how do your lead engineers "think" about the problem? A first-that-comes-to-mind object model would probably be fantastically hard to scale up and/or verify, due to the huge amount of state associated with even the smallest little things in the game.
On the other hand, you probably didn't write your auction house code in Haskell.
How "cool" is your model of the world?
Lineage had over 4 million subscribers. WoW does NOT have the largest subscriber base in the world. I really wish they would stop saying that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_(game)
...prompt patching...
Who is the submitter trying to kid? I remember waiting months inbetween patches.
Not trolling, just saying that using the term "prompt patching" is very misleading.
Blizzard is definitely no friend to Linux or the open source community. Sure they make good games, but thats about it. There is a Linux version of the hugely popular World of Warcraft, and Blizzard canned it, without warming or explaination, even though it was functionally complete and ready to go, and after a discussion of a support agreement with LGP. It would have risked nothing for them to make the game available, and they chose not to.
In guild discussion yesterday, one of the big topics was the real world purchasing of gold.
I am aware of your ToS concerning this issue, but what is being actively done about it?
Will hero classes be developed as part of a regular patch expansion, or a retail expansion pack?
In the near future will it be possible to freely switch servers, not just using the random character transfer page? - (My friends created characters on different servers.) Also is there any plans for Cross-Server Battlegrounds, that's being talked about on the forums, to reduce queue times for BG content? Check it out here here.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Recently, webcomics PvP and Penny Arcade have virtually taken over the Dark Iron server with thier respective megaguilds. While it seems boths sides are having quite a bit of fun, it also seems the trafic is bringing the server to its knees. Whats your take on these "specialty servers", and are there any plans for reenforcement, or is the hardware maxed?
#include <signature.h>
World of Warcraft Team:
What process do you use in the game to give it its addictive properties? Do you modify the screen refresh rate to simulate a "flashing light frequency" which induces a soothing and mildly euphoric reaction in the brain? Or is there something in the way the characters and scenery are modeled which puts the user into a highly suggestive state, leaving them susceptible to subliminal messages in the audio that say "keep playing; your outside life and responsibilities are insignificant compared to the welfare of your half elf wizard" over and over again?
I'd be very curious to know which process works best.
Pat Highgate
-Assistant new-media producer, Republican Party of California
The Internet is generally stupid
How much of the feedback that is given is actually used and accepted? I have seen a lot of consumer feedback, with no response. This includes Bugs, exploits, and information regarding each of the various classes.
why does the game cost far more to buy than the cost of manufacture + 1 month's subscription. Don't you think it's cheeky to charge the cost of a normal game AND a monthly subscription, and that more people would have a try if it weren't so expensive?
Two weeks before world of warcraft was launched the Paladin class was totally changed, with their two main talents (holy strike and crusader strike) being removed as well as their ability to cast undead spells on undead players. What prompted you to make a change so close to launch, and how do you evaluate what needs to be done to balance out the classes?
"prompt patching and additional world servers have left the game in excellent shape"
All I can say is LOL. Any regular WoW player can't help but laugh at this sentence.
Is a world were everybody can have superpowers hard to design and control? Everybody who plays long enough and survives is able to start interacting with this world in such a way that it can become disruptive to other players.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
If you could start over, would you use Linux and Oracle again?
ID does such a good job of making Linux releases - what will it take for you to do the same?
I am glad to help out the Cedega folks, but it would be nicer to not have to use a band-aid.
What other games (both MMO and not) did members of the development team play while initially developing WoW? What other games are developers playing? Did any of these games impacted design decisions during WoW development? If so, can you give us any examples of how?
Thanks, and keep up the great work.
Yeldarb, Undead Warrior, Durotan
In other news, we hereby revoke 2004 Game of the Year status for Blizzard's "World of Warcraft," effective immediately.
...
I'm putting aside issues like class balance or Gamemaster abuse, because honestly those things are only a problem when the ****ing server is up.
...
It's not like I'm sitting here trying to connect at odd hours so I can catch them in something, either - this is in prime time, or on a weekend. The mail system works when it is good and ready. The servers themselves appear to have other things on their mind.
So, my question is basically about how Blizzard is dealing with the problem of servers and user load? People are paying good money, and when the service is available, they're losing that good money, while Blizzard saves it. Thanks!
Really enjoyed the game when it first came out. However, it really seemed to have no endgame other than acquiring yet more loot by running yet more instances, or random killing, (and grey ganking for some). Are there any other attempts going to be made to add better PvP endgame content? I really wish the PvE of WoW was married to the RvR endgame of Dark Age of Camelot.
My question/s is about the future of WoW.
Rumors are out about and of an expansion, could you confirm about this and what we/players might have to look foward to? Also are there any plans to raise the lvl cap of 60 for the many players who have hit this cap and are looking for more challenges within WoW (not all of us can wait in queue for Battlegrounds, jobs take up much of our precious playing time)?
As more and more of the players reach the raid level content the instances are becoming more laggy and less stable. On my server for example when there are 8+ raids on our side in Molten Core and probably a comparable number on the opposite faction the instances lag to the point where they are unplayable. It's not uncommon for instant cast spells to take 15-30 seconds to go through. Other times the instances will just lockup completely, the chat channels will work but we can't do anything else.
Because of the number of people required to do these instances (40), it is hard if not impossible for us to schedule these except during prime playing time.
I understand that you have offered transfers off of some of the higher population servers, but this doesn't really address the problem. In the coming months are there any plans to beef up the raid instance servers on the higher population servers to accommodate their increases usage?
I appears Blizzard's end-game philosophy is still too heavily geared towards massive 40-man instances. Is this end-game myopia intentional? Does Blizzard actually believe that everyone wants to experience the in-fighting and backstabbing that is so common when you have 300+ member guilds? I belive the best solution is to provide extreemely difficult instances that are maxed with 5 and 10-man groups, that provide a similar level of difficulty/reward ratio as those that require 40-man raids. At the very least, they could provide equipment that will end the balance issues that we currently have that mean that only members of mega-guilds get epic items and succeed in your newest end-game farce (I mean fix), which is Battlegrounds. Is there ever a chance of us getting such elite content for small raids?
Why do you ask? Are you wondering what you're missing out on?
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
Many people joined servers and have since wanted a change. It is understandable to only allow people to transfer from one type of server to another server of the same type, PvE -> PvE. If and when do you think that this will be possible and would you allow for East coast realms to transfer to West coast realms and so on?
1) Do you have any plans to upgrade the Rank 14 ranged weapons to have 3.4s delay to be on par with the new Ashjre'thul crossbow from BWL? The Rank 14 melee weapons are undoubtedly the best melee weapons for PvP. However, the Rank 14 ranged weapons are only marginal improvements over Bloodseeker and Carapace Spine Crossbow. Ashjre'thul is way better than all of them for PvP.
2) Will we get upgraded Rank 12/13 armor sets? Currently these armor sets are inferior to even the tier 1 Molten Core sets, both in stats and in set bonuses. Considering how difficult it is to reach Rank 13, one would hope that those epic PvP armor sets would be on par with the Tier 2 Blackwing Lair sets, or at least only slightly inferior to those Tier 2 sets. What's worse is that currently, those epic PvP armor sets are only a minor upgrade over the blue PvP armor sets.
3) What is being done to curb honor inflation through bonus honor? Are there plans to return PvP to actually killing players? Players should be rewarded for doing things and not for kissing ass and getting into winning battlegrounds/mass quest turnin battlegrounds (for reputation).
I think I speak for at least half the WoW players out there when I ask:
:p)
Who in the world decided to put that big pit in front of the Ironforge auction house? (affectionately know as the lag trap, the lag pit of death, and many other unprintable names
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
I enjoy the PvE and exploring element of the game most, and now when I've reached level 60 I'm only really able to grind the same instances (MC, UBRS, BWL, etc..) and battlegrounds over and over. My question is: what will you do for the players who enjoyed exploring new areas and doing fun quests as they level, but find that the gameplay experience came to a halt at level 60?
Why, for the last month or so has WoW sucked performance wise? You guys seemed to have had it nailed for the first few months but now hardly a weekend goes by that im not in an instance or world crash. sometimes, happening multiple times an evening.
Is it that theirs too much data in the game now? your team is stressed with supporting the EU and Asian servers? IS it because people are crashing the instances (on purpose) to dupe from them?
Its weird because i really love wow, and the downtimes are usually around the order of 10 minutes or less. However, when you've spent 2 hours already in an instance and they it crashes, you cant help but get pissed off.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Thank you WoW team for making one of my friends realize that she married a useless tub of putrescence who's sole purpose in life is to avoid tanning to the point that his skin is becoming clear and evolving to have cat-like night vision and the ability to comfort-mold to virtually any surface,and as a byproduct, making certain that he gets the absolute most out of his $19.95/mo.
Now if only you could have made it just a little more addicting, he might have died from renal failure, things would have been less messy, but hey, I guess that this is good enough.
And do you know who I can call at Pizza hut to thank for having the delivery guy accept credit cards and delivering directly to his home-office window? I'd like to send them a card.
Why do your patches seem to fix as much as they break? Is there some constant number of bugs you are required to maintain in the game, and by fixing bug A, you are subsequently required to implement bug B?
10 months after release, and the game is more laggy instead of less. There are visible hitches every time more than a handful of player characters enter clip. Statues in certain instances twitch spastically where they stand, when they didn't at release. In Dire Maul, the guard you can trap into an ice cube continues on his patrol when two months ago, he stood in place properly.
What gives?
I was wondering if there are plans to play on U.S. servers using a credit based system versus the current monthly unlimited model. Ive heard in China players can get on using credits.
1 being the least amount of problems or bugs. 10 being full of problems or bugs.
What kind of dessert would you suggest for a potluck dinner? I'm torn between a jello salad and cookies.
I'm pro-accordion and I vote
I have always wondered about game masters but haven't found a lot of information on them. Here's a few questions I had:
Are game master players that you can see in the game, or do they just "slew" around without being an actual character.
Do they have a custom version of the program, and how does their screen look different from normal players.
Are there different levels of game masters and game admins, and what are the different abilities of each level.
Oh yeah, off topic from GM's, do you plan on allowing people to switch servers, and when. I can't tell you how many times I've found out that friends are playing too, but on different servers. It really stinks sometimes.
The game is doing very well in term of subscriber with millions when you factor all the countries.
I like WoW alot but I have to admit that there is a serious lack of new content. By this date, for most past mmorpg, we should be looking at a soon to be released expansion.
It's currently the major downfall for the people I play with and what eventually lead most of them to get bored.
So my question would be where is the massive new content that having 3.5 m subscriber should allow you to do without lost? Where is the expansion?
Eric
www.starsonata.com
Six major patches have been released so far, with a seventh coming within the next month or so.
With the different dynamics of a MMORPG versus previous Blizzard games, how are the expansion teams separated from teams that work on patches?
what percent of the people on the WoW team are dedicated to each?
Since your forums are filled with players decrying overpowered shaman or underpowered mages, I wondered what is your strategy for developing content updates that nerf or buff races and classes. Are cycles of class imbalance and correction planned, or is this flux a more evolutionary process? What is your recommendation to players who have strong opinions about these changes?
All generalizations are bad.
So, who's the Alizée fan who programmed the night elf to dance like her? ;-)
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Can you describe the current customer service model used to service the many servers in WoW?
What steps are being taken to improve communication flow between GM's and players, improve response times, and resolve in-game issues that require immediate attention, i.e. cross-faction outdoor raiding boss disputes?
Are there any plans for something better than the useless meeting stones? Something like a billboard in IF/Ori. (I'll admit, I haven't played in months. Got to 57 and the game just completely fell off. Either become elitest and join an uber guild or be doomed to being alone.)
I'll stop being cynical when the world allows
With WOW closing in on its first birthday (as retail) (wow I've been playing for almost a YEAR!) where do you forsee WOW heading? In terms of PvP will we bee seeing more of an incentive to do non-battleground PvP (I know the DK system was created to prevent town raids). Will we be seeing greater rewards for PvP, and what are the chances that we'll see larger than 40 man PvP instances, or FFA type BGs? In terms of PvE where is everything headed, what kind of raid instances can we expect on the horizon? After the outcry by casual players are there plans for more small-raid instances, or are the plans to stick with (soon to be) 20 man or more raid encounters? Lastly what do you expect to come of the expansion? I know details will be released when available, blah blah blah, etc, etc, but I'm sure every is dying to know what we should expect to see! Are there any plans for new factions or races? New classes? I know most of this can't be answered with difinitive answers so I'll throw this out there too, Whats your favorite in game "thing" (can be silly items like lucky rabbits feet, equipment, characters, quests, etc, basically anything). Thanks! Jininji Leader of the Dark Marauders, Bleeding Hollow
--untwisted
At $14 each, that's about $49,000,000 a month! About.. $168 a year!
I know subscription costs of MMORPGs go toward maintaining servers as well as providing extra content (like the recently added battlegrounds) - but wow, that's quite a surplus of income after the basic maintenance is done!
While the recent additions have been "free" so far (free in quotes because it hasn't required the purchase of an expansion pack), does that mean that any major additions to the game (ex: new classes) in the future will remain just as "free"?
Square-Enix made a bad move with their expansion set - not only do they charge a base fee each month, but also an additional dollar per character. You figure if someone is paying that much each month to play, why would they be required to purchase an expansion set to gain access to new areas?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Nerf Rock, Paper's fine.
- Scissors
The problem is in the numbers unfortunately. You have to justify increasing your support staff, QA staff, and patch staff. Lots of people, lots of work.. for marginal benefit.
Don't expect them to put out a version thats not fully suported. It would be a liability, to say the least.
Yesterday, while playing my tauren shaman, I was killed by a mob. What steps are you developers taking to rectify this situation?
Regarding progression at the end of the game, Blizzard has been quoted as saying "The game begins at Level 60". Current progression seems to only be based on encounter difficulty and not tiered progression, ala Everquest. Is it your desire to contiune this trend or to implement a tiered-based end game?
Battlegrounds are a nice feature, but despite them, the World of Azeroth is quite static place. There have been few events - like the orphan week - but nothing big.
Are you planning to introduce "events" into the gaming world that would actually shape it permanently, like in Asheron's call?
For example, a demon/naga expedition force attacking a frontier fortress - and depending on how well the battle goes over the next week the threatened faction either hold the town or lose it. Depending on what happened, the next "event" would be either attempts to retake the town or perform a retaliatory strike. NPCs would do most of the "grunt" work, of course, but players ultimately would contribute to the fate of the world. The happenings could be tied to the actual World of Warcraft timeline. Depending on the server type (PvE or PvP) some of the events could also be between factions (players on both sides of conflict).
Battlegrounds are a good start, but in the end they are just refined team deathmatch maps..
I'm a casual player by all counts. I loaded up the game on release day, and only in the past few weeks finally got my paladin to level 60. I play at my own pace, spending a lot of time seeing the sights and not necessarily grinding or farming loot. I'm in it for the experience and the rich world around me.
I've played a lot of MMOs in the past and usually lose interest quickly because there's nothing obvious to do at the start. WoW breaks that pattern by having a very well crafted early game experience where I'm led around to a ton of great and varied locales, given a variety of quests to do and am told a rich and involved story. That takes me up to about level 30. Then, as an alliance member, I enter Stranglethorn Vale and the game goes rapidly downhill from there.
It feels as if the game had a lot of care and attention given to those first 30 or so levels, packing the areas with great content and wonderful gameplay, then suddenly I'm playing a different game completely. One that involves killing tons of mobs to grind out levels between quests, and then we're suddenly dumped into a game that requires 5-man groups for a large portion of the content.
Was this intentional? Was the first half of the game designed to be a solo, story-driven experience whereas the second half was meant to take what you learned at the start and now apply it to help other players? Why does the game change so drastically at this mid point?
I've recently quit WoW. I had two level 60s (warlock and shaman). I've heard comments by Blizzard (on the forums) that they track class wins/losses and discrepancies, similar to Gank Central. Why doesn't Blizzard publish those official statistics when making controversial (against the common sense of the average player) changes to class balance?
What are you going to do about the horrible problem of melting faces?
And, will we see a MMORPG of Starcraft? How about a 2D birds-eye-view MMORPG of Starcraft, ala the original PC/Mac game?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
It seems like all the content additions of late are targetted at level 60 characters (the current maximum). I've been playing WoW for months, but I tend to level slowly and play a lot of alts. Are there any upcoming content additions in the works for characters under level 60? It would be great if there were more instances, or if existing instances could be retooled slightly - both Gnomeregan and Uldaman are viable in the 30s and 40s but tend to be avoided as the enemies clump together too much and cause lots of headaches. Also, troggs seem kind of generic and unimaginative, like fighting orcs in other fantasy games.
I know that the most of the player base tends to graduate to level 60 after a while and that they're the ones most at risk of cancelling their accounts. It makes economic sense to cater to them. However, I think the mid-level game could be more exciting if tweaked properly.
Honor for worthy PVP encounters, Dishonor for killing lowbies. Such a simple idea, and anticipation of this feature was what kept many people playing WoW, finally a penalty for "griefers" for over a year. And then suddenly the Honor rules were published, a couple of months before the system went live, and dishonor was explicitly missing. Many people bring up issues such as reverse griefing, using low level players as human shields, ganging up on high level people, etc, but all of these have simple obvious solutions. In the end, why was this aspect of the system nerfed so badly?
To Which Camp Do You See Yourselves?
* 1337 c0d3rz w1th m4dd3 5ski11z, t-shirts and jeans, cold pizza for breakfast, drive a 84 Celica with the back seat crammed with McD's/Jack in the Box/Burger King bags, work from 10 AM to 3 AM and drink massive quantities of Coffee and/or Redbull/Rockstar/etc., live with parents or rent a dark and sinister fortress of squalitude, wonder what you'd do on a date assuming you ever had time for/got one and have a maxed out overclocked PC at home with liquid nitrogen cooling. (But at least still cheap enough to employ for companies to hire).
OR
Ph.D / MSCS in India, working for $9,000/year, 3 bedroom house with 4 families living in it, bicycle or econobox that you wash once a week, arranged relationship, only as much personal technology as you can afford for your personal business.
The category of "* BSCS, suit and tie, eat to stay fit, drive a recent Volvo you wash once a week, 8 to 5, spring water from a bottle, live in a 3 bedroom house or condo, in a stable relationship, only enough personal technology to get you through personal business." is rapidly disappearing in modern society, whether Slashdotters like to believe so or not.
Ah, excuse me Mr. Warcraft developers. On the WoW CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?
-nt-
-Randy
WoW is generally agreed to be the best thing since sliced bread... but the harshest critic any artist is always the little voice in your own head.
Are there any game-design decisions you made in WoW that you regret? I don't mean minor tweaks that you patch, but major, basic gameplay concepts that might've seemed fine early-on (or even in beta) but didn't pan out. Any things that you'd wished you'd done differently?
I play on a PVP server. Since the introduction of the battlegrounds, PVP outside of battlegrounds has become almost pointless as far as rewards are concerned. You can get more honor kills and points from a few hours in a battleground than you can all week trying to PVP in normal contested areas.
The only PVP that goes on outside of battlegrounds now are high levels ganking low levels or other grievous activities. PVP'ing for rewards has been turned into grinding sessions within battlegrounds. It seems all that was good about PVP is now gone and all that remains is the bad.
Is this a concern you are aware of and are working on? Can we that play on PVP servers get some words of hope that something will be done?
What is your reaction to the reasonably high proportion of female players present in WoW (compared to across all games) and do you think you could further redress the balance by marketing? Do you plan to do so?
"Frag the weak, hurdle the dead, and assassinate those cursed snipers."
There are a few images floating around the net of a Linux native client existing during beta. Are there any plans to resurrect the Linux client?
"While technical issues were a problem for the first few months of retail service, prompt patching and additional world servers have left the game in excellent shape."
o w-realm-status ...but not all of it. Like massive db lag that can cause 20-30 second delays or longer every time you send mail, use the auction house, or even loot a quest item from a mob.
I would submit that the game is -not- in excellent shape. Your own server status messages tell some of the tale:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=w
Granted, things have improved since launch, but there seems to always be a long way to go.
What kind of priority does correcting this have, compared to other activities that will tend to make things worse, such as new content and boxed expansions?
Or, put another way, how many PSI of pressure is Vivendi's vice exerting on your jewels for the release of the next box set? Or are they happy with your success thus far, and leaving you alone to make things right?
If Vivendi isn't making the call, who at Blizzard is making the choice to focus more on content than stability?
Also: Has Blizzard been approched to drop Bittorrent technology as their patch delivery mechanism because it's "primarily used for illegal purposes" or is a "disruptive technology"?
With "n3rf t3h class x" being shouted every other post, can you describe the process you use for determining a balanced class?
Do you have a spreadsheet full of numbers you use? Is it all guestimation? Patch/Test Server/Feedback/Repeat?
n3rf t3h hord3!
Read penny-arcade much? They restored the award, and it's been almost all they've talked about in news posts for quite some time (see the new penny arcade/pvp rivalry server on dark iron) Most of the big early server problems are fixed (my server almost never had any anyhow), so if you want to rant, at least use current information.
Given the success of WoW, are there any plans/contingencies/what-if's floating around Blizzard regarding MMORPG's based on other successful Blizzard titles?
Us Mac users appreciate the fact that Blizzard shipped a first-class Mac version of WoW. How was it done? Was the Mac version developed side-by-side, or ported later? What was your experience creating the Mac version -- good, bad? Were there issues with DirectX vs OpenGL/OpenAL? In short, how wasy was it for you to create a dual-platform game?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
If I look at this addicted friend of mine, I always wonder how to drag him out of this mess...
Would you consider implementing any of the following in WoW:
* server-side limits on game play time:
Use case: A player wants to limit his play time. He voluntarily opts in to playing a maximum of X hours per day/week/month/whatever for the next day/week/month/whatever.
* public user statistics:
Use case: A player wants his (real life!) friends to support him in getting rid of his addiction. He voluntarily opts in to publishing his usage statistics via web/email/blog/whatever for the next x time.
* Slashdotters, be creative and put more anti addiction hints in reply!
Can you please ask Blizzard what they are planning to do about severe lag in Ironforge near the Auction House? Also, I think it would be really helpful if they filled in the chasm right in front of the Auction House. I can't recount the amount of times my character has fallen in because of LAG.
As stated somewhere else, WoW generally runs fine on Linux with Cedega/WineX, however, some issues remain (e.g. random crashes in configuration menus). Do you regard this as Somebody Else's Problem or would you consider giving the Transgaming guys a hand? Or even a native Linux version?
Prompt patching, migrating users, and adding new servers have *not* fixed the problem as many realms are unplayable at peak hours. Many servers also have large queues (30+ minutes) on a nightly basis. Once you login, find an instance group and get halfway through, the server dies. You wait for an hour, the server comes back up. If you're lucky, you get right in and wait on your team to show back up. If you're unlucky, you wait another 30 minutes in queue. You finally get back in and voila, you are now sitting in a freshly reset instance - all progress lost.
What exactly are you doing to fix these problems?
World of Warcraft was advertised as being fun. This "fun factor" holds the first time through the game (the world is a marvel to behold), and in the lower levels on subsequent playthroughs. However, as one progresses through the game, more and more time-based roadblocks (as opposed to ability-based blocks) come into play. Why is it that, as we progress in level, the time requirement to do basic actions increases? For example, resurrection sickness lengthens, flight paths require more and more "jumps," and instance respawns become more numerous and frequent. As it appears to me, at least, increased time requirements detract from what WoW is supposed to be about, fun!
Do you measure class balancing by straight dps?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
How do you plan to handle hero classes and what is the ETA for them?
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Are there any plans to add new content/classes for players to advance PAST 60th lvl? It seems to me once you max out your character, the game gets a little old.
Roughly what percentage of your system is built on open source, commercial, and homemade components, and what drove the decisions behind those choices?
_______
2B1ASK1
Me and 3.5 million of my peers are now firmly addicted to WoW--but we still must eat, drink, and take biological breaks. The only thing that might make me forgo these little trifles of carbon-based life is an in-game weather system.
Are there any firm plans of introducing weather into the game? (e.g. Dust storms in Tenaris; Snow storms in Winterspring; Rain showers in the Wetlands; etc.)
Did the large population imbalance between the Horde and the Alliance surprise you? Do you plan to do anything about it?
For those who haven't played the game: there are two factions at semi-war with each other in WoW. The horde, with orcs, trolls, tauren (minotaurs,) and forsaken (zombie-like undead) versus the alliance, with humans, night-elves, dwarves and gnomes. Guess which side has a larger population? And the player-versus-player portion of the game involves fighting between these two factions.
Blizzard has a strong tradition of releasing expantion packs. Are you going to continue that tradition and release an expantion to World of Warcraft?
If so what kind of radical new features/ideas/mechanics/etc... can we expect?
Hi, are there any plans to finish and activate sleeping areas? I noticed several places that look like they should be used, but all persons are dull, buildings are empty or artificially closed and there are even tunnels ending in nowhere. one example is the high plateau near ironforge (you see it when flying to menethiel).
or would such changes disrupt the world too much?
What software technologies are used - OS, language, database, etc.? What kind of hardware is needed to run a realm? What programming tricks are involved in making this thing scale up to so many users? What limits the scalability - i.e. when a realm has too many users at once, what's the performance bottleneck that creates the limit? How would you architect things differently if you started over?
Hi, having played the game for the last 9 months, it is my first MMORPG. I've heard and experienced problems with the Master Loot system when raiding in instances. It usually results with the Master Looter seeing the items and unable to distribute them. I've heard in other MMORPG games that game masters are able to resolve this issue on the spot, but so far for the smaller instances in World of Warcraft have no such thing happening, and it honestly looks bad when a game master uses a scripted response to acknowledge a bug that seems to have been around for quite some time. So the question is are there plans to improve this aspect of in-game support, to allow issues to be resolved on the spot for all instances by game masters?
.... ... }
int main (void) {
You might want to take a look here and here to see their official postings about employment opportunities.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
As it is now, all the interesting end game instances are limited to raids of 40 players. The logistics of setting up such a large group of people willing to work together well enough to complete the dungeon means this content is limited to a very small minority of player. As well, in a 40 player group, each player is a minor cog and individual skill counts for nothing as long as nobody does anything too stupid. The real challenges of such a dungeon are in the organization, not the game play, and that means with 40 players involved, only a couple of leaders are "playing" the rest are minor machines. This might mirror a real life army, but it's not fun in a game. Your "efforts" at addressing this seem to be introducing a 20 player instance with inferior gear to what is available at 40. How about having a 5 player instance that is balanced to be as hard as DWL is for 40 and have it dop the *same* quality of gear at the same rate per player-hour?
Wtf pwned.
I am curious what the original motivation was behind deciding to modify and use a BitTorrent client as the distribution client for the patches?
I realize that bandwidth is a very obvious concern that might be one of the core reasons, but I have always found BitTorrent to be obnoxious and slow unless correctly configured for use in my router. I would even go as far as to guess that a large portion of subscribers to WoW don't know how or haven't configured their routers correctly. The impact, unfortunately, is long waits and slower download speeds while many people attempt to connect and download the patch from the percentage of us that do have our routers configured correctly. Once the number of users still trying to get the patch dwindles in gets a little more difficult to obtain it due to the nature of the BitTorrent network.
Now that the game has an unparalleled success rate at ~3.5 million active subscribers is there any possibility of going back to a patching system the uses direct downloads from your servers?
NOTE: I ask this question realize that 3.5 million subscribers is likely generating enough revenue to adequately offset the cost of the bandwidth needed to serve patches to 3.5 million clients.
Hi, how long do you think World of Warcraft will sustain its momentum before users drift off and the servers shut down? I understand that 'never' would be a perferable answer, but did you guys plan on having this around for a long time (will my kids be playing WoW in 20 years)? Was there a long term "indefinate" plan set up before the launch of the game, of if not what thought/actions for this possibility? Thank you.
I think what everyone really wants to know is where the heck is Arthas?
If you pull up a ctrl-F on page 1 (at least at this point) you'll find a related thread with a link to a linux gazette article discussing what happened to the planned client. Apparently LGP would have handled distrobution, and if licensing was sane, they probably would have been support, too...
+5, Truth
It would be fantastic to get a *glimpse* of how Blizzard designed the infrastructure to handle WoW. I was actually thinking a field trip to Blizzard would be a great opportunity for my IT department to get away for a few days. Anytime I receive connection hickups or difficulties logging in, I immediately try to understand how Blizzard would handle said situation with server redundancy, as well as database redundancy. What's most interesting to me is how a character object is handled from the database perspective, especially considering how our company views business objects. So, how DO you do it?
While there has been ongoing attempts to level out server population (with varying degrees of sucess), one thing that has never been addressed is faction unbalance. On the far majority of servers, alliance players far outnumber horde players, to the point of being ridiculous on some servers. Are there any plans to try and help balance out the factions in some way (give horde something cool possibly)? As it stands now, I know of some people who are either quitting, switching from horde to alliance, or switching to PVE servers because the horrible faction imbalance makes it nearly impossible to just go somewhere and level without constantly being killed.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Hero Classes are something that were on the slate originally for the release of the game. We all know that they didn't quite make that deadline and have been pushed off to the purgatory that is the "On the Horizon" page of your official site. I was hoping you could toss those of us that are pretty much done with the PvE experience of the game. Perhaps you could tell us if they will be out before the first expansion pack, and if they will be a form of alternate advancement for all, or a hardcore player only feature like the PvP ranks. Hero Classes are the one thing holding a lot of us 60s that have most of the gear we want hanging on and it would be great to hear even just a tidbit about them.
Arriving at Ironforge is intensely slow, based upon player load. This occurs in other places, particularly when picking stuff up from corpses or using a collection profession such as mining or herbalism.
This hints at a structural scalability issue since the poor performance and bugs related to same are consistent through all patches. An example is the infamous empty mining vein/herb that leaves you crouched down until you either successfully find and open another vein/herb or relog. This bug has been there since the beginning, I believe.
Based on what I know of the architecture of the individual server clusters, it is likely there is some kind of backend database involved with WoW. I might be reaching, but I suggest that it is probably a SQL database. I also surmise a query is occurring each time we come into Ironforge (or any other zone) or open up a corpse/vein/herb/chest/etc.
The bottom line is that there appears to be a hard limit to how many users each server cluster can comfortably handle. This limit appears to be exceeded on many high-traffic servers. What can be done to correct this? What is being done? I see very limited voluntary server moves being approved but the incidence of lag and server load related bugs appears to be increasing rather than decreasing.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Just wondering why some of the accepted models for comunity interaction (ie DAoC's CSMs) have never made it in to WoW. Taking a peek on some of Blizzard's forums, it appears that the community is crying out for them and would make for a much better customer experience.
Also, why was there no inclusion of such simple things as a physics engine?
And why was the native Linux client canned after completion?
Why are there regional servers if IPs from other regions aren't banned? Is this a sign that gold farming for sale on EBay is acceptable practice?
Why, after close to a year you are having server stability issues? In the past month over 50% of the instance runs I have been on have resulted in a server crash.
It strikes me as an odd choice that all instances should be arbitrarily tuned to a hard-coded number of players (40, 20, or, most often, 5). Given that the game already has the notion of "elite" mobs that have a multiplier applied to their total health, item drop rates, and xp rewards, why doesn't this multiplier adjust to match the number of players in the instance, rather than being fixed at 3?
This seems all the more strange to me in light of the fact that Blizzard has already used this mechanism, with great success, in Diablo II. This seems to confirm that not only is it not a generally difficult thing to implement, it is specifically not beyond the reach of Blizzard in particular.
The current approach of using manually-tuned dungeons seems like the worst possible deal for everyone: players have a limited set of content that suits the play style they prefer, and Blizzard needs to do much more work to separately create content for soloers, small-group players, and huge-raid players. Causing all instances to scale smoothly would seem to allow players the most flexibility, and Blizzard the greatest return on their efforts.
This issue is of personal interest to me because I prefer to play with one to three real-world friends or alone, rather than with thirty-nine strangers. I've essentially ceased playing the game because there's simply no more content that suits the solo/small-group playstyle that I enjoy.
I certainly accept that other people prefer the feel of a huge raid, and I don't wish to deny them any content tuned to their preferences. Indeed, I'd like them to be able to 80-man any instance in the game if they so choose, while I 3-man the same instances with rewards scaled down to match.
Back in the 90's, I spent quite a bit of time playing multi-user dungeons (MUDs) and imagining what they'd be like with a graphical interface. After spending some time playing WoW, it seemed to me that I was playing exactly what I had imagined many years ago; a beefed up old-school MUD sporting a 3-D interface. Is this an accurate way to view the system architecture? Is the GUI simply an interface to a text based MUD?
What does the hardware cluster for a realm look like?
Clovis
60 Warrior
Uther
I love WoW, but the last time that the servers were down, I opened up that big wooden door and I saw something that I'll never forget.
It was bright. And hot. Like, I could feel the heat on my skin.
What the hell is that thing, anyway?
ps: Don't worry -- I went back inside and the burning sensations have stopped.
Are there any plans on making a "stable" battlegrounds environment, in which all characters who enter are given a set (or a choice of sets) of gear to use? I ask this because, As time progresses, players will be given better and better gear through both PvE and PvP. By virtue of this fact, "new" level 60s will be less and less able to compete with those who have been playing for a long time. Eventually, the gap between a fully Southern Silithus geared character wielding Bonereavers Edge and a new level 60 holding a magic sword of the boar will be so great, the two might as well be in a different battlegrounds class (like the gap between the 41-50 and 51-60 BG).
#2) ... why it is that parties were limited to five people? We often have LAN gaming groups of 6-8 people and someone's invariably relegated to soloing or grouping up with another team.
Thanks, Gorko on Doomhammer
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
So, let me get this straight.
You're pissed, because they ignored you as a sole lone person from access to a limited resource (that being their developers)
You're also only more justified in your being pissed, because they care about an audience of 10/100's of thousands to millions?
I have just one short phrase for you: JUST STOP, AND THINK
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
The vast majority of quests are either:
1) "I need to make [item] collect N of [item] for me"
2) "I am mad, so kill N of these for me"
3) "Talk to [person]"
Some quests include a few words referencing some background story, and there are a few scrolls that contain a tiny bit of story (lore mostly). Why is it that with all the millions of subscribers there is basically no story at all? And why is it that quests completed earlier have no impact whatsoever on the world or on subsequent quests? It seems like if I create a plague the human town should at least be diseased until somebody from their side cures the plague. Basically, the way the game is written there is no reason why it needs to be MMORPG instead of a offline game.
Also, why do the horde have to look that ugly??
You continuously bring realms down too fix issues and its been one of the most burning issues with your users. Why aren't your server Farm redundant so that players can get uninterrupted play won one farm while you fix another and then switch. Are there technical issues that prohibit such approach?
Seeing WoW become the biggest game out there, I assume it's the most profitable.
,but I doubt you guys get a million dollars in bonus or royalty based bonus of some kind.
Now, in recent line of the whole EA spouse problem with game devs and overtime pay I ask you this:
WoW probably made Blizzard filthy stinking rich with the work, effort and sweath of all the devs. What share of the pie do you guys get?
I heard that Blizz employees accept smaller salaries in order to work for the company that makes the greatest games and that beign part of that is worth all the money in the world and such nonsense.
With the profit made from WoW, i bet every single dev could be millionnaires now with a fair sharing
dont you guys feel cheated?
Does the wow team has a bit of a math problem? There seem to be some pretty basic mathamatical errors with WoW. 1. The first thing that comes to mind is the Seal of the crusader... i guess the question is how do REALLY basic errors like that get though QC? 2. There seem to be hundreds of items/enchants/buff/ that add up to a certian amount of x to y, or do a bonus of x percent to a skill or ability. Most of these don't appear to work all that well. Are there plans to fix these proublems, or at least make it clearer where damage bouses are coming from (like a verbouse mode for the combat log?).
Has WIndows and Linux clients on same server...
One particular annoyance that noobies like myself (lvl 30 undead warrior) have had to deal with is ganking on the PVP servers; high-level characters attack lower-level opponents, camp at their corpse, etc, and generally make questing more of a chore. Do you think that newer players may start getting disgusted and just move over to a player vs environment server, leaving the PVP to the "elite" and effectively closing off the influx of new players? Any thoughts of reviving the dishonorable kill?
Why bother have a namimg policy that isn't actually enforced? During any average gaming session, I encounter dozens of obvious violations, and sometimes report them. Why is ObeeWhaan or BigusPinus still playing a week later?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Since I am so addicted to this game I might as well be paid for monitoring questionable behaviour and such within the game.
I'll preempt the flames -- I was wrong =)
My girlfriend wanted a giraffe pet but was they're all marked as untamable. This lead me to do a search of all the animals that were or were not tamable and made me wonder why the limits were there. Would the giraffe have too hard of a time with walking indoors/outdoors or is there a limit to the pets you want people to have to load into memory in crowded areas?
There's a recent article on CNET http://news.com.com/Game+players+say+Blizzard+inva des+privacy/2100-1043_3-5830718.html?tag=nefd.ac that describes a process by which illegal mods and hacks can be discovered. This obviously raises an outcry about computer privacy, as every connected computer gets annalyzed. Granted, Blizzard reserved that right within the EULA, but little has been said about the nature and specifics of the scans. How does this scan work, what does it look for as tell-tale signs, and how do you appease a privacy fan and game lover like myself that our trust is not misplaced?
Since release, there has often been issues cropping up with loot/AH/mailbox lag. I believe this is primarily due to the fact that since there is essentially one server for each continent, and then you have your instance servers, that the system bogs down. We've had numerous patches since release that have re-introduced this problem, and require subsequent patches to fix them.
Why hasn't blizzard gone to an AH zone, or a mail zone. A simple "zone into this spot in an inn for the mail" would hopefully allow the database servers to keep up with the rest of the world. The same would be true for the AH.
To me, the game got really boring when I hit 60. After 5+ years of EQ's grind it out for gear/levels, I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to 60, taking my time about it. Then, I hit 60, and it's nothing but grind for gear, or PvP. What else does Blizzard have planned for the lvl 60 crowd that may not be such a grind?
Boxr, lvl 60 rogue, Uther
They already did, and the pallies cried like little girls.
Why do I spend more time playing this game than I do sleeping? If you increased some drop rates, I wouldn't have to spend all weekend long *hoping* to get one better item.
Do you guys use TCP/IP throughout or do you have different (faster) protocal or Infiniband on the backend? How much of your system performance is dedicated to the various functions (collision detection, cheat detection, packet formation, etc)
Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Why do your servers still constantly crash, often several times an hour on some servers, nearly 8 months after beta ended?
Why do you delete thread after thread on this on the General WoW forum?
The World of Warcraft forums only contain paying users.
Slashdot is a site that they can use to connect to a large pool of gamers, where a decent percentage may not yet play the game.
This exercise in getting in touch with the Slashdot community could be seen by the cynical as just another marketing / advertising excercise.
Connect with a market of tech-saavy gamers who may not be playing your game, who have concerns about the administration and gameplay of the MMORPG. Send out a small contingent of developers who'll talk the sweet talk about how all their desires are coming in the next content issue, while brushing aside how you apply heavy-handed changes in the name of balance. You get free front page advertising on a high traffic server like Slashdot, and maybe a few hundred more subscribers... not a bad deal.
This seems to be a fundamental issue with the MMO games. I've not played a game where I haven't heard of this strong sense of disconnect between developers and the community. People are paying a monthly subscription and, rightfully, expect solid customer service.
What I have yet to figure out is whether the amount of feedback from developers that is being received is too low or if the expectations are too high. For example, I pay something like $80/month for Cable, and like $90/month for DSL service. I don't really ever talk to these people. On the other hand, I pay $13/month for an MMO game and I expect to be interact with these game developers routinely.
I think what it boils down to is that one of the selling points of MMO's has been the dynamic environment. That while you may end up paying more to play over time, you can also expect the game to evolve and improve over time. That evolution is necessarily dependent on pretty heavy interaction between the community and developers. That is, if the developers don't develop the features the customer base want to see developed, then they will take their dollars elsewhere.
The problem is that in order to have sufficient development resources you need to generate enough revenue to afford it. To do this you need a critical mass of players, and almost by definition, having enough players to generate this revenue means you're going to have poor interaction between developers and the community. That is, there are so many people who have so many things they want to see in the game, that you're almost guaranteed to be pissing a lot of people off routinely.
I've been playing PlanetSide for two years now and the community has dwindled somewhat. I think the size of the community has lent itself well to better interaction with the developers of late, but there's only a handful of developers they can afford to have working on it. For example, right now, they have no artist working for the project. So they can implement changes, but if the changes require new models, they can't do it. This has lead to rather limited changes to the game which has generally had a negative affect on the overall community.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The early game is brilliant, and playing it was a joy. Why is that so hard to retain in level 60 play?
:)
Because at low levels you could solo, and in a 1 - 2 hour playing session you would always come out with a new item, or a new level and with it some new abilities (well new abilities every other level).
At the endgame you need to find raids of 5-40 people to be successful. You group up with them, and raid a dungeon for 2-6 hours. You will sometimes come out with nothing to show for it.
WoW was so successful because levels 1-40 appeal to the casual gamer, and even 1-60 can be done by a casual gamer. Now if only they could make the endgame the same way. One man instances, quests for good items that you don't need raid groups to get, etc.
All in my own opinion of course.
While many users here are asking about servers, specifications, and so forth, I am greatly interested in what goes into bringing new servers online. What goes into deciding what kind of server to add (PvP vs. PvE, etc.), and how much of that decision is based on population? How greatly does player feedback figure in to such decisions?
Thank you for your attention.
The endgame doesn't stop when you hit 60, it just changes. Prior to level 60, you can just go to IF or Org to get a pickup group to run an instance or yell in a zone for help completing a complecated quest. At level 60, to progress, you have to have 40 people so you can run Molten Core or Blackwing Lair. Some people might consider this a hinderance, but i personally think its an amazing part of the game, if anything far superior to any parts of the game before it. No longer is the game about scripted encounters with quest npcs, its about large scale coordination and guild dynamics. The "quest npcs" are your guildmates, and rival guilds who compete for outdoor mobs.
Some of the most fun I have ever had in World of Warcraft is with my guild, when we raid outdoor bosses and have to fight off the horde at the same time, or negotiate with other guilds on who gets to attempt them, and when. Yes, it requires more of a time investment to join a hardcore raiding guild, but the reward is greater too, and I'm not just talking about the "purples" that one acquires from completing these raids. Level 60, if anything, is when the real game of WoW starts, which in my opinion, is getting to know the people on your server, and joining a guild capable of making attempts at endgame content, or a smaller pvp oriented guild that runs lower instances and forms battlegrounds / gank groups.
Daneth
Level 60 Warlock
Bonechewer
Why is that so hard to retain in level 60 play?
You need the Golden PSP. And a soul.
Wake up.
1.) Why are flight paths seemingly randomly connect to each other? And why to fly South do I have to fly for 5-10 minutes in the opposite direction? Why aren't these routes more logical? 2.) Why can't druids use Entangle Roots / Nature's Grasp' indoors (NPC enemies can use these abilities in either environment)? Why are places that are 'outdoors' considered to be indoors (this also affects using a mount)? 3.) Why have some types of in-game communication (and equipment access, etc.) been disabled during death (corpse retrieval) and others not? Again a logic question. 4.) Another druid question. Druids are a versatile class that plays aspects of all others and has 3 streams of character building. Why do all the sets and set bonuses only cater to 2 of those streams (Feral and Restoration). In other words, why is there no set gear to help Balance druids (+dmg and +crit gear and reducing cast time of dmg spells, etc.)? 5.) Any plans for building a better (faster) travel system? I think many level 60 players grow tired of 10 minute flights when they are trying to help out other players. Thanks for addressing any / all of these questions and keep up the great work on the game.
I definitely agree with this one.
It's the entire reason I cancelled my account and moved to Guild Wars. While I don't know if Guild Wars will be any better toward the end, at least I get the early on experience again. I absolutely despised the end of the game where anything worth attaining on my character was so hopelessly out of reach of someone like me who casually plays. Blizzard consistently said "We realize our main audience is casual players", and then implemented these massive, sluggish requirements on the high level quests.
I don't have 8 hours to sit and play. There are times when I barely have ONE hour.
(Guild Wars is a lot of fun, if anyone is wondering.)
Aside from your paycheck being dependent upon the whims of your employer and the voicebox known as their legal department. What is your feeling about 3rd party created gaming reams? (I am referring to the bnetd project http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/20/08 22243&tid=123&tid=10 )
If in the game design, game authentication (is this a legit copy) and realm authentication (to whom am I logging in) can be separated, how much effort would need to be put forth for this goal?
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
The next vein gave me the same problem. In fact, I had gotten stuck, and had to re-log on 4 of the first 5 veins that I mined with this toon. If I had been a new subscriber, I would have returned the game later that same day, and demanded a refund.
This problem is obviously not just with mining. Sometimes, it can take 7-15 minutes to get an item out of a mail sent to me from another player. Sometimes, it can take 45 minutes to list all one-handed maces on the auction house, even though there's only 23 to list.
What data structuring technique did you use to hash items in the game? (I need to know, so that I stay away from it.) Also, is it too late to fix such a fundamental problem as this?
Lastly, what makes you think that the servers are in "Excellent shape"? Have you forgotten about posts such as this one? I count 397 people who disagree with the developers response (that's 100% of the players who have replied to the initial blue post). Why can you just respond with "ok, we're looking into it" ??
Free unix account: freeshell.org
The thing I'm most intrested is the infrastucture that is behind the WoW realms, how do you manage it, what kind of clusters and database systems do you use, and how do you keep it all up most of the times?
I'm also intrested in what you feel are the biggest bottle necks in the infrastucture, is it the pure processing power required to execute a 200 man raid to orgrimmar that brings the realm down?
Why not allow players to sell their in-game weapons in real life through a system/interface that YOU guys create?
That way you could take a small portion, say, 3-4% of each sale and profit...
As you know, there are offshore bot farms that do nothing but trade in-game items/currency for a hefty real life profit.
If you allow it, but regulate it through your servers, not only would it allow players to feel safe in trading (as the transactions would be logged), but would also essentially run these offshort bot farms out of business.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Before the moderators mod this down, please take note that I am being serious, not trying to take the piss or anything.
All of the guys that I've talked to who have had sex with both mares and women say that the mares are physically superior. Only guys who haven't been with mares because they think it's sick or disgusting or whatever claim that women are better than mares.Why has World of Warcraft typically followed a policy wherein they did not seem to acknowledge bugs until the next preview of the patch notes came out? When I want to report a bug, I don't want to report a bug 15 other people already have. On that same token, if the bug is avoidable or if there is a work around until it gets patched in a month (or more) I'd like to know about it. It wasn't until very recently that there has been any kind of public acknowledgement that the team knew about the bugs (the posts on the Bug forum helps!) unless I petitioned a GM (and then their information often seems outdated.)
One user on your forums who uses his computer for both work and gaming expressed concern that confidential patient information on his computer is being transmitted back to Blizzard by this new spying tool designed to detect cheaters. Several users have threatened legal action and there is a rumor of a class action lawsuit against Blizzard. In the past Blizzard was sued for spying on users of Starcraft in an atempt to fight piracy.
My main question is : have you been served yet? And if not, are you concerned that your hard drive scans of users "My Documents" folder, internet cookies and web history are invading your users privacy and could lead to legal action brought against Blizzard?
The lag in IronForge is unnacceptable. Could this be solved by putting the Auction House on a separate server, or in an instance (or both), or adding Auction Houses to Stormwind and Darnassus?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
In your view what short comings would open source software such as Blender http://www.blender.org/ and the GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ need to overcome in order to be suitable to become part of the pipeline for developing high end game content as used in WoW?
LetterRip
When you set out to make World of Warcraft, how much of your design came out of learning from the mistakes of other popular MMORPG's?
Is Blizzard planning to release an expansion pack? If so, is there any time frame for this and would it include a bumping up of the level cap?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
WoW seems to be very PvP oriented. The storyline seems to promote the animosity of the alliance versus the horde.
That being said, there seem to be some issues with WoW's PvP play. For example, the way the guards function, which is, exactly like any other NPC. They will aggro the enemy player, follow them for a certain distance, then run back to their bind point.
With this method of "guarding" the players of faction, and cities from the opposite faction, you have certain classes who can easily manipulate the reason behind the guards. Mages and Rogues come to mind.
Am I missing something, or is there no real reason behind the guards except to "potentially" hinder the enemy of opposing faction? Shouldn't a player have to work on his faction in order to gain the favor of the neutral zones?
This is exactly the kind of question Slashdot should be asking Blizzard. Technical, geeky, cool.
Given the broad network nature of WoW, why did you decide to use TCP/IP instead of something a bit more performance oriented, like UDP? I understand that UDP is not loseless but for things like char positions would it really have mattered? Wouldn't the lower overhead have been more desirable, costs and bandwidth wise?
Suggestions for Improvement should be possible to make in-game, instead of only via the forums. A lot of suggestions are spontaneous and easy to forget, especially since it is necessary to exit the game, or remember to login to the forums later.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I have heard many times the 'it's complicated' line on the official message boards, given the revenue you're getting from WoW it's ridiculous you haven't given serious thoughts to fixing this: on many servers AV starts maybe once a day, 2-3 hour waits for WSG are common as well, this makes 'casual' pvp-ing practically impossible for most of your subscribers.
I know you're probably worried about people trading items in WSG across servers due to the high abuse potential but if you disable trading in battlegrounds unless players are from the same server (which should be easy code-wise) cross-server BGs should enable us to actually get in in a reasonable amount of time. Right now my choices as a level 60 are:
= farm for gold while waiting for AV/WSG to open (boooooring)
= find a pickup group for some instance while waiting (which means waiting in IF for an hour for people wanting to do DM west/north or 5-man strath, which NOBODY ever wants to do) only to have the 'you are eligible to enter AV' pop up 30 min inside the instance run (argh)
= level up my alt(s) (gets boring after a while to do the same quests over and over and over and over and over again because there is no new content to be had at 60 really)
And btw, fix the code for the 'estimated waiting time' please, there have been way too many times where I've had the 'ETA 10 minutes, time elapsed in queue 3 hours 15 minutes'.
-- the cake is a lie
Why does everyone hate on hunters? I like my hunter!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Dueling Invites and Guild Invites should be something thatI can toggle to auto-refuse. I NEVER want invitations for either activity, and some morons just don't take a single no for an answer. i know that I can Ignore them, but the auto-refusal option would be much simpler.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
What are your plans to regain/retain casual players?
Your current implementation of *bonus* xp is totally ineffective once a player hits lvl 60. On PvP servers, casual players have no hope of becoming higher rank, regardless of skillsets. On PvE servers, casual players fall behind their guild mates/friends due to the fact that they cannot attend high level instance raids.
This essentially creates an environment hostile to the casual player, making those of us (yes, I have terminated my account due to these problems) leave an otherwise great game.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
As a person who primarily plays a caster class I'd like to know your view on the caster perception that we are very stagnant in damage output once hitting level 60? In the last couple of months, now that more and more guilds are regularly defeating the end game instance bosses and receiving the "purple loots" casters have been posting on the WoW forums their jealousy of warriors, rogues and hunters getting significant weapons upgrades in addition to other equipment. Is this considered a problem or just casters "not knowing how to play their class" as is often said by non-casters? Are there plans to introduce new spells perhaps?
P.S. How are warlocks supposed to be played? ;p
I'd consider playing something like WoW if I could get a $5/month account that allowed, say 20 hours of game play/month. Even better, why not put everyone on this account into their own server- those of us with lives outside of WoW could play and not worry about the kids living 18 hours a day online.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Rather ironic that my server goes down as I read this article, =/. Other than the omgwtfbbq when are the patches scheduled, I'd like to know when Blizzard is going to get some competent staff for in-game support.
Are speed of advancement and other time investment vs reward just a result of market research and player feedback? Or is there actual psycological research that goes into the decision about how fast a player can advance?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Yes, it does appear that you (Blizzard) have made a conscious decision to go for slick playability over user-designed content. Can you confirm this, or would you like to see more player cities and the like? This is something that does seem to be hugely lacking in MMORPGs compared to text MOOs. Given various speculations about the "wikification" of games, how long do you think the top-down content model can thrive?
In order to progress through the game, its important to sell your goods at the auction house. Its practically a requirement. When I play, I generally leave my Hearthstone at Ironforge, because after I'm out running around I need to teleport back there to sell my stuff.
I'm lucky, a friend of mine cannot even step foot in Ironforge. Her computer is unable to withstand the heavy lag and number of players. We went once, it took 45 minutes to get back out. Now I just buy her equipment, and bring it to her.
What is the reason for your decision to limit the auction house to a couple geographical locations within the game? This not only excludes a vast number of players from improving their characters at the early stages because of proximity, but also requires extra travel time, and completely excludes people with lower end systems from being able to easily sell their stuff. Is the reason a technical bottleneck of some sort, or a design decision?
Not that this isn't the way of things with most MMORPGs, but it's a lot worse with WoW than other ones I have played.
Why don't you document everything that you patch? I know you document a lot of things in detail, but there's often a lot of minor (and sometimes major) changes that go undocumented. For example, changing some animations such as the Female Tauren dance happened in patch 1.5 (I believe) but it was never in the patch notes. Is there a possibility that these minor changes can be documented somewhere, like in a "Minor Patch Notes" addendum to the main patch log? A lot of work in the player community is to try and figure out what you guys "stealth patch."
Greetings. I am a casual player of World of Warcraft. Casual means I get in about 6-8 hours average a week, if I'm lucky.
It's extremely difficult for the casual gamer to play World of Warcraft. For much of the game, the casual gamers are forced to play solo, or in ill-formed groups of people with various play styles. Joining a guild is impossible, as I'm not on long enough to get to know anybody. And PVP servers become impossible after about the 30th level, especialy while soloing. What can a casual gamer do?
--Pathway
Can you tell us what is being done to help the faction imbalances on these servers?
Are there any plans to open up battlegrounds to any players who wish to join regardless of faction? Or perhaps faction vs faction guild battle grounds?
What other PvP plans are there for the future?
So why does it hurt you if that is left as is and there are 5-player instances that are balananced to be as hard as DWL and drop the same loot?
Then you can have your fun agonizing over organizing 40 player groups that will get along and all be on at once. You can fight your 2 million HP bosses where individual player skill and actions mean nothing. I can have my meaningful end-game where only having 5 players mean the skills of individual players make a huge differencce.
With 40 players, each player is a cog. A priest for example is strictly a healer, usually assigned to a couple of players to concentrate on...oooh what fun, cast heal over and over for 30 minutes. A warrior simply spams high threat spells and holds the mob in place where the group wants it.
With 5 players each player is doing a lot more. Maybe the total group DPS is too low, so the preist will have to deal damage as well as healing. Or the warrior can go into damage dealing mode to raise group DPS but they'll take more damage too making things harder on the priest. You have all sorts of options and can play the way you want to see what works for you. Compared to 40-player where everything is a a precisely-scripted minor role, 5-man is far more fun and takes far more skill.
Compare it to an office, in a small office with 5 people, one of the office workers will also have to run the company's website, and support the computer network as well as doing normal office work. It's more interesting because they do a diverse set of things at work. In a 40 person office you probably have a dedicated web admin and net admin, and the work is much less diverse because they're each doing the same thing over and over.
At work, this is a good thing because it allows them to specialize and it's work, not play. WoW is supposed to be a game, you play for fun, so more diverse and interesting things to do in a dungeon is better.
Having some other-worldly demons force these guys to recover the items (if they sold them) and give them back would be a nice way to keep the game going -- and the fear of these demons may get people to refrain from cheating in the future.
Farming (the practice of using inexpensive foreign labor to "play" a game to obtain resources for sale on eBay, websites, or cash markets) is a bad problem in any MMORPG. True, Blizzard has done a decent job through game mechanics to stop it from being a runaway nightmare. But it's still a very significant problem. I understand that Blizzard gets a lot of secondary revenue from subscriptions from the people who run online gold sites. But still, there are many good reasons to put a stop to this practice, Blizzard.
1. It's against your terms of service.
2. It inflates the in-game economy, widening even more the gulf between casual and hard-core players.
3. It slows the game down. The combination of both too many farmers and actual players competeting for a limited amount of resources means significantly more time is spent on resource aquisition for everyone, meaning more time sitting around waiting for a creature to spawn, on the off chance you can get to it before 5 other players do.
And the sad thing, it it seems horribly simple to stop. Buy $5 US of gold from an online gold site. Permanently shut down the account of the character that delivers the gold. Repeat until the cost of becoming a farmer (one copy of WoW + subscription) is greater than the expected revenue.
Blizzard, why don't you stop the farmers?
I have heard rumors that you an Sony are working together to make a "Portal" that would allow character to travel between EverQuest and Worlds of Warcraft.. is there any truth to this?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
Why did the designers and marketers decide to model the game on the World of Warcraft series, when its clearly an extension of Diablo? /K
How was the genius (seriously) to hire Furor (http://www.fohguild.com/) as an employee. That was probably the best premptive strike against a future player ranting about a game. Lots of people in the everquest arena remember furors complaints. when he said he was going to play WoW instead, someone hired him! Good job!
At what point did the Blizzard design team decide to just punt by adding random time sinks in the form of faction raising and rare random drop farming?
Honestly how hard would it have been to add a 10 step quest for each of the Dark Moon Faire trinkets? Or the same for each recipie?
"Please bring to me 2400 dark iron ore I'm building a house out of it." is just the anthesis of fun. As is standing in the middle of the plauge lands farming cards and bat eyes. When players were asking for content to do solo this is not what people had in mind. Plus it plays right into the hands of the Farming faction. If you can only quest for something once per character you can't go farming said object.
What about adding cogent reasons to go into under utilized instances like Maurdon or LBRS or BRD and kill minibosses for quest tokens? As it stands those zones are still under utilized and there is still no reason for endgame characters to go there.
And farming Aces doesn't count, I wouldn't mind a requirement of 3 runs but a random low drop rate item is not a cogent reason to go do the worthless content again. There should be some interesting story driven reason why I'm killing the X another umpteen times.
Why isn't there an entertaining and story driven way to get to rewards that exist all throught out the game but suddenly dried up in the latest patches?
And there is no such thing as "you can choose not to do this content if it does not interest you." New content all gets base on abilities you get with the current content. So new encounters will assume people have +22 int and +15 agil enchants on weapons. And raid ready guilds will have spell power or healing power enchants. As well as any resistance gear necessary.
This coming from the same company that was famous for saying "we're not adding anything unless it's fun." and that produced games so polished you could see your reflection in the tiny digial avatars dancing across the screen.
So again, who killed the fun?
"Why the subscription crap?"
They're in it to make money not provide you with a cheap game. They have completely succeeded in making money so I guess the plan worked.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The reason was this game takes a real 180 once you hit level 60. Leveling up was quite easy as a casual player, I could solo and make good gains and group when needed for the more difficult quests. A good balance and a much better leveling system then most MMO's.
Then came level 60. The "high end" PvE content completely alienates the casual player as 4-5 hour chunks of uninterrupted time are needed to progress through places like Molten Core and BWL.
The PvP content (my preference) is even worse. Players have to dedicate an abnormally high amount of time to succeed in the PvP ranking system. And ironically, this is to gain rewards that are quite inferior to their PvE counterparts.
It has been my experience in other MMO's that the "power gamers" always rank up the fastest, get the best gear first, etc, etc and that is expected. However, the casual gamer could achieve these things, it just takes alot longer. This isn't the case with WoW, advancement is predicated on non stop play without letting up, because once you do, you fall too far behind.
So, that leads to this question: Am I alone in this observation/experience, or are you hearing this quite a bit from your player base? That is, are you hearing that the game starts out very casual player friendly, and then turns very casual player hostile at the end game?
And further, if this is the case, are you satisified with this situation, or do you intend to ease up on blocking casual players from aquiring end game gear?
I know several users experience lag from time to time on their servers. Just curious as to what the most common cause is for this. Is it because the servers have problems keeping up with all the events going on with the server, or is from lack of bandwidth on the network?
What does your server closet look like, and what poor sod is in charge of wiring it *shudder*?
I can't really understand the excitement about WoW. How can it be considered a MMORPG when you've only got two players? And the input is fairly limited with only a 4-way joystick and a fire button per player. Not to mention gameplay is rather limited in the dungeons. That said, the sounds are pretty cool and it has speech too: "Find me, the Wizard of Wor!"
Rogues have to be the coolest class in the game. I never had problems getting into groups except at endgame. I quit the game because of this issue. Rogues have no value in endgame at all. When battlegrounds was implemented that screwed Rogue even worse. How do you plan to address these issues?
Why is there no railing around the semicircular pit near the Ironforge Auction House? People fall into the pit every few seconds; the lack of a railing is extremely obnoxious.
It's been argued that the melee itemization in the game is out of control and casters are falling more and more behind. Do you see this as a problem, and if so, what does blizzard plan to do about it?
I want to ask the one burning question that I and almost every other "real" WOW player wants to know. Why is there so little communication between Blizzard and their customers? The class representatives barely ever post on the forums(except for Caydiem of course, beloved by druids everywhere), and many times in the past when they do post they are just plain wrong about game related topics.
Of all the hardcore players I know that is wihtout a doubt everyone's biggest problem, even causing people to leave the game. So what's the deal, how can you have 3.5 million people paying a monthly fee, but the company cannot afford even a bare minimum level of communication and support regarding the game. To top it off, the WOW site is woefully behind the times, contains virtually no hard facts about gameplay, and even relies on website such as Tbot to catalogue game information.
I loooove Blizzard games, from Diablo to Warcraft to WOW but why the slap in the face? You could easily pay for 1 person per class to do nothing but play and post advice/comments/upcoming changes, or field an army of volunteers if you needed them, so whats the big deal?
the pvp system is lacking in wow. I joined a pvp server to have World War not instance battles. its awefull to join an alterac valley instance (40v40) and half way through everyone on your faction starts to leave because you happen to be slightly on the losing side. This only encourages a lackluster pvp system. "there is no penalty for losing so ill just leave and join another instance where we might win". that kind of mentality is rampant and ruins the pvp eperience for many who value a good pvp system over everything (me for one).
Does Blizzard have any plans in the future to implement a for of real world pvp system that is not instanced. one that has real world consequences if you dont stand and fight. and real world rewards if you win?
Do you want your highly paid devs writing code or digging through 900 daily NERF SHAMAN!!! posts?
Blizzard pays the developers to build the game, not scan the forums. In WoW, new and balanced content give it life. Devs need to maintain their focus to keep driving the features. If the devs spent any significant potion of the day reading forumns, it would have a huge impact on the development schedule. It makes perfect sense to have people dedicated to managing the forums. These people can dig through the crap, and there is tons of it, and compile the real issues for the dev team.
Now that doesn't mean that the devs don't scan the forumns at lunch or at home, but from a process standpoint, it makes sense to keep them separated on an effort this big.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Now that you've made millions of dollars, do you have any plans to hire artists to replace all of the cookie-cutter castle models with unique designs?
Why are you alienating a market which is most likely more dense in players than your other target platforms?
Keep in mind that the Linux market is *not* anyone who will play a game under Linux. It is *only* the subset of that group that refuses to emulate or dual boot. Given the fact that the majority of Linux users dual boot or emulate the market is far far smaller than you suggest. Replacing a Windows sale with a Linux sale does not generate any new income and does not defray the ongoing costs.
In short, why bother, why add the QA and tech support issues when the community is *already* saying "It runs great under cedega (transgaming wine), even better in opengl mode."
Many don't have the time for battlegrounds pvp and would like to participate more in the defense of Crossroads and Ogrimmar, but the alliance has up to 3x the force that raids towns. Is there any plans to balance the populations or anything to help the horde defense?
We're watching gold farmers\sellers multiply and boon over these past few months, to the point that key areas and resources are completely dominated by these farmers. Months ago you made a press release that this would not be tolerated and you would be acting against them, but currently it is obvious this has not been the case. What have you done to remove this from the game as it honestly is completely ruining many aspects of it, what will you be improving in the future, becuase you current actions are not enough.
I played WoW for about 8 months on a daily basis. I have a couple of level 60 characters and a few lower level characters as well. I enjoyed the game but after a while I realized that $13/month added up quite a bit. I played the game constantly because I wanted to get my money's worth.
Have you ever considered selling lifetime subscriptions? I might have been inclined to pay $200 for life. It would work out for both parties. I would have gotten a better deal and you'd have gotten more than $154 ($13 * 8 months + $50 for the game).
What is being done to reconcile some major differences between end game melee gear and end game caster gear? While Melee gear becomes increasingly stronger, allowing melee charcters to increase their DPS (damage per second) as well as their stats (str, agil, stam) this is not the case with caster items. Casters are given the choice of either having +dam (increase to damage) gear or +stat (int, stam, spirit) gear. Also, are there any plans to change how +dam gear works, allowing it to give the full benefit to spells with 3 (or is it 3.5) second cast times?
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
I would bet anything that balance is the driving force behind all final feature decisions. Patches in most games are bug fixes, while in Blizzard games, they consist of some bug fixes and mostly balance tweaks. If Bliz answers this question, it could give great insight into their development process.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
In the beginning months of WoW the servers were brought down and "hotfixed" within days of finding "bugs" that allowed players to gain minor advantage over the environment. Contrast that to some "bugs" (driud shapeshifting breaking frost effects and "stun resist" powers not working, come to mind) that were known for over 6 months and not fixed. I was wondering if you could shed some light on how exactly you prioritize bugs/exploits and what leads to the decision to leave some bugs for 6 months and hotfix others in 2 days?
I'm a 60 rogue and working on another alt that I'm getting to 60 as a mage, and I agree entirely with the annoyance at having to do big raids to get anywhere at 60.
And it's not a matter of spending hours on the game. I DO that. What bothers me is that I have to count on other people to be good, and also, not to cheat me by ninjaing loot and other silly politics.
I understand that Blizzard doesn't want to create a lot of content that gets instanced for every single player, so single player instances are very technically challenging to create for them.
However, I do wish there were single-player challenges that you *know* you are going to get the goods at the end of if you put in the time and do it right. It doesn't have to be easy, it just has to be something you do where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
*If* my guild takes me to Molten Core and *if* we work well enough together to kill the bosses, my class set item *may* drop and if I *could* potentially get my hands on it. MC takes hours and hours and rarely is finished in one or even three runs at it. While that means more chances at drops for me, it also means that I will be in there for hours and hours with nothing to show for it and no way of knowing if my hours invested will *ever* get me anything. That's not the way to keep people around. They get burnt out on the game well before your new content interests them again.
At 60 Blizzard knows it has run into a brick wall with the level cap, so it is effectively changing the whole landscape of the game to have a game at 60. The problem is that now you need other people to succeed, and those people don't play on your schedule. Whereas you could 1-60 if you couldn't find a group, you had the option of going solo, at 60, you can forget it that. Nothing less than a 5-man group with 1 warrior, 1 priest, and 2 mage/rogue/hunter/shaman/paladin/druid and frequenly 10, 15 and 40. New Zul-Gurub will have a 20 man raid instance. Same thing.
I'm surprised that Blizzard doesn't encourage more solo work. After all, solo players who feel that they can play all the time will stay in the game and pay the fee even if an elite guild doesn't want them or they don't have the time for a guild. I am a hardcore gamer, but I have a job and a wife and there is going to be a day where I simply can't put in the time to be in a full-on guild and I'll want to try another game too. Why shouldn't I have the option to work on the game at my own pace, even at 60?
We are developping a Software Engineering and Game Design degree, which is getting under way this September. What would be, in your opinion, the most important skills and knowledge that students could be taught as far as being effective game programmers, designers, architects, etc?
Also, would someone from Blizzard Entertainment like to be on the Advisory Board for this programme?
Certain classes have had some major overhauls to their class design such as Warriors and Warlocks. Upcoming patches point to Hunters and Palidans and Druids as getting some attention. What classes will come after that?
What is your plan/vision for the Mage class? Having played one since Beta I've seen a lot of changes to the class and I am curious where it is being taken? To expand upon this, I'm sure many of us would like to know what the developers ideas are on each of the different classes. Are Rogues to be sneaky S.O.B. damage dealers? Are priests just heal bots? Are mages just vending machines? I know there are utility listings on the web page, but those are vague and in the case of the Mage it has changed quite a bit over the last couple of months.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
When will you fix Druid's? If not in patch 1.8 then will you ever fix them? Can we get a refund if not ?
Dear Mr. Greenspan,
Based on the experiments we conducted in WoW universe, we are pleased to offer you the following advice regarding interest rate management
Sincerely,
A bunch of nerds from virtual reality.
--
It's OK to ask if they ran into any interesting problems with their economics model, but that stuff about 'benefit to the rest of the world' - this is really something
3.243F6A8885A308D313
ok i get what's up with rogues having stealth and stuff, but why don't mages have invisibility??
I have heard that it was tried in the beta but dropped before it hit retail??
WHY!!!
The effect of this is that a mage MUST be grouped past level 20 so that there is somebody to watch their back whilst they stop to drink after every 2 mobs or so...
this...stinks...
blink is nice and all but many mobs can run so fast that it's just not enough to get you out of danger in time, especially when one or two hits kills you.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
ID does such a good job of making Linux releases - what will it take for you to do the same?
c id=13323538 why bother? Replacing a Windows sale with a Linux sale does not pay for the development, testing, and ongoing support costs. Between dual booting and emulation there is not really much of a Linux *market* ("market" as in a business opportunity). The Linux market is only those who refuse to dual boot or emulate.
ID has said that they support Linux because they think it is cool to do so and that there is no business case for it. Old Game Developer Magazine quote.
I am glad to help out the Cedega folks, but it would be nicer to not have to use a band-aid.
But what is the business case? If Linux gamers are already buying the Windows version and posting things like "It runs great under cedega (transgaming wine), even better in opengl mode" http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159086&
I'm still not sure if I want to go and buy this game. The fact that there hasn't been a demo version has really put me off from buying this game. Are there any plans to put up a demo server/version?
im very into WOW since the beta days, and want to know what is gonna happen next.. theres a lot of rumours about hero classes, about incrementing the max level to 80, and about higher level bosses like the old gods and the titans, can you tell us what of this is true? A happy customer Thanks
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Did you even read the parent post? Everything that you're talking about with regards to the changes in endgame content is exactly what he's railing against. Truthfully, I can't readily argue with him, either. I played WoW starting in beta, moved on to launch, and made it to 60. I've done MC a few times with my old guild, I've done successful runs against Onyxia.
The entire issue with WoW, as he mentioned, is that while the game is wonderful for the casual gamer from 1-60, once you get to 60, what then? There's nothing left which can be compared to all that has come before. It's an issue, and one that Blizzard needs to address. Ultimately, it's the casual players making the game as successful as it has been, not the l33t d00dz with all the ph4t lewtz.
Kelgas
60 Shaman
Garona
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
Just a hint here: If I can't play the game, I'm not going to pay for the game anymore.
Wink-wink nudge-nudge know-what-I-mean
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
I've had mini LAN-parties over at my place, where five or six of us were playing WoW at the same time. MRTG's bandwidth graph remained astonishingly low for the duration.
Recently, I've also used dialup (~44-48K actual) to play WoW and it performs without a glitch, keeping the bar mostly in the green. Even Battlegrounds work, although a delay there is noticeable.
I'm very impressed with the way you've structured your protocol to make efficient use of network bandwidth and I'm curious to learn what the main difficulties were, what the most bandwidth-intensive parts of the system are, and what kind of protections have you built into the protocol to avoid tampering with the inbound/outbound data. I realize you can't go into great detail for a host of reasons, but any tips and tricks would be welcome.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
Where is the Dev communication? What is on the hot plate to be fixed or added to the game? Why are there so few discussions with the players about ideas? Why is there no Dev tracker on the forums? Why can't I download a trial of the game? MANY MMORPG games have at least a 10-day downloadable trial. WoW seems to be the only one that doesn't. I absolutely refuse to play the game unless there is a Demo or Trial for download.
Warlocks have to go out and farm soulshards in order to be at the same level as the other classes, in PvP. Why? Why force the Warlocks to work their asses off just to be balanced?
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
Almost a year after release, WoW is still plagued with technical issues; instances crash, Battlegrounds go down almost nightly and as of late, lag during prime time makes the game nearly unplayable.
Will Blizzard ever fix the technical issues that constantly plague this game?
There is no questioning that the economy heavily influences game play and strategy in World Of Warcraft. It could be said that right now the primary force behind the economy, the auction house, creates a seller's market. Other than word of mouth, there is currently no way for a player to explicitly advertise their desire to buy an item at a given price. Does Blizzard plan to add any features to transform the auction house into both a buyer's and a seller's tool?
Are paldin's ever going to get the love they deserve from the Dev's. Reading, only briefly from http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wo w-paladin it's easy to see that they really do need some attention now.
--Disclaimer: Yes I do have a level 60 paladin.
GCS/S d-x s+(+): a C++++$ UL+$ P+ L++$ !E--- W++@ N++>$ !o !K-- w++$ !O !M !V PS++>$ PE !Y PGP+ t+ 5++ X++ R tv b
This is so true. I was going to ask something similar but this post pretty much sums it up for me and WoW right about now. It also is why I am letting my WoW subscription lapse. Please make sure this question is asked.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
WoW improved on the annoying aspects of EQ by a huge amount (by, for example, having a game where you could ever-quest). However some good ideas that others have had seem to be missing. Examples include avatars/sidekicks so you could play with folks of differing levels; a mechanism by which you could be part of more than one guild (but only one at once); a way to rework your character's physical profile (and really once I reach 60 why can't I just change classes but retain my level. Not expecting all my equip or gold but do I *really* have to grind up to 60 again?)
Also big kudos for allowing 3rd party addons but I'm surprised many of them (Autotravel should be core) aren't incorporated into the game.
So my question is how much does Not Invented Here play into what is implemented?
-CZ
Considering I play on a PvE server, why are there items/recipes that can ONLY be aquired through PvP?
If I wanted to play PvP, I would have chosen a PvP server...
Will The level cap be raised
Do you have any plans to incorporate some more dynamic world effects, such as weather? Or, moving up the scale, anything like whole cities being taken by opposing factions, towns destroyed, etc?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
The gist of why is it seems some nodes/herbs spawn before they should and it borks your gather attempt. (a couple of the nodes in the Barrens Oases had these problems 6 months ago)
P.S. it's pretty consistent on which ones are borked this way - the peacebloom right outside XR is notorious for this bug.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
With all the problems MMORPGs have with people using farming bots etc. It seems to me that with the problem revolving around real world money, the answer to stopping it would be real world money. (if you cancel their account, they will just create another one)
So, how about if you catch someone cheating, instead of canceling their account, charge them ~$50 for violating the rules. (like a traffic ticket if you speed) Then they will not have an incentive to cheat as they will not actually make any money. You can even have a points system for repeat offenders that eventually you will cancel their account if they keep it up to add to the deterant.
==>Lazn
Is there any plan to implement a system of alternative advancement which allows a character to acquire and develop skills after they reach level sixty?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
There are dozens of places that currently are just eye candy, some only when flying over the landscape. The airfield NE of Ironforge, the lake above the tram to Stormwind, the Venture Co. camp mountain-locked between Stonetalon Peak and the Charred Vale, the Graymane Wall, southern Silithus, Dalaran, Quel'Thalas, Mount Hyjal... Was all that just meant to be in-flight entertainment? Created-but-cut content? Under construction for later to make it all seem 'fresh and new'? Bait for explorers to lure them into places for which they are banned for seeing early? Please, impart some insight into these holes in the world!
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
A very large percentage of players are playing either Night Elves or Undead. Some other races (Dwarves, Gnomes, Trolls) are not played very much at all.
Are you happy with this situation? If not, what do you think would have evened out the race populations?
I'm wonder what Blizzard has done to architect WoW so that it can grow and exapand as computer and video gam technology improves. Will users be able to download an improved WoW engine in two years? Will the Xbox360 and PS3 be able to join the WoW community?
Any chance we'll see subscription fees that work more for the casual player? Hourly fees instead of monthly fees? I would love to try the game out, but rarely get to play more than an hour or two a week. It is just hard to justify $15/month with that amount of play.
I would like to know if the company has any plans to increase end game content for high level players that can't stand nightly Molten Core/UBRS/etc runs, raiding guilds and the like. It seems like the only content for level 60 players, aside from sitting in the 3 hour que for a battleground run, is raiding the same instances over and over again for gear. I love *playing* World of Warcraft, not reliving the same instance run from the night before. I've found myself with an alt of every race and class now and, well, with two other characters approaching 60 I'm really running out of things to do.
I would like to honestly.
Did you ever consider starting a new character?
I've played several other MMOs (FFXI, EQ2, AC2), and WoW is the first one in which creating a new character is very enjoyable.
I've got characters of different races and classes, and things are so well balanced, they're all quite fun to play.
I've got half a dozen characters that I rotate through when I'm tired of leveling my main, and since they all accrue rest, leveling them is speedy. Aah, instant gratification.
Hi, I'm another of those "casual" players who has been playing since game release, but am still leveling one char. I really enjoy the game, but because I'm so casual, most of my friends have "aged out" and changed servers with their alts. The beauty of WoW is in its social aspect, so I was wondering if/when the ability to transfer your character to other servers would become available to all servers? It's really my biggest beef of the game right now :/
Also, I love questing but I find the nature of the quests really take away from the "War" scenario of the entire game. I would have thought that most of the quests would have been "do this to fight the horde" instead of "hey can you find six eggs for me?" The fact that the quests are not war-related at all makes it feel like the world is hardly at war. Why did you decide to make questing very non-war oriented?
-Jamfish NE Druid, Lightbringer
You have to remember that the Developer teams for D2 and WOW were entirely made up of different people, and not necessarily all of the same level of expertise.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Do you get any inspiration from some of the old school online games... meaning BatMUD, RetroMUD or the like? I used to play them a lot and with out graphics, they did a great job of creating a wonderfully imersive world.
Can I have my free time back? Thanks!
Nosce te Ipsum
rooooar
Q (Short Version): Why is the regular downtime nesesary?
Q (Long Version): I've worked for several large firms, and in each case downtime was measured by the second or minute per day, not hours per month. To meet these requirements systems were designed to be easily swapped, upgrades were done by migrating connections to cloned machine, etc. etc. You obviously have some good infastructure in place, why can't upgrades be more seamless.
paul reinheimer
1) While the article states that the servers are in great shape i dont agree at all. There are still terrible lag issues, server ques and lots of instance crashes and bugs. I was in molten core last night on bleeding hollow and the server crashed 3x on us while we were in there. I was in the AV battleground and it was impossible to caputure a graveyard because the BG was bugged. Will these simple issues ever be fixed? 2) the druid class is the lowest damage class in the entire game by a long shot. We have 1 good talent tree (restoration), 1 alright talent tree (balance) and 1 terrible talent tree (feral). We also have issues with our damage scaling as better and better end games items appear. Even with the posted buffs for our cat form, it still dies in a few hits and has no added chance to dodge or any in combat stuns to make it able to survive even a little more. When will this class be fixed properly? 3) Lots of people are getting bored because of the lack of new content, myself included. 1.7 will finally offer a new instance to go to but there is still a lack of new content thats needs to be addressed. Why not release 2 or 3 new dungons rather than just one at a time. 4) When will there be new graphical features such as weather effects added?
I've been trying to get the answers to these questions for awhile now. I've changed the format of the posts, I've posted it in the general and warlock boards, nothing has worked. I've called blizzard and they told me the only option I had was to continue to repost and hope to get an answer, so here goes. I won't post the link to the other thread as we're not supposed to, so I'll just copy+paste in a new thread as I was told to by the csr I talked to. Thanks for the answers in advance. I hope things are well there at blizzard. "I know this post is long, and for that I appologize, but there is alot that needed to be said. First off, I want to let you know that I'm a warlock, on a pvp server. I have played my main pretty exclusively now since the very first day of launch. I love my character. I have asked some of these questions in previous threads, and other warlocks have asked the others, so I figured I would compile them here so that a cm can have a quick and easy place to answer them. In addition to posting here I've called Blizzard several times and was told that the only way that I can get the answers to these questions was to post on the boards...again, so here I am asking for a blue to respond and answer even some of these questions and issues that warlocks have been asking for quite some time now. I know much of this has been asked before. I ask that people keep the flames and /bumps without comments other than /bump to a minimum. I know that many people are tired of hearing the same thing from warlocks day in and day out, but that is because we simply haven't been told the answer by blizzard. I would appreciate it if someone up the chain of command would even acknowledge that they know these issues exist even on the most basic of levels. The problems that our class faces pale in comparison to the problem that we have with getting information from those who are in the know.
Anyways, onto the questions.
1. Why is it that the developers require that level 60 warlocks on pvp servers (and pve/rp to a much lesser extent) farm for hours to gather shards which do nothing more than put us on equal footing with other classes? The cookie-cutter response has so far been "balance", but when you look closely at the facts, shards are the single most unbalanced variable in any of the warlocks repetior. Also nobody has ever explained what shards are balancing that the long cooldowns, high mana costs, lower damage and talent point costs don't already.
Allow me to explain;
There are several spells in the Warlocks arsenal which require shard usage. All of our low level pets, (except the imp) all of our high level pets, all of our stones, summon players, shadowburn, and soul fire. Now on one level this doesn't seem too bad until you realize that a warlock without shards is not on equal footing with other classes who can simply log in and play as "balance" would dictate. If anything we are severely handicapped as we cannot use most of the spells that define us as a class.
Many of these spells, shadowburn as a premier example, have long cooldowns, higher mana costs than comparable spells from other classes, do less damage than those same spells, require talent points even to be able to cast, then get hit with the additional burden of requiring a non-buyable reagent that can only be farmed from mobs (or players, but more on that in a moment) of level 48+. Now if this was really a balance issue, the cooldowns, mana costs, damage and talent points would be right on par with all the other classes, but once you realize that you then have the additional burden of wasting time farming those shards THAT is when the imbalance occurs.
Many players claim that without the shard requirements on spells such as shadowburn that the spell would be overpowered. This is wrong for several reasons;
First, any warlock who has this spell will go out to farm as many shards as they can possibly fit in their bags with the intention of using them all as rapidly as possible given the situation. If a warlock is faced
Many users have experienced drops in Instances and other parts of the game where they have played for a couple hours to get to the end only to be left empty handed when say, the end instance boss glitches or the instance servers go down. At this time you are unable to offer compensation for this in anyway whether it be monetary or an item nothing is given to the player. In a "non-e'world" compensation is given to the consumer for a faulty product (i.e. store credit or a refund) however in-game there is no compensation. When users are paying monthly for a game and the product fails on the server side, why is there no compensation?
1) The Community managers are similar to support reps. They deal with the user base. Developers neither have the time nor often do they have the skills to deal with a populace. The answers you get often come from the developers, what you have to understand is that those answers are often santized. Santizing an answer isn't always that bad, because I've known developers to make something rather nice sound downright dreadful all because they have diarhea of the mouth.
2) The term "developers" these days has been morphed. Developers could mean just the guys who grind the code, and yet it might mean the product managers who actually design the code. Then again, it might not be. Frankly, the Community managers could deal more with the product managers who actually design those changes you loath on every update, or whatever. Bottom line is you should ask for who to talk to by name and by learning what they do. Don't just blanketly ask to "speak to a developer."
3) Developers aren't always ultimately responsible for the decisions. Developers, like in #2, could just be people who grind out code. Managers make decisions, you should ask them. And ask for them by name, and by responsibility. Again don't blanketly ask to "talk to developers."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
How do you plan to address the population imbalances on most servers?
The Horde characters are uniformly ugly compared to their Alliance couterparts, and the population split on the servers reflects it. Making Horde character classes more powerful (shaman, Tauren warriors, etc) might convince the power gamers to switch over to Horde characters, but the vast majority of the player base stay with the Alliance.
I play on Archimonde (Codemonkey, undead rogue) and I love the PvP there. Archimonde has one of the highest user populations (but also the most balanced between factions) of all servers. Our server experiences problems typical of a system under extreme stress. Very often the database chugs like it is experiencing a bottleneck; i.e. querying the AH inventory, moving an item from the mail or bank to your bag can take 20-30 seconds. The most annoying situation is when the transaction server for the zone in which you are sitting (client/server-request/response) is unresponsive or just plain laggy. For example, key presses for melee combat moves or spell casting can take up to eight seconds sometimes to register on my client software. This makes the game unplayable when the window to implement your next action in combat is a fraction of a second to ensure that you survive. Often when the game server is playing very badly with a latency of greater than 800ms I expect a server restart in short order. However, the server restart can sometimes take an one hour and fifteen minutes (last Saturday night, Aug. 13th). This last weekend, there were three server restarts, two Saturday and one Sunday night. I design and write proprietary software for a large user population that places much overhead and processing load on our database, so I am aware of what you are probably facing. My question is: what are some realistic options that can be implemented to ameliorate these issues? What are the exact issues that cause these problems and what needs to be juggled to reach a solution that will make the game consistently playable? Could the code, OS and database be tightened up? My experience with servers whose performance gradually degrades until restart is necessary is that the code is poorly written, the database connections/transactions are not being performed correctly, or users' actions are negatively affecting the OS as it is currently configured. Reservations on memory are not being freed once they are not needed, connections are not being freed once not needed, logs are getting out of hand and not being maintenanced. Are there just too many users on Archimonde? Is the hardware inadequate? Would throwing newer, beefier servers at the problem or just increasing their number to further divide up the work load solve these issues? Lastly - Is the hardware-programming-database model meant to support this many users? Was it tested in any way to replicate the population that exists on Archimonde? If not, then WoW is probably not optimized and unprepared to deal with the overhead that Archimonde's users will place on the system. Please discuss. Thanks for your time. FOR THE HORDE!
With population imbalances being rather large in some cases have you thought about doing Same faction vs faction battlegrounds for no exp/rep/rewards so people can practice a map rather than waiting 30min to an hour between maps?
example.. my guild would like to practice 10man warsong but queing in as 10man group is difficult but we could find another guild who can assemble a 10man crew and practice against them to improve our teamwork rather than waiting almost an hour between matches while Horde have almost no wait between thier matches and are able to practice/play/refine thier abilities.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
Thottbot is a popular add-on to WoW that I couldn't imagine playing without. From interface additions to data mining used for its website to search off of, it has come a long way. Had the developers imagined the extent to which the Add-On capability would change the game? Also i would find it interesting to hear about the issues involved in choosing what is available to add-on software to avoid potential abuse.
The only 40 person raid material is Molten Core, Onyxia, the afformention Azuregos, and Blackwing Lair. I have never been in any of those instances (aside from the 30 second look inside MC after finishing a BRD run).
If you have finished all the lvl 60 instances and don't want to join in on the raid content, well the game is probably done for you, cancel and be satisfied with the fun you had. When new 5 person lvl 60 instances come out you can just resubscribe and pick up where you left of.
Q.
Is there ever going to be a fix for this? Thousands of paying subscribers would like to know why their servers just simply reboot several times a night, disconnect them, lag out during raids, split their instances, and basically make the entire game nearly unplayable!
What is being done about this?
Your sig got me really excited, but where's the linux version? I would really really like to see a good cross platform scrabble game that doesn't depend on something like play.games.com and flash. I'm just a little confused, python and gtk are cross platform, so where's the .tar.gz?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If there's one thing I'd love to know, it's the raw equations behind your stats. +5 spi is going to raise your mana/HP regen by how much respectively? How does it change per level?
How hard is a weapon going to hit, what are the chances that it'll be resisted, etc? I'd love to know the actual chances and actual numbers behind, well, everything.
Even though World Of Warcraft is a hugh multiplayer game, when are we going to see instances that a single player can do?
To achieve anything in this game you need to be in a party of 5-40 players. But what about people who like to play alone. I tend to be not very outgoing, a loner type. And I find that the game forces me to do something I'm not comfortable with.
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
I recently cancelled my two World of Warcraft accounts.
I'd been playing since Beta and with my guild and friends had defeated all but 1 of the 'end game' bosses, excluding the very new Blackwing Lair.
Despite what is being generally assumed in the gaming media, many servers are still not stable despite being 1 year into development after a lengthy alpha and beta test.
My server, Blackrock, being the highest population server must represent some extra challenges but why have you not been vocal and communicative about the almost constant instance and server crashes during peak play times?
(Before I canceled last week, one of the last nights I played Blackrock crashed 5 times in a row consecutively over the span of 2-3 hours AFTER a lengthy extra maintenance period that same week)
There have been reports that instance farmers, dupers and Raid cascading guilds are to blame for the massive server problems we've had in the last month but all of these are rumors, unconfirmed - and yet the problems continue with no official response of any form nor, more importantly, no specific drastic action to fix this long-standing problem.
In addition, why has Blizzard not locked out new players from starting off for the first time on Blackrock?
You have had 3 transfers periods for people to move from Blackrock to other servers and yet all it has done is allowed more free space to open up for other people to start over or for the first time on the "popular" server.
Why have you not 'locked' Blackrock and prevented the massive population problems that continuously plague it?
(For those unaware of the annoyance of instance resets or server restarts - it often meant that after spending 3-4 hours clearing through an end-game instance and defeating 3-4 bosses the instance server would boot you and you would eventually login back at the beginning with all of the 'trash' monsters respawned - requiring you to spend another 1-2 hours to clear back to where you left off. Sometimes this would happen more than once a night.)
Some questions here were about the costs of the game. Casual players (like me, I only play at a friends place occasionally, because I only run linux) find it unfair to pay a lot per month when they played only once a week.
In addition, there have been concerns that the problem with people becoming addicted to these types of games are worsened by the fact that it is easy to justify to play more than is good for you.
Therefore my question is: Why is it not possible to play per hour?
Despite the articles claim that the game is now in great shape it is clear that there a still serious performance problems that have yet to be addressed.
Several months back it was announced that a fix for LAG in Iron Forge was in the works, now many months have gone past and my friend who still has an active account still experiences huge lag in this zone and the auction house. I remember this issue appearing as I an many others present at launch progressed to quests in that zone. Is there a major fix in the works?
Even though the game is designed for mass conflict, it appears that the combined fan bases of penny-arcade.com and pvponline.com have been able to fill a new server and full scale conflicts have already resulted in crashing clients or worse, as well as the dreaded queues. What is being done to resolve these kinds of issues, what is the maximum capacity of a single realm / zone?
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Are there any plans to expose any game information to the "outside"? It would be pretty handy to have something like a dashboard widget that lets me search the auction house or alerts me when a certain item is on it. Of course, it would be even better to be able to bid, but that might open up things like bid sniping programs and such, so I'd be happy with even a read-only interface.
Actually, I did. I had a level 60 Hunter, and when I finished that, I began a priest, which made it to level 41 before everything finally got to be too much. I had also started a few others, but they never made it past level 11 or so.
I am not saying the game was a bad game. It gave me many, MANY hours of entertainment, it was a fantastic game. I was just a bit disappointed when I worked hard to get to 60, and then everything after that was so impossible to tackle. New characters are fun, but when you put so much time in to hit level 60, there's a lot of desire to do more with that character, since you worked so hard to get there.
That was my main reason for losing interest. Coupled with some of the more irritating things of the game, I just decided it was time to move on.
How much software engineering went into the development of World of Warcraft? The game is massive and has a clear direction, so just how much of this is planned before hand and how much gets done "on the fly"?
With the recent spate of login problems(European Servers), once or twice a week recently. I would like to know why you don't make an effort to give loyal, paying customers a reasonable explanation or even an estimated time for the servers to be back up again?
You are alienating the community and i know many players who are thinking of cancelling their subscription because of the poor quality of customer service we as a community recieve. As an active member of the community who regularly reads the forums i would like to see more communication and response to feedback in the forums.
.
Firstly, i've noticed that WoW lacks relatively any high social endgame content, such as a system of kingdoms or players being able to build up their own towns/bases etc, or really anything where leadership is especially important; I see this as positive. Generally speaking every other MMO, from Puzzle Pirates to Anarchy Online has some sort of feature where guilds have to pour tons of money and resources to support the resources for gameplay only a few people will experience. This omission seems intentional and i'm interested in the factors that led you against that sort of end-game content. In the same vein, the whole system of factions suggests that something similar will be available, but without specific players acting as the primary fulcrums that make the system work.
One thing that i'm curious about is how you see the alliance/horde population imbalance. If you could go back to day one and redo faction, would it still be the same way?
Finally i'm interested in what priority #1 is when you design an encounter. Whether you're designing a battleground or a high end rading zone such as Blackwing Lair, it seems that there are essentially two possible routes. 1. Focusing on the role each individual class will have in the encounter 2. Focusing on the overall scheme of the encounter. The obvious trade off being that focusing on the overall scheme can make players feel as if their individual contribution doesn't matter very much, whereas focusing on class can ocassionally make some classes feel as if they aren't needed at all for a specific encounter. Or does a different thing come to mind when you first begin thinking about how to build an encounter?
Have you thought about adding services to the auction houses, specifically enchants? It would be nice as a person looking for a specific enchant to be able to search the auction house. It would also be easy as an enchanter to sell enchants without standing in a major city and yelling for an hour. Also the auction house would help to stablize the market for enchanting. What are your thoughts?
Are shadow priests an effective class on pvp servers?
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2 question on the same subject:
It's obvious that great effort was made to cut out the more tedious elements present in previous mmorpgs...
1)
So what's up with the faction quests? I understand that faction with the Thorium Brotherhood/Furbolgs/ect. needs to be difficult since it gives you access to some very nice tradeskill recipes, but the current method of raising faction seems to be about as dull and repetitive as you could make them. Argent Dawn's not so bad, since it raises by fighting in Stratholm and Scholomance, the the others are just insanely boring.
2)
Why to warlocks still have to farm shards a level 60? It's not like a warlock becomes uber when he's got a bag full of shards, a warlock needs to have a bunch of shards just to compete on the same level as other classes. The shard bag that's in development doesn't seem like it'll solve the problem, it just means a longer farming session before hand. Right now I have to start farming half an hour before my guild heads into MC just so that I don't run out, not exactly what I'd call "fun", and I don't see how it balances the class.
At one time, what you say was true. But, with the 1.6 patch (at or around that patch), several issues arose ONLY on linux using wine or cedega:
I played WoW since closed beta, and bought it the day it came out. In about 3 months, I made it to level 60. But... then my interest in the game sort of ended. I didn't care about high end raids, or about any PvP content. Elite content was more of a hassle for me than it was fun and exciting. I eventually cancelled my account. So, my question is, are there any plans for more solo content for the endgame? I understand the concept of a MMORPG is to interact with others, but I don't want to have NOTHING to do if I can only play for an hour and want to do something alone.
Is WoW intending to be a permanent world which will have challenges for years to come or is it imagined as a finite game which will eventually be replaced with something new?
Do you imaging player-created content ever being incorporated into the world? ( beyond a group of characters standing around pretending to be an encounter :-)
Do you think there will ever come a day when you GPL the server-side engine?
From recent press releases you have been immenseley succesful. I'm assuming you've recovered your development costs in full. So, short of making money hats, what are you doing with the profits from your success? Profit sharing with your employees? Does Vivendi eat it all up? Funding new projects? Has the obscene cashflow going into your company changed it at all?
For the Horde!!!
Razorleaf
Level 45 Druid
Lightning's Blade
(I kid. sorta.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
i wonder if their developers could get arrested for insider trading? or corruption? i know it sounds stupid, but lets say your involved in the development you know somethings going to change in a new patch coming out... you tell some farmer to start going for a particular item... the farming goes way un-noticed, thats until after the patch in which your then already cashing in... but the best part is you can cash in without really any risk of legal action?
sure my post isnt well thought out, but i thought i would chime in....
I like both PvE and PvP, so I'm doing both and that may be the reason for my enjoying it, but there's also the fact that there are so many ways to combine 8 skills out of the 150 your two classes get you that you have lots to experiment.
Then there is the fissure of woes and the underworld, both of which can be quite challenging to even a good group.
Guild Wars is definately the best game I've played, both in terms of gameplay, absence of farming, tactics, balance of economy and LACK OF BUGS.
Now if only these koreans could leave the favor of the gods to europe...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
Blizz: When are you going to move the story along? Are you planning to shake things up with realigning alliances within both factions?
For example, at the end of Warcraft III: FT, Jaina Proudmoore and Thrall team up against Jaina's father to take him down and reigned in a new era of peace. I played WoW based on the excellent epic story of Warcraft and I thought it would be a no-brainer that both factions could learn the other faction's language and even earn reputation. For those on RP servers, I thought for sure that we would be able to rewrite the story thus fall and try to reestablish that era of peace.
Well, I was wrong.
Since the launch of WoW, the story is dead. What do you plan on doing to push it closer to Warcraft 4 / WoW 2?
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
There are rumors of a secret way to the top of the mountain behind Ironforge, or at least, some secret part of Ironforge. When you fly by on the gryphon, there appears to be a cross or something at the top, something that is not a tree.
Even though these rumors remind me of the 9th graders who tried to sell official-looking elevator passes to the 7th graders on the 2nd day of school (there was no elevator, of course), is there anything to these rumors?
More generally, is there secret content in the game that only a glitch or a DM could get you to?
Especially when [insert class here]s are so awesome?
"Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons...for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
A lot of "casual" gamers are concerned about end-game play. The game is brilliant up until 60, then quickly devolves into a social experience where you NEED other players to enjoy. I simply cannot adhere my real-life schedule to guilds' that require 40 players to be on at certain horus. The only fun I've had with my level 60 character is pvping, and that's only because I can do it alone at my own pace.
5 0803). As an avid "casual gamer" pvper, I find a number of these players are more skilled, but the vast majority are simply winning from better gear. Will a mechanic be introduced that actually rewards skill (giving more points to those who win games faster, having diminishing returns on bonus points, etc)?
Up until 60, you have the option of playing solo or in a group. At 60 you really no longer have that option. Do you intend to change that?
Alternative question: how do you handle the issue of pvp rewarding those who spend inordinate amounts of time playing the game, instead of rewarding skill?
Case in point: a lot of players have been putting unheard-of hours (some as much as 12-14 a day) pvping. They, in-turn, end up with some high-quality gear (see the comic you linked on your site: http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=200
I'm aware that ghost is in development, but that is console only.
What are your plans for future PC titles, specifically those Starcraft related? Have you discussed a Starcraft MMORPG or would you prefer to work on a Warcraft 3-alike Starcraft game before embarking on such another huge project?
I know a lot of people felt much more immersed in the Starcraft arena than the world of Warcraft (no pun intended).
Warcraft's greatest strength to me is its abundance of hand-crafted quests - something
most people before didn't think would be practical in a commercial-scale mmog. The
quests are all quite entertaining, but something that's all too rare is for the player to
be given a genuine choice. In particular there are several ideological factions within
the game, such as the Defias and the Scarlet Crusade that occupy a moral gray area.
Someone's real-life or roleplayed sensibilities might lead them to side with one of these
factions, but the game dictates the player's allegience simply because there are quests
against these factions, but few or no quests to take on behalf of them.
One case in which Blizzard has shown some much-welcome flexibility is the Bloodsail
Buccaneers, allowing players to gain the friendship of these pirates who are normally the
"bad guys." It wouldn't take an extreme investment of time to allow similar options for
the Scarlet Crusade, Defias, Twilight Hammer, Syndicate, etc, etc.
To put the gist of this post in the form of a question: Is there any possibility that
Blizzard will allow players to side with any of these factions, as with the Bloodsails?
That's the essence of it. For anyone curious, what follows are my own ideas of how to
allow the choice while respecting the massive amount of content build around the
assumption that these factions are players' enemies. In particular the Deadmines and
Scarlet Monastery dungeons account for many hours of playtime of fighting these factions.
That amount of content can't be tossed out nor duplicated, but a fictional reason can be
told for someone on either side to do them. (If you don't want quest spoilers, stop
reading the post here.)
Before completing the Deadmines instance, the Defias appear mainly as violent thugs. The
choice to side with the Defias could easily come AFTER experiencing the Deadmines, so
that content can remain completely intact. After delivering Van Cleef's letter and
hearing Baros' Alexston's story of the unpaid workers and corrupt nobles, the player
might be swayed to the Defias' point of view. However, someone siding with the Defias
would be just as motivated to complete the same existing Stockade quests to root out the
corrupt noble. All that's needed is two slightly varied dialogue paths and all the
quests are still applicable. Some kind of follow on quest could then be provided to make
the Defias in Westfall friendly to the player, a la the Bloodsail Buccanneers. Moonbrook
might even become a functional town to players that have completed the series. I can't say how to support the choice in the Missing Diplomat quest series though, since it isn't finished. Please finish that, by the way.
For the Scarlet Crusade, the Alliance quests start out being against the undead on behalf of the Crusade, but suddenly the player is forced to turn againt the crusade on the say-so of an NPC he or she just met. First of all, this sudden change could be made more convincing by adding a step to the quest series for the players to go to the torture chamber wing of the Scarlet Monastery. There they would see for themselves what the crusade is doing. This would also give Alliance players a reason to visit that wing, as there are no alliance quests there currently. At a minimum this would make the requirement of turning againt the crusade more believable, but it could be taken further by offering a choice through a dialog with Interrogator Vishas. The first would be to decide the crusade has become overzealous and must be stopped by killing Interrogator Vishas, Arcanist Doan, Scarlet Commander Mograine, and High Inquisitor Whitemane. Alternatively the player could accept a quest from the interrogator to eliminate members of the crusade opposed to his extreme methods - Herod, Houndmaster Loksey, and High Inquisitor Fairb
For great justice.
Many PVPers have the opinion that WOW PVP is a skill-less. PVEers have a *HUGE* advantage when fighting PVPers because of the superior loot provided by the high end PVE instances (MC & BWL). In addition, WOW PVP in general lacks sufficient counters in order to rise to the level of the Pre UO:R tank mage era that is widely viewed as the best PVP implementation to date. So PVPers see WOW PVP as very paper-rock-scissors based on classes and gear, rather than player skill.
1. What plans do you have to remediate the gear problems and make WOW more skill based and less designed around PVE?
2. Are there any plans to shutdown the chinese farmers?
3. Will there ever been a kill-death ratio implemented into battlegrounds to track true player superiority, not just who plays the most?
4. Has there been any consideration to the PVP community request for a Free for all (FFA) server without instances (which will allow for dungeon control)?
5. For a long time, casters, mages in particular have been being nerfed into oblivion. Are there any plans to make easily available to casters high end gear that offers comparable damage increase to that which is provided to melee classes such as the unstoppable force weapon, for example?
6. Are there any plans to create a cross-server battlegrounds so alliance from all servers can face horde from all servers instead of the huge lengthy battleground queues that often exceed 4 hours on popular servers?
What have you been doing about code evolution in the game?
You obviously forsee this codebase being in existance for probably another five years (just look at EQ), and it's already been in developement for over three. How do you manage the complexity of this system? I'm thinking in three areas:
Have you considered doing a post mortem? WoW obviously has a large codebase, and generally your team has been able to deliver fixes (every now and then a bugfix backfires).
At one time, what you say was true. But, with the 1.5.1 patch, several issues appeared ONLY on linux using wine or cedega:
a ys-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html and http://transgaming.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3149& sid=478fe7a988c378ded481441f54c5ce7a for more information.
You can't target anything. One of the workarounds for targeting NPCs, PCs, is to hit the 'v' key which will turn on a clickable bar. It is also not possible to loot corpses or treasure chests, unless you do some weird angling with the cancel (some have mentioned it's like there's a huge transparent square across the screen except on the very edge of it, which blocks clicks).
That's the only in-game workarounds I know of (that I've found on the Gentoo forums). There are currently 2 known wine/cedega workarounds, but they don't work for everyone. See: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-246098-postd
The truth of the matter is, it's not as easy as you think until you try it yourself (and believe me I've tried, I had it working fine before 1.5.1 patch). If Blizzard were to make a native client -- say, like Epic did with UT2003/2004 (used to play UT2004 on Linux some), Id did Doom 3 -- then these headaches would probably be almost non-existent.
Are there plans to let classes, other than shadow priests, melt faces in PvP?
wh3nz j00 0p3n t3h sh17 53rv3r xf3r.. j00 b1tch3s IOW, OPEN THE GOD DAMN FW -> FM TRANSFERS! I HAVE ORPHANED GEAR ON FW.. dont you whores understand!
Why does World of Warcraft run at 50-60 FPS on my 2.6 Ghz P4, 1 gig RAM with Radeon 9500 Pro (128 MB RAM) video card and only 25-30 FPS on my Dual 2 GHz G5, 2.5 gig RAM with Radeon 9800 Pro (256 MB RAM) video card?
can you explain the difference between client-side and server-side lag, and the basic causes of server-side lag?
I'd love to see a nice detailed topology of one of your server farms.
What is Blizzard's policy regarding server population? Given the long list of recent transfers, it seems as if they want to make all servers of medium population at all costs.
This is my only disappointment with Blizzard. They are doing a wonderful job otherwise to make the game playing experience enjoyable for all manner of players. However, they seem to neglect the nature of their servers. Each has its own culture, economy, etc.; adding a ton of new, high level characters on top distrupts this. It destroys the gaming experience for both natives and incoming transfers.
This change is dramatic, as I can attest to. I just recently began playing on Frostmane. Our guild master, a professor interested in spending time with students online, chose the server because it was low pop and had an even Alliance:Horde ratio. She wanted it to be a friendly place for freshman new to our campus and the World of Warcraft. A month after creating the guild, Frostwolf is dumped ontop of Frostman! The once quiet and peaceful server (perfect for playing with friends you know offline) became crowded with a lot of noisy, and sometime rude, players. I also can longer enter areas like Iron Forge with my minimum spec PC; the sheer number of models to load halts the game.
** In short, I would ask Blizzard to find a different means of managing server populations. **
Amen!
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I have very little to add to the parent other than my a rant about my experiences playing a Paladin.
Let me say this right up front: Paladins are Balanced. That's not the problem.
Paladins. Are. Not. Fun.
Here's a description of the interaction used in PvE:
Bless.
Right-click to auto-attack. Seal, Judge, Seal. Afk for a minute while you browse the forums/grab a dew/look at some pr0n. Loot.
Click+sealjudgeseal. Afk for another minute. Loot.
Click+sealjudgeseal. Afk. Loot.
Click+sealjudgeseal. Afk. Loot.
The 5-minute blessings are about up: goto Bless.
Here's a description of Paladin gameplay in MC:
Blessblessblessblessblessblessblessblessblessbles
Cleansecleansecleansecleansecleansecleanseclean
The tedious gameplay coupled with complete impotency in PvP (Test of Honor: 0% Paladin winners... hell, even broken warlocks got more than that...)
Now, a finisher and/or a real snare would be nice, as well as a mount/epic mount that wasn't worthless in PvP (I'd give up the "free" part in exchange for a mana-less mount), but I stopped playing my level 60 Paladin and canceled my account because if I wanted to hit one button over and over again regardless of the situtation, I'd work in a nuclear plant. Blizzard may be oblivious to how bad Paladins suck, but they're starting to lose customers (hard-core gamers like myself to boot) as a result.
I have a series of questions but any one being answered will make this avid gamer happy. Has any thought been given to extremely difficult and rewarding five man content? Are there any plans for single player instances that involves severe amounts of skill as a player? Are there any plans for further character advancement beyond grinding for gear? Or are there plans to add questable pieces of set gear that compare accordingly to some end game content?
There is an MMORPG popular in most eastern counties with over 40 million subscribers. It's called Mu
bite my glorious golden ass.
and thus have no incentive to Nerf Shamen?
Its universally agreed they are overpowered yet noone has come near them with a nerf bat.
Inquiring minds want to know.
To start off, yes I did play wow. My in game play time is 57 days. I did quit a month ago.
The in game assistance from Game Masters in World of Warcraft game is horrible. Well, not the assistance itself, but the time you have to sit any wait for help. The lowest time I ever waited was 2 hours, and that was a miracle. Most times when any glitch or major issue comes up, paging a GM results in a reply nearly 10 hours later (literally).
Does Blizzard plan on staffing more in game GMs to help with user problems, or can users always expect that when they need help in game they should open up a help ticket and then check their email the next day for their official reply? I've been in time sensitive situations where there is a bug and "epic" items could be lost (loot bugs in Molten Core for example) and not had a GM come in time to help us.
With 3.5 million subscribers each paying monthly for the game..
Can you please explain why the physical servers are shared among multiple realms (or game servers)? (obviously it cant be due to cost)
Do you plan on following up on your players requests for balanced to: Classes, Races, and Tradeskills or just dangle the carrot in front of them and grin evily while they hope and pray?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
Can I have your stuff?
oogly boogly!
that doesnt happen. give me one single link to anything thats not a gay ass, no evidence, forum post saying that this happens. the people that think that this is happening to them are the same people who think a browser setting a cookie is OMFGBBQ haxoring!! their PC. ie idiots.
but ok fine, next time i run wow ill fire up ethereal for 30 minutes and see whats really going on there. by the same token though, if people "know" that this is regularly happening, it should be trivial to detect with a router that dumps TCP connections to the console or simply by running ethereal as i plan on doing this evening.
the fact that with 3.5 million installs, no one but a few attention whoring forum wackos have noticed this is a testimate to its illegitimacy.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I'm a casual player with a precious few hours per week to play and it's been a lot of fun. Yesterday I went into WSG for the first time and it took about an hour for us Hordies to win. My question is: given the nature of the Honor system, Honor degradation over time, and the high cost of the BG rewards the whole thing seems to favor the serious BG player. Are there any plans to make a better set of rewards available to the casual player?
To whom it may concern:
Will Blizzard get to fixing issues where people who farm for real life cash deliberately crash instances or servers to dupe items? Since 1.6 patch, its quite common for instance servers to be deliberately and repeatedly crashed by people who are doing so in efforts to double their gold output. Barring overt crashing of instances, obvious farmers for ebay are mechanically taking over higher level zones on most servers. Tyr's hand, Azshara, and a number of other places are not playable. Its pretty obvious whom the people are who are doing the farming, and its not honest players who are trying to grind gold for their epic armor either.
Quite a number of MMORPGs were ruined by the fact that high level areas were totally denied to them by commercial entities who are playing the MMORPG not to have fun, but to profit illegitimatly. At the outset, it may be a cost center to focus on security at release, but if a MMORPG is abandoned in weeks of months after release because players are unable to advance, or are continually in competition with obvious commercial entities, that initial expense will seem small, compared to perhaps a release of another MMORPG.
Will Blizzard's coding practices cause World of Warcraft to follow these other MMORPGs to oblivion when the next generation of MMORPGS like Dungeons & Dragons Online or Vanguard come out, or will Blizzard step up policing and defensive coding practices and retain their customer base?
With 5 players each player is doing a lot more. Maybe the total group DPS is too low, so the preist will have to deal damage as well as healing. Or the warrior can go into damage dealing mode to raise group DPS but they'll take more damage too making things harder on the priest. You have all sorts of options and can play the way you want to see what works for you. Compared to 40-player where everything is a a precisely-scripted minor role, 5-man is far more fun and takes far more skill.
I seriously hope you are not playing on my server. Priests DPSing if mana inefficient. Warrior DPSing is stupid, becuase a mage or a rogue are soooo much more efficient then them, specially in a 5 man instance. That scenario you just presented is ridiculous. What do you want? A 5 shaman instance? Because they are the supreme jack of all trades. Perhaps it's because of people like you that the developers don't listen to the end users. How about you go roll a rogue and get 300 first aid so you can be a rogue healer?
Good idea... ... now do it in a multi-terabyte database spanning dozens of servers (per game "world") with hundreds of thousands of user accounts plus their millions of uniquely identified items.
For a bonus, do it in real-time and ensure that your customers don't get pissed off just because one of the servers isn't updating their account correctly and thus all their items suddenly disappear, because you better fucking believe you'll get more service calls from customers that lost their +50 Sword of Uberness worth $100 on eBay due to a server fuckup, than you'll get from the wankers duping items in a corner.
Not so easy anymore, is it?
Will this service eventually be expanded to where players can move a character from any server to any other server? (I'm sure players would pay for this capability and would not mind changing character names if they already exist.)
I'd also like to know if this service might become more granular. My daughter now has a character on my account. Eventually I see us buying another account for her, but I don't want her to have to start over. Would it be possible to transfer a single character from one account to another?
Oracle is used for Transaction integrity-one of the main parts of the technology of the world from what I've gathered. This is also one of the main reasons for Lag. Ever considered using mySQL + INNODB/Postgres for a few aspects of the game? It could cut your costs and provide a better experience for users.
Many players use Ventrillo or Teamspeak to organize group runs together especially in the greater-than-5-player instances. Are there any plans to include this voice-over-IP technology as a built-in game feature, perhaps at an extra monthly charge?
I've heard this argument in every mmorpg since time began hehe.
The bottom line is this:
Loot from large raids MUST be better than single group loot or there is zero incentive to raid.
Not only that, but the realism takes a major hit if single group loot is the same as some uber god's loot.
Why do I say that?
Raiding isn't fun. Ok, some aspects are. The pace, intensity, tons of folks making wise cracks, the big community feel of a guild, etc.. However, the planning, occasional in-fighting, loot disputes, back flagging, etc. are all negative aspects.
Grouping is easier to setup, takes less time to get going, less time to organize, typically is a group of close friends or people you know, etc.. You have the same fun playing in a group as in a raid, so those things cancel out.
Positive raid aspects = Positive group aspects = team feel, lots of social stuff going on
Negative raid aspects = organization, numbers determining what you can do, loot systems, etc..
Group loot = 1/2 of raid loot usually. or 1/3 of raid loot.
Raid loot = 2-3x group loot.
All in all, I'd say this equation is what balances a game:
Positive raid aspects + Negative raid aspects + greater raid loot = group loot + positive group aspects
Sorry, but at some point in a game, there must be some semblance of reality. Reality in the sense that 50 people taking down a god must yield some reward that is greater than 5 people taking down some orc chief.
The work involved in running, organizing, and maintaining a guild necessitates that the rewards must be higher, otherwise, why the F would I want to be part of a guild, and have my nightly activities decided for me?
Why not create a spell in game that allows a person the 'plane shift'.
.... if I can't move, then I'll probably just stop playing (and paying) ...
Name collisions can be got around by prepending 'Orginal Realm' or even using the original realm as a surname as in 'Francis of Windrunner'.
I can imagine being the subject of this spell would be traumatic and cause several hours of unconsciousness (as in give your systems a chance to do the move).
I started off on Windrunner myself, but want to move to Proudmore due to the larger number of Aussie users
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
What courses would you like to see in a game design program (physics, multimedia, AI, pop culture, Sci fi fiction)? What sort of content?
What tools (software design environments, hardware) would you recommend?
Can you recommend any books on game design that you think are useful?
What would you say are the minimum skill set needed for a game designer?
With recent patches, the differentiation between PvE and PvP servers seems to be diminishing. Battlegrounds now compromise the majority of player versus player combat, and are equally prevalent on both server types. With the introduction of dishonorable kills for civillians, city and town raiding have been effectively removed from the game. The honor system, also, takes a pve approach and rewards time spent instead of skill.
Is this the base intention of the developement team?
Specifically, as a competetive gamer, i'm interested in the likelyhood of any change that would base cp gain on skill. Examples include: A modifier that increases the direct kill cp reward the more you kill without dying (rewarding positive kill ratio). The loss of cp when you die. And, a large(r?) bonus for killing players of high rank. Perhaps even the move to a rating system; a formula to take into account kill ratio, kills per hour and bg win *percentage* in assigning weekly cp, as well as a small modifier to continue to take into account time played (at a much smaller portion of importance than the current system).
Are you planning on establishing a consistent economy - where stuff I sell to Merchants is available to other players to purchase, and vice-versa.
The current system of each vendor just somehow having stuff, doesn't quite cut it.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
How much consideration is given to cheaters in designing the protocols for the game?
;)
For example, if you move forward quickly, then players and creatures can be rendered quite close, instead of at perception distance(in the case of riding a gryphon, mobs often don't render on the screen until after I have flown past!). Does this happen because you don't want to transmit any data about objects outside of the perception area until actually inside the perception range to curtail cheating at the cost of performance?
As an addendum, were many other areas of the game, such as requiring the use of a mouse to get loot, affected by cheating considerations?
Oh yeah, and why do you have assertions enabled on live code?
From Thanksgiving 2004 until June 2005, I was addicted to World of Warcraft, playing more hours than I care to admit. I was focused on reaching level 60, achieving the success of building my character. Having been at level 60 now for the past few months, I find myself playing considerably less, and having no where near the fun I had before. High-level instances just don't cut it for me, and a lot of other people I know. What are you going to do to make level 60 play as much fun as level 1-59 play was? I think this is a serious issue for your company to solve, retention is key. Please don't respond by telling me how many high-level instances and battlegrounds you are adding. That's not what I mean.
World of Warcraft is sold to customers from various regions of the world from Canada to Singapore to Australia, all of which play on servers physically located in North America.
What challenges does Blizzard face in providing a consistent experience to customers in such a large geographic area?
I just canceled my account. I'm pretty hardcore and would have loved to stay with 1 level 60 character if I could have, but the complete lack of end game content meant I had to reroll alts all the time to continue having fun. I've now rolled enough alts that I can state with absoluet certainty that I have done every quest in the game, been to every instance and killed ever boss short of the BWL bosses.
Blizzard what do you have planned for people like me who wish to play your game but can not due to no additional content (Diremaul was a fantastic step in the right direction that just stopped, nothing new since)?
I've tried pvp but the 3-6 hour queues stopped me dead in my tracks. I've played every class to at least level 30, 4 of them to 60 and 2 others beyond level 50. PvE is now dead to me with nothing to offer other than loot grinding which holds absolutely zero appeal to me.
Professions are worthless as dropped items are better by several orders of magnitude. The unstable servers, despite what this article says, have driven myself and many others to madness. Nothing is worse than spending 5 minutes trying to loot a corpse or 20 minutes waiting for the auction house window to load. The multiple times over the last month in which servers were down for extrended maintenance was unacceptable.
Contrary to your press releases you are losing customers left and right. Many people I have played with since release, people I used to think would NEVER quit have now ended their subscriptions.
My questions and concerns are asked on your own forums every single day by people of like mind, more often than not they are ignored, flamed to death (forum moderators exist there?) or locked and deleted by your pitiful community managers saying repeatedly things like "working as intended", "please be patient", "the developers are happy with this fuctionality" etc. Why am I to believe asking questions is even worthwhile and by extension why is my continued investment of time and money in this game and your company worthwhile?
Three words:
Worlds. Of. Starcraft.
Enough said.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I've played quite a few other MMORPGs, and in most cases, the level cap has been increased in all instances (with appropriate quests/lands being added). This is done to keep players around in the long term. Is Blizzard going to increase the level 60 cap, when will it happen, and what content will be added in regards the the cap increase?
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Any plans to release hourly game cards? Currently only bimonthly (60-day) cards are available, which waste away if not used after activation. For example, if I activate a card on July 1st, it expires on August 29th no matter how many hours a day I play. I (as well as many other users) would like to be able to purchase a game card for x number of hours and play it out over some period of time.
I'd like to expand a bit on what the previous poster commented on. I've enjoyed World of Warcraft a great deal all the way to level 60. Unlike many of the players who lament the need to find groups to complete most of the in-game content past level 30, I really enjoy finding other people to form up with in order to meet the challenges presented by all of the games zones and instances. Working with other people lets you use your class to its fullest effect, something I really enjoy.
However, much of the endgame content seems deeply flawed. Areas like the Molten Core, which require 40 people to complete, work unlike any other challenge in the game. Nearly every class is forced to use the same abilities over and over again, as opposed to taking advantage of the diverse palette of skills available to them. The entire instance, for many classes, requires the use of no more than three buttons to complete.
The problem, to me, seems to be rooted in the old ideal of large groups of players fighting single, epic enemies. In order to keep a team of 40 players from overpowering such an enemy with control skills, they're rendered completely immune to them. It seems that in these situations, though, nearly every class loses much of the original flavor that let people enjoy the game in the first place. What has the design team learned from some of the previous endgame content they have written, and what kind of experiences do we have to look forward to in future patches?
Why after almost a year that the game has been out can you not keep your servers stable? What drove me away originally was the lack of stability that you had on your servers and every time I think of comming back I start watching the boards and sure enough people start complaining about thier server being down and sometimes Blizzard anounces 24 hour down times for maintaince and to me that is not acceptable as a consumer.
Itemization throughout the game, in general, is terrible. In my Dire Maul group last night, we had like 4 or 5 blue items total drop, plus 4 or 5 green items. The first 2 named mobs dropped ONLY green items! This was done because the first bosses in Dire Maul are easy to farm. You can kill one, zone out and reset the instance and kill them again. Over and over. The green items were placed in there to deter boss farming.. it'd be just dumb if you could farm those bosses for blues. Enchanting would be cheaper, though.
Always wondered why that was. It was the only one that sounded at all appealing to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Reroll to the Horde you insensitive alliance clod!
Mark me off-topic, but...
When the heck is Ghost going to be released?
-David
5 man groups need rogues from time to time.
DM is much easier with a rogue.
I played WoW from December to April and was very impressed with the gameplay and interface. The level grind wasn't overly cumbersome(Everquest), and the Auction House, Quest Sytem, etc were very elegant designs. WoW was a common sense approach to problems that so many other MMORPGs never bothered to examine. I truly felt like I was in good hands with Blizzard...until I reached level 60.
I have to ask, why did you choose to neglect the first rule of MMORPGs? After reaching level 60, players can no longer improve their characters. The inability to continue growing my talent tree after 60 was such a turn-off that I quit playing a few weeks after reaching 60. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy exploring new instances, and there's a glint in my eye for epic equipment, but none of those things substitute for experience based character growth. Everquest players were very satisfied with the alternate-advancement system. Why didn't you guys adopt such a system for WoW?
Hitting 60 was a huge letdown for me, and based on the WoW forums I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. After a 4 month absence, what I've read tells me that nothing has changed. I can only assume that experience post 60 is a low priority for your design team, and that you don't think players care that much. If you could please share your thoughts with us about this issue.
Thanks,
-An Orc who misses Orgrimmar
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I would like to ask the simple question: How many lines of code is WoW, including the graphics engine?
Will the middle islands in World of Warcraft be opened up any time soon? When will the hero levels be released? and is there a plan for more class speicific content?
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Several of your concerns are already addressed, or have been addressed. The last patch added in the ability to see your raid's health (just drag and drop either a class or the party number from the raid panel). Dire Maul has exits. Zul'Gurub (an instance in the next patch) will be a 20-man instance. The instance, IMHO, have gotten shorter- a Dire Maul East boss run gets you good loot and is doable faster. 4 of the classes have healing. I've main-healed UBRS as a paladin (admittedly, I'm specced and geared for it). The developers are supposedly re-evaulating the paladin's Blessings.
The above comment is CopyWrong (K) Erisian Entertainment. All Rights Reversed. Ewige Blumenkraft!
In your opinion, how complete would you say the game was on release (on a scale of 1-100, 100 being totally complete) and why do you feel that way? In your opinion, how confident were you that World of Warcraft would succeed (same 100pt scale) and why? Thanks
Would you consider adding the "exchange server" ruleset, allowing players to buy and sell gold, items, etc? Of course I'm suggesting a similiar model to SOE, where you run the auction service, handle payments, etc.
From what I've seen, the station exchange is a success in every form. The virtual sellers/buyers win, the people who don't like it get better servers (since the buyers/sellers are on the exchange servers), and of course SOE wins cause they get more revenue.
So just curious if this is an idea you would consider.
What tools did you use to Load test WOW?
The title is a bit misleading I know. But my question is about the overall quests and things to do in the game. I am an avid gamer, and an avid RPG player, and have indeed tried WoW. Though I only played for about a month or so. The reason I quit is because I got bored very quickly. The world isn't dynamic enough, and isn't dynamic in any respect of the word in my opinion. Nothing changes in the world, except for maybe the economy. Not only does everything not change, but everything is static. Once you play through the first town, and I would go as far to say the firts half of that town, then you have pretty much played the entire game. Every quest is the same, just in a bit different context. I have effectively grouped all quests into these catagories: Kill, gather, find, and the occasional escourt. Now I could understand if those quests had some sort of imact of the WoW world, but they don't; they actually have near nill relevance to the world. Maybe if there were more world changing quests, or "events" as some might call them then the game would be more enjoyable. As a gamer I found this game bland at best. At first I thought that was was pretty amazing, from the way everyone talked about it. Then I played and realized that the game wasn't as amazing as everyone said. My question is: will you ever change the quest system, or include other quests, that will seem like you have an impact on the world? I understand this isn't easy, but in a world where new MMORPGS will be released very shortly you may have to change the way the game is done or risk losing subscribers. Right now you have a lock on the market because you are, I admit, probably the best MMO out there now. With games such as City of Villians, Dark and Light, and Auto Assault on the horizon do you have any plans to change anything about the game? Basically my question is will the world ever become a dynamic one in which the players have the ability to change it?
I think (and I could be wrong) that the moderators are being paid to weed out the meaningful questions and comments and present them to the upper echelon, and return to the players with meaningful replys.
The demands from the players to interact directly with the developers comes more from the castrated responces from the moderators and their own admitted uninvolvement in any decision process than a real desire to speak with the people who make the game.
Having read the discription of how the last Priest review was conducted (providing it was accurate) makes me wonder why anyone would want to do that job.
Perhaps putting a little more detail into the coming soon page, maybe answering at least 1 question from each of the forums each month (not all at once), or provide some sort of progress indicator would (I was going to say reduce the number of complaints, but that would be naieve) reduce the amount of animosity and alienation your players feel.
So here comes my question:
What are the challenges from the developers point of view with keeping lines communication open with the representatives in the field?
I'd like to hear your side of this.
What is Blizzard going to do to address the issues that currently exist with low population servers now and in the future. For current issues, I will point at the Warsong Gultch and the Alterac Valley instances; estimated wait time 1 minute, actual wait time 3hrs 14mins.
This is a very real issue NOW and it will be much worse in the future when more and more people have maxed out faction rewards. Personally, the immediate answer that springs to my mind is that PvP instances and instances where people try to form a pick up group through the meeting stone should first attempt to match on the current server and, if that fails within a resonable amount of time, match you up with players from other servers. If this solution is, somehow, too complicated for you to implement then the only other solution I can think of is character transfers from low population servers to medium or high population servers.
What about live people playing the role of NPCS? You should be able to hire guys from India to do it. Not only would it enhance roleplaying and battles, they could keep an eye out for Chinese gold farmers.
Is there any possibility of having some more environmental effects in the world? Things like: Weather - rain/snow, heatwaves, wind? Mana dead areas - where spells dont work Dark areas in caves so you need torches/light spells.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Why are people still logging out and back into instances every few minutes?
I'll confess to some hostility here. My entire guild has moved on to other games. That's 15 people who were interested enough in your game to create lvl 60 characters, got bored, quit, and stopped giving you any money. I bet we aren't alone. Nothing that you can do to pve is going to get us back. Ever. We hate it like poison. The less pve the better. Your pvp is boring. If you want to get us and our money back, then the pvp has to get a lot better. Making these changes will do that as far as we are concerned. 1) Allow in-game Alliance/Horde communications channels. (Tabbing out to irc is annoying.) 2) Allow Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch instances to be created with instance names and passwords. (So we can set up matches with particular horde/alliance players.) 3) More pvp maps. Two is not enough. 4) More pvp game types. Two is not enough. 5) Fix the queing system. Stop punishing pre-organized groups for entering them together. Tell us how many players are q'd on the other side. 6) Rebalance the pvp/pve loot in favor of pve. It's not an issue on non-pvp servers, and on pvp servers better pvp players should have l33t3r l00t servers. The way it is, there are people running instances for the umpteenth time instead of fighting with/against the other players. That is so wrong. Are any of these things on your schedule? If so, when? If not, do you have some other plan to make pvp less horribly dull? What is it? See, here's the thing. On three occasions we managed to get a good alliance group into WG at the same time that there was a good horde group there. It was really fun. pvp in WoW could be great.
Why o why is there a limit on how many quests you can have in the questlog (max 20)?
I am uncertain if Blizzard intentends to do a 'Hero' class character or not, but these are my thoughts on it as well as the possibility of playing a purely neutral character in game on PvE and RP Realms.
Similar to the 'Hardcore' character that can be created on Battlenet for playing Diablo 2, I think it would be quite interesting to see how many people (players and Devs alike) would be open to the idea of having a hardcore/hero character in WoW. You could even start the game as a normal class, however at a specified level (30-40?), you have the option of going hardcore. This would turn you into a player 'Elite'. You are tougher, hit harder, etc., just like the NPC Elite's. However, if you die.... you are done with that toon. Game over. Reroll. I think this would certainly be the challenge that most higher level players are looking for that are not into playing Unreal Tourna.. I mean... Battlegrounds (don't get me started on how stupid it is to have a capture the flag game within a fantasy realm). Thoughts from all?
As for player neutrality - I think this applies particularly well for Druids, as they are in the history of role playing, supposed to be a 'True Neutral' class. There is a hint of this within WoW and the Druid Moonglade (Night Elf and Tauren guards co-existing peacefully), but that is where it ends. Druids should be played on PvE and RP realms as pure neutral characters. This would give them the advantage of being able to experience the entirety of the game with one single character, as opposed to having to split your time between the two. Other classes could also achieve this status (neutrality), but perhaps would be required to complete a quest to prove their worth and the such. And if you ever breach your neutrality, it is lost forever, never again to be trusted within an opposing faction city again. Thoughts?
I love what a couple of posters have suggested about the dishonorable kills. If a griefer accumulates either a base number or a percentage of their kills by running around a popping lowbies, I'm all for either having an NPC assassin (62 - elite) released on them, or have them pull aggro from even trying to enter their own factions larger towns (as they are a disgrace).
Post your feedback!
1. How does a customer provide direct feedback over underlying in game issues such as game balance, bugs, that seriously undermine their class? I have many issues with the mage class and would like to know what Blizzard plans on doing to address them.
2. What is the process to formally lodge a complaint about a Community Manager? *cough* Eyonix *cough* *cough*
This has been posted a few times on the WoW forums, both on general, and the suggestions forum. While some aren't as civil about it, I think that Aussies (as well as the Kiwis) would just like to know if there'll ever be a server located in our neck of the woods, or even for our region. This isn't just about crappy connections, though having pings I haven't had since I had dialup kinda sucks. We also want to be able to play alongside others without having to log in at 5am our time. Whether its a yes, or a no, I think many of us just want a definite answer so that we know -- so far, there doesn't seem to have been a response.
This is a simple question, but why can't I move my character realm to realm?
"Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space..."
I've seen the caverns of time in Tanaris by letting the giant dragon kill me and ressing inside. It's pretty cool looking but it's still not open for business. I think a cool idea for this instance would be to make you progressively get weaker the longer you're in it. So you have to rush through to get to the boss before you're too weak. When will this instance be completed? Will it breathe fresh life into the game?
It's not difficult it's just bad design
You can't just scale up hp or damage or anything to make encounters scale. Seriously. It's just not that easy.
---
I support spreading santorum
As an avid WoW player I have been noticing that in a few weeks the 1.7 patch will be released and that version 2 is coming up soon. Marking the 1st year of WoW in a couple months will 2.0 signify that event. And if so/not what sort of changes are we going to see? Hero classes? World change event? New races and classes? Uncap leveling to beyond 60? Would be interesting to see where and what direction the game is going to take.
Would you consider introducing Family Account pricing, allow multiple machines to connect from 1 IP address? You could limit the client spawns to say.. 2 other machines.
My wife and children also play WoW, and it would be rather nice if we could make use of the spare computer and play together.
This would be an excellent feature that I'm sure would be welcomed by many. I'd gladly pay a bit extra for this, but can't really justify paying for yet another full account.
Fangtooth has done a horrendous job advocating the concerns of paladins and priests. He pisses us all off and we're not happy.
Anyhow.
Right now I find it much easier to hold aggro specced retribution (two hander damage increases, consecrate. etc.), but it would be damn nice to be able to do it that well while holding a shield. Fix the protection tree so that it actually makes for a tank that can hold aggro and take the damage well, and I'll be happy about our class.
You morons owe me like 2 months of free subscription time due to releasing the crappy honor system before battlegrounds was out. Do you realize how difficult it was to PvE near TM or in Tanaris? Level 30-40 toon walking down a path and ganked by 5 60s. Yah great fun. Way to go blizzard. I want my life back.
Why aren't we allowed to do that? Sure, you're not suppose to heal players from the opposing faction but shouldn't that be a choice for a player to make rather than enforced within the game rules?
Forget that! My question is "When do I get my wife back?!?"
(Actually, it's okay. I use the time to play Matrix Online.)
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
It's a running joke(?) that Blizzard hates the Paladin class. Not only were they nerfed just prior to the launch of the game, but they have the most mind-numbing job of anyone in the end-game: Cast a 5-minute buff on up to 39 other people and spam healing spells on the tanks. You have said that all classes are being looked at and having certain talents and abilities changed. It is the opinion of the general populous that the Paladin is in the greatest need of such revamping. So what type of changes are you making to the Paladin class, in terms of the Talent skills, their spells, and their role in end-game content?
With all the many ways an artist, writer, programmer can contribute to the (real) world, what are some of the ways your staff rationalize their involvement in something which has this particular characteristic associated with on-line games?
Or does anybody stop to think about it at all? It seems like it might be one of those elephant-in-the-living-room issues which everybody just nervously ignores.
What are your thoughts?
-FL
When will you nerf shamans, if ever?
Everyone knows they're unbalanced in PvP. Will you ever fix this problem?
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates is platform independent.
so i played for a bit and it's cute but last week my account get banned for "investigation". which is midly annoying but i didn't do anything to fall fould of blizzards polocies so i'm expecting to get my account back which i can then properly pass the items out in lagForge and term the account.
but the question is if the account stays banned am i not entitled to a refund for the game? you've sold me a physical item which is no in essence been taken away from me. i should get the $50 back for the media as it's now useless. i don't mind blizz keeping the monthly sub fees as that's understandable membership fees. i can't quite think of another scenario where a manufacturer can so royally screw their customer. where else can you buy a product and have the item actually revoked from you with no compentsation.
i know the eula probably states you waive the rights to your first born to be enslaved as a code monkey if you're considered to be exploiting, but can this stand up?
Will the game be enhanced to allow enforcement of more rules among group members - for instance, if everyone in a group agrees "let's roll for that chest", have the game guarantee that only the winner can open it?
I would envision a kind of majority voting system, where if at least 3 of 5 players feel a rule is appropriate, it can be "voted in" to the rules that the game enforces on the group's activities.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the game is the chance that a player might "ninja", stealing items that are not his or hers according to those sensible-but-easily-ignored "group rules".
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
Since the PvP patch was implemented players were given the choice of grinding in instances or grinding in instanced PvP (for the most part) as a way to aquire items. Almost every serious PvPer I have talked to describes WoW as item intense (as compared to (Ultima Online style) skill or (Quake style) twitch). This leads to literally hundreds of hours being spent collecting the phattest of loot so one can have a higher chance of combat success.
People also describe instanced PvP option as santized and boring, lacking risk and reward (some of the rewards are simply an opportunity to spend money). Friends have mine have dedicated much of their waking hours to the PvP option and find personal skill, teamwork and composure in a fight is much less important than the sheer hours played to achieve PvP rewards.
What is Blizzard doing to titilate the more hardcore PvP crowd which doesn't want to spend 18 hours a day in a PvE instance or similiar amounts in instanced PvP (much of which is waiting in queues for the match to start)?
Is the ability to conquer and control towns ever going to be implemented? Will casual gamers who level capped their avatar and know their class as well as anyone ever have a reasonably equal chance as someone who has no life and put in hundreds if not thousands of hours collecting epic items?
Any news on a true sequel to Starcraft? I hear that Blizzard is already working on a new yet-unannounced title.
WTF?
1. Will there be an update to the world such as new worlds. It'g geting a bit boring for the level 60's. 2. Will the level cap increase anytime soon? 3. When will we be geting legendery equipment (only 1 on each server) 4. When will they do or what will they do about the battlegrounds. I have tried to join about 5 time's each accasion i have waited over 4 hours with no luck. How does this system work? And can they fix the approximate time (It says approximately 30 minutes and i usually wait 4 hours). 5. Will they do anything about the shaman coz they kick arse, I dont think there is a class that can beat them 1 vs 1. 6. Also blacksmith is basikly usless as you can get better stuff from drops. And if you wanted to make something you are better of bying it coz it is cheaper than buying the mats, will you be adding new stuff that is actually worth making and you can actually afford at high levels? Apart from that it is a great game and i love it.
The WoW server is down! (seriously!)
Any word on lowering the cost? Even a little goes a long way. Great game!
So is there any plan to provide adequate service to the customer is dealing with the poor server issues that keep occurring and reoccuring ?
Once upon a time, a soon to be mommy and daddy loved each other very much (the lust was strong as well as the drinks)
Blizzard recently pushed WoW to the chinese market by opening servers in China. This is a great marketing move, but at the same time makes the rest of us outside the US and China feel like we're insignificant.
When will we see localised servers physically based in other countries such as Australia?
So far, my favorite part, is my ability to continue question solo if I like. The henchman concept, so far, has made it possible for me to play alone if I want.
I realize that if I want to be alone, I shouldn't be playing an MMORPG... but the popularity of MMORPGs has made really good PC RPGs a continuing rarity.
I loved the Warcraft games so much that I could never play WoW (major time sink! :-)
My question is, would your company encourage, allocate time for and generally nudge willing developers to blog?
It seems Blizzard has a bad name among some who used to like Blizzard. This is due to bugs, some bad moves by Blizzard legal, and a "black box" process for customer feedback (many comments here bemoan the 'handlers' on the Blizzard forums).
If anyone's worried about bad postings and replies to the blog, a good example to look at is the Microsoft IE7 bloggers. A public blog seems to have influenced Microsoft into fixing IE7 to a degree more than initally planned, which is a Good Thing for many.
A theory is their developers wanted to do the right thing, and the blog helped support that.
...so we know who to direct the complaints to.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about end-game equipment choices, for both casters and melee. There are several issues:
1) Casters get less benefit from gear upgrades than melee players. They can increase their mana with INT, or their mana regen *after 5 seconds of no casting* with SPI, but most just choose +mana regen items, making neither of these really help. All they get from most items is a little stamina. Now, there are +damage and +crit items for spells, but these are not at all mainstream, unlike +STR or +AGI for melee, and they often require sacrificing *every* other stat on that slot.
2) Alterac Valley rewards are heavily melee-centric and quite good for something farmable. This has two problems: first, it adds to the caster problem above, second, the fact that soon every melee will be walking around with The Unstoppable Force because it can be farmed in a few weeks of casual play and is much better than most easily obtainable 60 weapons. There need to be more alternatives.
3) Many epic sets suck, for all classes. Instead, people mix random epics and even blues with a few epic set items. For example, a Warrior typically wants 2 sets: one with insane +def for tanking melee mobs, and one with insane fire resist for fire mobs; Wrath or Might fit neither of these categories. Similarly, a caster wants mana regen and +damage instead of yet another point of INT/SPI, but caster epic sets don't provide this.
These are all problems that you're probably aware of. I'm just bringing them up for background. However, I have a more interesting question: So far all the rewards in WOW are better equipment. You get better gear to help you get even better gear. What will you do when this reaches the point of trivializing end-game content, or of making fully-geared level 60's completely dominate newer ones or high 50's in PVP? Will that mean it will be X-pack time, or do you have plans for a non-equipment-based reward, such as some kind of guild ladder or something?
How much did the Oracale DBA(s) get when you begged them to join in Dec/Jan?
Is Blizzard going to work on fixing the issues they are having with Gm's who either are too overworked and busy or too lazy or simply want to cause grief to players by accusing them of hacking or using 3rd party hacks in the game by mistake and then ban them from the game with no warning or apparent method of disputing it?
This is what happened to me. I came home from work one day to an email stating such. This was days after coming across the Wyvern bug and not knowing what to do at the time, tried riding it to another Flight point in the hopes that it would reset. I never made it of course. A friend told me that I needed to log off to get off the thing which I happily did. (If you have experienced this bug you know how it can make one sick to their stomach)
Now before anyone comes along with a reply accusing me of being a cheater and deserving it, I will let you know that after replying to the Gm email and being told basically I was out of luck and no further replies would be read and a 45 minute long distance call to tech support (42 minutes on hold 3 talking) I was given another email to plead my case to. The Bosses of the Gm's.
To make a long story short, I got my account back once someone who knew what they were doing could or cared to take a longer look at the incident and saw I was telling the truth.
Personally, I suspect that you are falling victim to your own popularity and do not have enough manpower to effectively do your jobs and hope this will be fixed by more employees and better training and hack detection software that doesn't lump victims of In-game bugs with people who are truly cheating.
But I suppose I am trying to ask what you actually plan to do to improve this rather than try to guess myself. If this happened to me, I can only guess how many other truly innocent people lost their accounts, wasted time and effort and some money (cost of game, monthly fee which was non-refundable) and did not prevail in getting their accounts back simply because they weren't as relentless in pleading their case politely as I was.
My question would be:
As a Shadow Priest, will I be melting faces?
Since you have an international presence, do you use mixed currency or just one? Could you take us through what it's like to be in a money fight?
(for those that dont know - http://warbucket.com/site/encyc/view_entry.php?id= 107
This is a two parter with the first part being a question and the second part being a statement:
Part One:
One of the most interesting aspects of MMORPGs - and computer roleplaying games (CRPGs) in general - is the nearly frustrating obfuscation of the game mechanics. Take nearly any MMORPG you've played or any CRPG, sit down with it, and try to come up with an accurate, verifiable game system that could be played without the computer - no points for decompiling the game or pouring over the source, only the game and accompanying instructional manual may be used. Dollars to donuts, there's probably less than 1% of the games out there on which you could do this easily.
Why is this? Why do MMORPG/CRPG makers feel an almost universal desire to overcomplicate and obfuscate their game mechanics? Coming from playing pen and paper roleplaying games as well as board games for over 15 years, I'm left boggled and perplexed by the inability of most players in most MMO's to make honest value decisions about the many choices they have to make.
Let me give you an example:
In the current incarnation of "Dungeons and Dragons" (D&D 3.5), one is faced time and time again with value based decisions. For example, take the hypothetical question of, "Do I choose this armor over that?" The response might be, "Well, this armor has a higher Armor Bonus (Note: Armor Class in D&D is usually a scale that typically goes from 8 to 60, this will be important later), but that other one allows me to apply more of my Dexterity bonus (Note: Dexterity bonuses are usually on a scale of -2 to +10) to my Armor Class. Also, that armor has a lower Armor Check Penalty, but if someone catches me early in the round, my Dexterity won't matter anything." At some point, using the rule system and some rather simple analysis, I can make a value judgement based on criteria which include not only the rules of the game, but also my personal preference.
However, in games like WoW and EQ, one is often left staring at two alike pieces of armor and wondering at their value. The same hypothetical question above, when analyzed, becomes, "Well, I can take this armor, it has a higher armor value by 50 points (Note: On a scale that often goes from 1 to many, many thousands) or I can take that other armor which has 5 more Agility (Note: On a scale that often goes from 1 to multiple hundreds). Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of the rules underwhich the game operates, so I guess I'll just have to sit here and try to rationalize which one is better." And while WoW has gone far beyond the days of Ultima and EQ and given us actual numbers (Oh, the joy of actually having a value which describes my blocking percentage!) there is still much that is fuzzy in the rules system which defines the world WoW.
I guess this gets to the very heart of my complaint against computer RPG's of all flavors: Why the animosity, the fear, the anxiety about publishing your game's rule system? Is it IP concerns? Is it the fear of cloning? Or is it the fear that with the ability to make value decisions the players will figure out a way to maximize the utility of every item and ability?
If it's the last, then why is it that games like D&D are able to keep players playing 20 years on - some even playing the original editions and versions every week for nearly two decades? I understand that there's a lot more personal control in a game like D&D, but there's also a level of depth and expansiveness in a game like WoW that I think few D&D games have barely scratched the surface of.
Part Two:
I hate 40 man raids. Seriously. They're boring. I, rather blessedly, belong to a particularly good (Toot toot!) WoW guild on a fairly popular server and have had the honest pleasure of getting a few pieces of purple Molten Core gear on my character. My guild has been at the forefront of a number of server and side firsts and we've never dismissed an opportunity to take on a challenge for a "Server first". But, despite all of this, I find m
First, I do not have ANY shaman characters, so I can't attest to whether or not they're overpowered in general. I can say, however, from my point of view (lvl 60 mage), I don't think shaman are INCREDIBLY overpowered. I think the only problem is that they're falling into some of the same melee itemization > caster itemization issue. While they're casters, they're becoming strong melee as well, which gives them a little extra. One on One, there is no harder class to beat than a priest. They're clearly overpowered in 1v1 pvp. They're also overpowered in group pvp, it just isn't obvious at first glance. Do a 10man v 10man and give one side a priest and not the other, see who wins. Druids aren't far behind. While I realize for PvE, it's really cool to see how well a group scales with priests, you need to maintain the balance for pvp. Unfortunately blizzard has let this get to the point that it's so broken it's near impossible to fix. You can't nerf heals, because priests would be useless. You'd have to rebalance the entire game from scratch.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
What are the technical realities/challenges of lag and what are you doing to improve the situation? Specifically lag when large groups of players are all in the same place.
Where is itemization in this game going?
The gear that mages most covet, in case you didn't know, has nothing to do with intellect or any other stat. Stats aren't helping us compete with warriors in terms of damage at raids.
We want +damage gear.
What's really perplexing is that much of the best mage gear doesn't come from the toughest dungeons in the game. In terms of risk-vs-reward it doesn't make any sense at all.
Here's the gist: Do you really intend for a bunch of random crap picked up from all over to be better than Netherwind?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Are there any plans for a Diablo II-esque system of socketing weapons and armor to make them more effective in combat which would increase the variety of equipment even further amoung other things?
Why is my server down, again.
Why does it take over an hour for your realm status and realm setus forum pages to recognize it as being down.
http://interserver.net/
Can you implement a quest log history, where done quests are just marked as done.
That way - I can pass an earlier quest in a chain I am doing to a prospective group member.
Currently it's a pain when each person is upto a different part.
Remember - the downside for the person is not getting the XP upto that point, the up side is joining in on a group quest.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
To what extent did the Lord of the Rings saga influence the development team, and to what extent are they themselves fans of this saga? Dont know if the answer was given a long time ago, and apologize if asking the same question again. To me the question seems so obvious.
The WoW client apparently checks what processes are running and what webpages are open, then transmits it back to Blizzard. If this is to prevent cheating, why do all realms know who the gold farmers are and what the dupes are? (hint: read the realm forums). Blizzard doesn't seem to stop this sort of activity, or any other actions that violate the TOS, so why do the spying? On a side note; server stability is very bad. SWG had better stability, but a worse game. If this dosn't improve, I could see out whole guild moving on to other games.
i played EQ prior to WoW and as happy as i am with the quality of the content, your game seems so small. i can count on one hand the quests and dungeouns thre are for me to play on my main character. Im not too excited about the World of Altcraft element of your game (creating yet another level 60 character of another class instead of pushing one to uberness). I by no means consider myself a power player. how are you going to keep the subscribers that are into end-game play happy? it lookls like youre creating a situation where the average player demands just as much low-level content to create another alt because they think thats what youre supposed to do in an MMO, instead of wanting more to do with a 60. IMO youre spreading your dev team out horizontally instead of vertically. thank you.
The new (and extremely flawed) paladin combat system was introduced about three weeks before retail, with no real public testing. Why didn't you solicit feedback on this from the players a month or so later, instead of eight?
Have you considered having truly contested territory in which there would be castles/fortresses that could be held by either side in the regular world outside of instances? Perhaps there would be a flag in the inner keep that if a side were to capture then the fortress and surrounding area could be controlled for a while by that side. The inner keep could have epic gear and high honor points as rewards to keep the high levels interested. Once a castle was held by a faction, their own guards would replace the guards of the other. I just think it would make contested territories much more interesting and realistic if a faction could conquer an area. What say you?
While technical issues were a problem for the first few months of retail service, prompt patching and additional world servers have left the game in excellent shape.
That is absolutely not true, the game suffers from way more issues now than it did when I bought it, a lot. The servers are constantly down for any reason, disconnect are frequent and lag is absolutely ridiculous. Stupid bugs like being told by the system that you arent facing a creature while you are straight facing it, telling you you are too far from the creature while actually hugging it and so on... Many instances crashes during important even and people can't access them and retry for hours if not days...
This article is uther bullshit for saying such a lie as if it was a universally accepted truth, WoW is absolutely NOT stable and very laggy, the fact that some other games are too doesn't excuse it. Actually it is impossible to play for 10 min without encountering a bug... An you pay for this, every month...
I wonder why the BG-queue is intra-server?
When I logged on on Battle.Net to play a WC3 game I did:
Select my preferred gametype, start search for a game. Wait approx 2s, rarely up to a minute. Then play.
In WoW I do: run to either the correct NPC in Orgrimmar or run to the BG instance for joinung up a queue. If I chose WSG then wait minimum 2s, but often several minutes in prime time up to forever. If I chose AV then wait 'til I grow mossbeard.
The BG queuesystem is no fun; I want to sign up and play; not sign up and wait.
So, why don't you have a intra-server queue?
I don't care much if the other players don't come from my own server.
I just want to play.
I reconn trade will have to be disabled, or allow only playermade items like food, drink, HealthStone and perhaps potions?
urd
Except for a small number of missions (3-4) after the desert, you won't *need* human players if you're skilled.
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
Perhaps some comments on the XBox version as well
When will you develop a customer service system with accountability. Eg, some ticket system with a code or a number with a website link. (eg bugzilla)
I am sick of having a problem (such as instance keeps kicking us out then porting us back to our hearth) and then the response (such as we are unable to resolve pvp disputes please see the pvp guidlines) I get back is completely unrelated. Obviously I should be able to click a link and say 'not so fast buddy'. But no, cannot be done.
Also what is the deal with your craptastic forums, reroute some resources to make that into something.
* Search isnt useful at all in forums.
* Cannot view new messages since last login or whatever.
* Rarely remembers your login/character. After logging in the first post is always broken and you need to have copy and pasted the text before you hit submit because you KNOW it rarely works.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Loot from large raids MUST be better than single group loot or there is zero incentive to raid.
And why should there be an incentive to Raid? RPGs have been about the small party since DnD in the 70's, and even into the computer format. It was only Evergrind that came up with the 40 man party. It was a stupid idea at the time, and it's even stupider now.
Not only that, but the realism takes a major hit if single group loot is the same as some uber god's loot.
The realism takes a far larger hit when you intend for the players to grind through the same 10 bosses (MC) hundreds of times for loot. How can you kill Rag 100 times for loot, he's one boss?
The work involved in running, organizing, and maintaining a guild necessitates that the rewards must be higher, otherwise, why the F would I want to be part of a guild, and have my nightly activities decided for me?
This is the key area we seem to disagree. The "work" involved in running, organizing, and maintaining a guild spoils the game. It is a game, not "work".
In this game that's supposed to be fun, exactly, why the F do you want to have your nightly activities decided for you? It spoils the fun and you're saying they have to bribe people to spoil their fun with better loot. It's a fundamentaly flawed model.
For me, I'd rather stay in a guild of friends I've been with since the server launched even though we have no chance of doing MC in the next few months.
Why doesn't Blizzard (or any other MMORPG that I've heard of) allow users to pay for only as much as they play, instead of having only a fixed monthly sum? This works well for ISPs...
This would allow casual players to play, who don't want to pay a large monthly amount jsut to login once a week, for example.
I learn from all my mistakes, I intend to be a genius at the end of my life.
Will you be adding any new low level content for the new people that are comming? or adjusting acess to battlefields so low level people are not shut out because the there are more level 60 players out there? I know its easier to keep the level 60 people playing because if they got thru the boring low level content then there easier to dup into playing shoddy assemblyline code you put out for them.
Since the europe release I've spent on averge 8 hours a day ingame. If I count the endless hours I spend on allakhazam, thottbot and misc forums it's surely 10. My real job is my secondary job. My hunter is my primary job.
Why do you design endgame content to suck the life out of you? 10g repair cost per Razorgore attempt forces you to farm gold endless hours to actually afford to play. And I'm just a hunter. Maintanks cries themselves to sleep. 10% durability loss per death ftl!
Girls are strange. They don't come with a man page.
-- Michael Mattsson
Let me tell you a short story. I joined WoW in July and got promptly recruited into a guild. (Some people seem to spam everyone in sight with invites.) I was a warrior. So I mention that I've taken up smithing, so I can someday make items for myself.
The unanimous guild mates' answer? "Dude, don't be stupid. You can buy better stuff at the auction house than you'll ever be able to craft."
Even better yet? "Ditch smithing and get mining and skinning. Sell skins and metals at the AH and buy better stuff."
Now I'm not opposed to crafting being, say, equal to dropped stuff. But the fact is, crafted items are _inferior_ to even drops from normal non-elite non-instance NPCs.
Yes, you can set some silly goal for yourself to have an inferior weapon crafted by yourself, instead of something better you could get from an instance or PvP. I do that kind of thing myself. Believe me, I usually love crafts, so I tried hard to believe that this time I'm doing something useful and meaningful. It's called "denial".
In reality there is no _logical_ reason to actually bother gathering/buying/bartering all those reagents instead of just farming whatever instance is apropriate for your level. The time and effort to get something better are actually lower.
At the moment, instances and PvP are the alpha and the omega, and that's that. The difference is just nuts in terms of rewards between those and _anything_ else you can do, crafting or questing included, other than for the purpose of getting an instance quest. (E.g., for a low level example that anyone should be familiar with, if you're gonna do the Deadmines, you might as well get a reward from Gryan Stoutmantle too.)
(And unrelated, while I'm at it, here's my wish for Blizzard: I wish that they'd balance the damn things against the rest of the game. Let's stop the silly pretense that everyone goes there because of the sheer fun, challenge and social experience. Most people are there for one single reason: because the rewards are so utterly unbalanced.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Any game comes to a point when everything is known about it. It gets boring. How are you going to prevent that? See what I mean?
being smart is exausting
I'd like to know what, if anything is being done to combat the queues and the lag, sometimes the AH/post doesn't work - to the point where you get the message 'internal mailbox/auction house error. At times it's impossible to buy or sell anything or even move in the capital cities.
Will more hardware and bandwith combat these problems?
"Unlike many of the players who lament the need to find groups to complete most of the in-game content past level 30, I really enjoy finding other people to form up with in order to meet the challenges presented by all of the games zones and instances. Working with other people lets you use your class to its fullest effect, something I really enjoy."
Well, I used to think the same, and I was known to post along the lines of "why the heck play a Massively MULTIPLAYER Online game while avoiding other players? It's not called Massively SINGLEPLAYER."
Then I've been in entirely too many groups which, to put it bluntly, just suck.
1. You get people who just can't function in a group. Period. From having to whine and beg at them to get any healing or buffs (and then they're fresh out of mana from blasting anyway), to aggroing the wrong mobs, to not drawing aggro as a tank, to whatever else. I've been in WoW groups where someone else had to heal the priest (or the Defender in COH). How sad is that?
2. Worse yet, you have people who just don't know even how to solo. They somehow got to a mid or even high level without knowing even the bare basics of how the game works.
E.g., for a really sad example, take COH, which actually has two bonus classes that are unlocked by reaching the maximum level. So when you see someone playing that you know that they also have a level 50 character. Not exactly newbie, right?
Yet they absolutely lack even the most elementary clue, like drawing or tanking. You see one of them _insisting_ that he's the one to start fights with an area attack against a large group of higher level enemies. Everyone else just heal him quickly, ok? I mean, wtf?
I don't know, did these people get power-levelled, or bought their characters on ebay, or what?
So between these two archetypes, it's probably good to have missions that require no more than three buttons. That's already two buttons too many for some people.
3. The greedy misanthrope.
The kind of person (bonus if it's the group leader) for whom everyone else is there just to get him the maximum xp. And he won't hesitate to get everyone wiped out repeatedly, because anything less than insane odds isn't getting him TEH L33T XP. (Even more bonus points if it's a game with xp debt for death, so he isn't even getting xp faster on the whole.)
4. You get the "perfect group" nazi.
I don't mean people who expect you to function in a group, which is a reasonable expectation. I mean people who have one single idealized version of a perfect group, and aren't gonna be flexible about it. In their book, warriors and paladins _only_ take hits, priests _only_ heal (and in fact are the only ones that heal), and mages and rogues are the _only_ ones supposed to do any damage.
And god forbid that anything or anyone deviates from that perfect ideal. Which also translates in unholy amounts of time spent to assemble something resembling that perfect ideal, instead of making do with what's available and works.
Etc.
I'm even skipping the more "minor" annoyances like groups that dismember as soon as the leader finished his quest, downtime as half the time someone is afk in a large group, someone rushing to mine as the rest of the party is ambushed by a patrol, etc.
I don't know... enough playing MMOs just gave me the answer to "why would anyone want to solo when there are thousands of other players around?" Turns out the answer was "that's exactly why."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Now that I have 5 WoW characters in their 40-50's... When, when is Blizzard going to release World of Diablo II, so I can cancel my WoW account and play the *real* MMO I always wanted to play?
Certainly the credibility of your claim is not helped by the fact that WoW already does this. A simple multiplier of health, xp, and loot drop rates is all that distinguishes an "elite" mob from a normal one. All I'm suggesting is that that multiplier should be related to the number of players in the instance, rather than fixed arbitrarily at 3.
And if you'll forgive me for repeating it, Diablo II used precisely this same system, to very good effect. Games ended up having approximately the same level of difficulty and reward regardless of how many people were in them, which made group size purely a function of player preference.
I just wonder why there isn't any weather changes in the world of Azeroth. Why doesn't it ever rain over the great fields of The Barrens or snow in Winterspring? Why don't we ever see leaves blow from the trees in the autumn-like Azshara? As the time in the game follows the time of the real world, why can't the game try to follow the seasons and weather a bit as well? It would make World of Warcraft - though how amazing it is to strole around in already - even more breathtaking.
_____
"He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away"
I have played World of Warcraft since it was released in Europe and up until May it has been nothing but a wonderful experience. But from that month and up until now it has been rather painful due to lagging and server downtime. I'm pretty sure these problems aren't solely experienced on the Stormreaver realm that I play on, but I guess it's worse on highly populated servers than others.
However, Stormreaver has been a highly populated server all along and these problems have suddenly begun to emerge and have become severe after the last content patch 1.6. Now it takes minutes to send mails or pick up attachments from them, browsing the Auction House takes so much time that people often think and yells "AH is empty!", putting up auctions or bidding on items takes forever and it seems like the whole server is running on syrup.
People are screaming in Orgrimmar - which they call Lagrimmar - dayly about the lag and it has happened several times that instances have been reset or crashed while inside so you need to do them all over if you're so lucky you even get online fater the crash.
How much focus does Blizzard have on fixing these problems? Do they realize how annoying it is and that any amount of new content like Zul'Gurub or Arathi Basin can't make it okay for the servers to be that unstable?
_____
"He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away"
Just to be brief -
Take 2 5-man groups.
One is Warrior, Hunter, Warlock, Priest, Druid.
Second is Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Shaman, Shaman.
They're both relatively balanced groups for a 5-man - tank, dps, healing.
Now, let's take Dire Maul West.
Then, lets buff it to Molten Core level difficulty for the first 5-man group.
Now, have the second 5-man group try and go in. If you've buffed it to be hard for the first 5-man, the second is going to get PASTED. They won't survive the first pull (the 3-elemental pull on the first pylon, as you can skip the big trees), given that it's hard for the 1st group with 2 CCs. The invisible patrols. The 3-pulls of undead. The huntress with a Bear on Crack. All of these are made easier by more interesting use of class abilities - that the first 5 man has and the second doesn't.
You can't make a 5-man as hard as MC as you can't assume certain classes and/or abilites are there.
"What in the hell is the point of being stronger if you can't attack the weaker freely ... if you choose to do so? [...] Someone earned that level 60, and there must be a reason, right?
You mean your _only_ reason to grind all the way to level 60 was so you can finally muster the balls to attack a newbie? That's way sad. You have my pity, dude. No, seriously.
Geeze, I know some people were born without balls, so they _have_ to pick on someone 20+ levels lower. I also know that some people have to troll/gank/whatever, because annoying others is the only attention they can get. I suppose some people just need the "woo, I managed to kill someone" (a newbie 20+ levels lower) or "woo, I finally got some attention" (by making an ass of oneself in public) ego-boost in their pathetic worthless lives.
But actually going through a 2-3 month grind to finally feel safe enough to attack a newbie, that's one perspective I hadn't thought of before. It's just _unbelievably_ sad. It starts with something that was pathetic already, and takes it to a whole new level of pathetic.
"I mean, maybe there should be a spider solitaire game within WoW so that players can escape that unpleasant reality for a few hours."
If you end up needing to escape the _unpleasant_ reality of a _game_, like your message spells it out, then that game is doing something awfully wrong to start with. Games are supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be the more pleasant reality to escape _to_, not to end up an unpleasant stress to escape _from_.
If a small number of idiots who can only get human interaction by trolling, harrassing and ganking actually manage to turn the game for everyone else into an unpleasant reality to escape from, then that game has failed miserable to catter to its players.
Bullshit rethoric as to why that is the "right" way is good and fine, it's missing the whole point. There is no absolute "right" and "wrong" in a matter of personal taste. What matters is whether a game matches someone's expectations or not. That's all. If you've made the game non-fun for someone, it doesn't matter how many bullshit arguments can you string to justify it. The only thing that matters, for them, is that it's no longer fun.
That's not just about ganking. It's just the way it goes in matters of entertainment and personal taste. If, say, I liked SF but hated romance flicks, if someone turned Star Treck into mostly a romance soap-opera, I'd have just stopped watching it. That's it. You can argue as much as you want that the change is for the greater good, what matters for me is whether the result still matches my tastes.
So there you have it: if a minority manages to make the game an "unpleasant reality to escape from" for the majority, then in effect the average perceived quality of the game has went down. It's time to take some kind of measures to fix that.
It's not even just for balance or fairness sake: as a publisher, that kind of thing hits you directly in the income. You have all the incentive in the world to address the problem before it goes out of hand.
If not, people tend to find something more fun to do instead. E.g., UO ignored the players' complaints (ganking included) for so long, it quickly lost most of the players as soon as EQ got published. EQ and AC pretty much made it their _main_ message that they're the place which address those UO grievances (e.g., being ganked on sight), and won. EQ ended up with twice as many player as UO... in a genre that UO invented.
Thankfully, WoW is not yet at that stage. It is still very much possible to be left alone on the non-PvP servers. But _if_ a group actually managed to make the game an unpleasant stressful reality for the others, then WoW too can see the same effect.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Seriously dude, which part of Massively Multiplayer Online RPG did you not understand?
Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh, but did you consider the following points? I don't even play WoW, but I have several friends utterly addicted to it, so I'm pretty well-versed in the mechanics and gameplay.
"I saw the simplicity of Diablo/II in it: easy to play, rich in content, and with a wide world to explore."
To be fair, you can get that in a single-player offline game. That's not why people play MMORPGs. It might be icing on the cake once they are playing, but it's not the fundamental point of the genre.
MMORPGs are about social interaction - what's the only thing (functionally) that separates them from an off-line single player game? The ability to interact with real-live humans from all over the world. If building friendships or co-operating in-game isn't your bag thats too bad, but this is a bit like slating an RTS for having an over-simplified social dimension, or a reflex-based beat-em-up for not supporting internet multiplayer matches.
"But then I got to level 60, and all that ended. Now, instead of being able to do most things alone or with a small group of friends, game accomplishments take a full raid of 40 people? You need someone to plan it all out in advance, you need everyone to agree to common rules and to get along with each other; and you need everyone to be coordinated in order to defeat ridiculous enemies."
Leaving aside the "ridiculous" accusation (to me, a non-player, all enemies in WoW are pretty ridiculous)... welcome to the endgame.
Think about it - by Level 60 you've reached the point that casual or isolated gamers don't tend to reach, at least not nerely so often as the dedicated "social" players. Short of increasing the level cap (which would risk alienating newer players), there's precious little to do - you've maxed out your level and gained all the XP you'll ever need. The only dimension left to drive play is the social aspect.
This also makes the challenge harder, since it's no longer about selfishly wandering about on your own amusing yourself, but rather it forces you to interact (again, the point of an MMORPG) with other players, develop large-scale tactics and work as part of a group. This is clearly demonstrated both in high-level instances and Battlegrounds - indeed, Battlegrounds was designed specifically so that even lower-level players would benefit from social interaction and large-scale teamwork.
Imagine if they gave you what you wanted, and you could get the best drops ploughing through same-old same-old 1-5 player Level 60 instances to get the best drops? What's the point then in getting together a group of 40 and whacking the crap out of Ragnaros?
Basically, once you reach Level 60, 40-man raid instances are harder than 1-5 man ones, and represent the only challenge left the game can offer you.
It also plays into your "character arc" in the game - the bosses get bigger and badder, and the battles you have with them constantly escalate. There's no better way to bore most people than keep everything the same apart from fractionally increasing the number of hitpoints you and the boss have each time you take one on. Large raid groups allow for truly epic battles, with bosses much tougher and more resiliant than normal creatures, and accordingly are much more exciting, both to play and to watch.
"Endgame is a different game, and I don't care for it. It's not the game I bought. Rather, it's the games I declined to buy in the past. Friends of mine who played Everquest and Final Fantasy XI are right at home, but I'm decidedly out of place, and don't really want to invest hours, days of my time on goals with exponentially increasing difficulty and exponentially diminishing rewards."
That's fine - it's your perogative as a player. If you like minimal-interaction or single-player games with massive worlds, where you can wander along not interacting with anyone and still "c
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Every post you make is against a native Linux version.
No, things are more complicated than your simplistic understanding. The posts merely state that there is no business case for a Linux version. That's the facts, you may not like the facts, but as you grow up you'll learn that your heartfelt desires and the real world don't always agree. If someone is going to do a Linux version they should be motivated by platform advocacy, charity, or some other non-business reason as is the case with id.
You're in likeness to a troll: claiming to quote from sources you don't reveal, advocating existing markets and not more reputable growing markets.
How is referring to an id interview in Game Developer Magazine not revealing sources? I get the magazine as dead trees so I don't have a URL. I'm sure you're a big enough boy/girl that you can manage to do your own homework with the info I provided.
Redundancy is the key to software development: don't put all your software in one baskette, let it span multiple planes in the case that a bug not in your control brings the entire service down.
Now you probably picked up the phrase "talking out of your ass" on the schoolyard recently but you haven't learned how to use it. Your quote above is a good example of where to use it, unlike you previous emotional attempt. The above is completely irrelevant to game clients. The developer doesn't get to pick the target platforms, the customers do, and if 9x% of your customers have a problem with the Windows version one day a Linux version doesn't help you, you still have to fix or work around the Windows problem. The market has chosen Windows and Linux gamers have chosen to emulate or dual boot negating the need for a native Linux client. Unlike Mac users who need a native client, well to be honest the platform made that decision for them. Emulation on the Mac is not feasable for games like it is under Linux, on the Mac you have to emulate a CPU not just an API. In 4-5 years that may change as the Mac population moves to Intel.
Actually it was not me that said that, I was quoting the original poster who was formulating a question for Blizzard.
As for recently introduced problems. They are presumably in Cedega code not WoW, the Cedega developers will surely fix it. I don't think any of this changes the business case for a native Linux client.
Someone at Blizzard, no idea who, obviously loves "killers". (As per the Bartle definition of a "killer": someone who gets their jollies out of making the game non-fun for everyone else, and whose greatest reward is driving someone completely off the game. Basically "killing" them off the game world completely. It's what on MMOs we call a "griefer", basically.)
Diablo and Diablo 2, never did much to curb griefing either. Other than leaving the server if anyone wanted to gank you -- even if it was your server -- there was not much you could do.
So, in all honesty, I'm not sure what you expected from Blizzard or why. A bandaid beancounter solution that does everything _except_ address ganking, is, in fact, exactly what I'd historically expect from Blizzard. Frankly, I'm surprised they even did something about the rooftops thing.
This isn't flaming them or anything. They're more than free to make the game as they see fit, and we're more than free to decide whether to play it or not. So I'm not flaming them. I'm just saying that it's something which simply doesn't fit their historical vision of a game, so it's rather unlikely to see it implemented. It's like expecting Id Software to stop making FPS games: unlikely that it will happen.
Personally I haven't found the ganking situation to be annoying enough for me yet. Been ganked only twice, and in newbie areas on a non-PvP server to boot, but, eh, only twice. Plus, it just gave me a chuckle. If someone had to go through all that grind and effort just to finally feel confident enough to gank a newbie, heh, they have my compassion.
But still, _if_ it got annoying, I'd just move to another game rather than expect Blizzard to fix it.
It's not like there aren't enough games that are strictly non-PvP or have strictly non-PvP servers. EQ2 or COH come to mind. Or PSO, which goes above and beyond the call of duty to make it impossible to harm others: you can't attack them, you can't block their retreat, you can't train monsters to them, etc. And everything happens in an instance in PSO (or about 75% or so happens in an instance in COH), so you don't have to deal with yahoos screwing your team's quest either.
So, I dunno... why bother waiting for Blizzard to fix that?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What's the freaking problem with a native port?
What most people around here fail to consider are the ongoing costs. Testing for example, a Linux port would add 50% to their testing burden as they target three platforms rather than two (Win32 and Mac OS X). Now which Linux distributions do you test against? How will technical support deal with the various distributions? How will they deal with custom kernels? All of this would have to be paid for by the people who refuse to dual boot or emulate, do you honestly think there are enough of those purists? I realize it is convenient not to have to reboot but if you buy and run the Windows version of a game you have effectively voted against a native Linux port. I realize that is the last thing Linux gamers want to do but that is the reality of the situation.
The idea of letting people sort it out for themselves has already been tried on several MUDs _and_ on UO, and it never worked.
The problem with "IC justice" is that there's _nothing_ you can do in character to someone who doesn't care about their character to start with. There are people who have nothing against throwing away whole characters or even accounts. Ganking right back has exactly zero deterrence effect there.
I've once accidentally landed on an UO griefer board by accident, when googling for something else about UO. It was... an education. People were actually planning to buy a new account, go on a griefing spree and get banned, effectively losing the money too.
So ok, most people aren't that cavalier about throwing some money out the window to grief, but there are a lot which just don't care about their character at all. There are characters out there which just aren't supposed to be anything but ganking tools, to be used and discarded as needed. Refusing to group or to trade with them (especially when they can get everything at the AH anyway) just won't even start to be a bother.
Then there's the OOC aspect involved. The player at the keyboard is likely a troll, basically. (And I don't mean the in-game race.) They do that just to get some attention.
And as the board wisdom goes: "don't feed the trolls". It actually makes them come back for more.
Forming an in-game posse to deal with them is just that: feeding the troll. It doesn't matter whether he won or lost. It matters that he got a whole bunch of you to drop all else and hunt him. You gave him the attention he wanted to start with.
Now add taking down their names like in your solution. So not only he gets momentary attention, he gets people to remember his name? Whop-de-do. That's the ultimate reward a troll can possibly hope for. It's like being raised to God status and put on a pedestal.
So to cut a long story short, it sadly doesn't work that way. You either stop them through code, or you stop them by banning accounts, or whatever. But letting players sort it out for themselves _never_ worked.
The corolary, of course, is that a dishonour system wouldn't work either. As I've said, we're talking people who just don't care about IC stuff happening to their character. Just getting a lower number on their character won't even start to deterr anyone. You either make it impossible (in code, by bans, whatever), or it just won't make a difference anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here's my question. From the subject of this thread:
"While technical issues were a problem for the first few months of retail service, prompt patching and additional world servers have left the game in excellent shape."
My question is: who writes this shit? Someone who doesnt play WoW.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
Effective solutions can be found easier than you'd think, if anyone cared.
E.g., I've been on MUDs who nicely solved the issue of AOE and non-PK characters that you described. Letting rip an AOE just wouldn't hurt the players that weren't valid PK targets.
So if Blizzard really wanted to stop ganking, they can do the same things. Forget dishonour, just not let you attack a much lower character at all. I.e., forget deterrence, make it just physically impossible.
So let's take your scenario:
"so a group of 60ies dukes it out, fare and square. Some asshole in the horde team (sorry, alliance here) logs out and back into his lvl 10 priest. Comes to the area and so neutralizes any AOE capability. Obvious solution? I think not."
Well, I can tell you first hand what would happen there with the solution I've just described: you let go an AOE anyway, the level 10 priest just isn't hit by it. And if they start attacking you or healing someone involved in a PvP fight, they get flagged, they start being valid target for the next hour.
So obvious solutions not only do exist, they were already tested on MUDs. It just takes the willingness to implement them. That's really what's missing at Blizzard.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When are you going to implement languages? I've got a Night Elf hunter that thinks he's a Dwarf. The ability to learn to speak dwarven would be a distinct advantage in his otherwise all Dwarven guild.
Is there any plan to introduce new professions or open up new branches to existing professions? I have a level 60 hunter that is a leatherworker. I still haven't chosen a specialty in leatherworking, because I don't like any of the gear for my character. The Dragonscale armor doesn't add agility. The Elemental armor does, but it's not mail. Is there any plan to add either mail elemental pieces or agility-adding Dragonscale armor? Or do you have plans for new professions? How about wood-working? The gathering skill would be to farm wood from certain trees in the world. The player could make bows and arrows. Maybe they could make boxes, crates, chests, etc. that are containers larger than the comperable tailored bags, but could only be used in bank slots, and not carried with items in them.
Which boat do I take to get to Kunark? I've been sitting in Menethil harbor for weeks, but nobody seems to know!
I've noticed that the Warsong Gulch Capture the Flag Map is very similar to a map by Der Kommissar called Contested Territories (LMCTF22) from the Quake 2 LMCTF Mod. (basic ss only, couldnt find a tour of the map and don't have quake at work http://www.planetquake.com/lmctf/maps.html) This is especially noticeable from the inside the bases. Was this planned as a inspiration or does "the Der" work there?
I think its obvious that alot of WoW players make Alts when they tire of end game content. The problem being, when I leveled up to 60 the first time around, on both factions, I find that I managed to do almost every single quest available to me. This makes the replayability of WoW rather poor in my opinion.
Everytime I see new content under development on your website, most of the time I see new end game raid dungeons. This disappoints me, since everytime I log in on the fly, I have nothing immediate that I can do, instead, I have to plan with my guild to hit one of these dungeons later in the week.
You did have one good add-on where you added that Horde village in the Hinterlands (I don't remember the name), where a good dozen+ missions opened up for levels 40-55+. Now I ask you this, is there plans to develop a boat load of levels 1-59 content? So that if I were to start over 3-4 times, i could potentially have a unique experience everytime. A good way to implement this so that a single character can't go out and do every single quest, is to create a boat load of racially unique quests, so that if I do start over, I can play a whole new experience as a different race. Of course, I know there are class dependant quests, but they are so far and few in between that you don't notice any difference, especially since the rogue quests come to a dead halt at level 20....
MORE CONTENT at ALL LEVELS!!!
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
Why can't leatherworkers learn any bag-making recipes. Tailors can make 16 and even 18 slot bags, but leatherworkers cannot. This makes little sense, as the default backpack and the Traveler's backpack seem to be made of leather.
My computer hit the end of the road when I got WoW. It barely runs the game, at minimum resolution and all graphical options disabled. When I am around too many other players, I suffer from what has been dubbed as "Video Lag", usually in severe amounts where I have to navigate myself at 1 frame every 3-5 seconds. Now, I know that I could spend $500 on a cheap computer that'll greatly outperform my 3 year old cheap computer. But, the best I could get out of it is possibly a jump in resolution, maybe a couple nice graphical options turned on, and perhaps some leniency on the "Video Lag". If I wanted to play the game at its absolute best, with little to no slow downs, I'm looking at a computer worth $2000+, and if I want to spend money on a machine that plays my games at their best, then thats what I need to spend.
Now, why should I spend so much cash when the $400+ XBox360 will be fully capable of playing this game at its best, why spend $2000+ on a computer capable of doing the same. Of course, computers have far better uses than just for games. But, if I were to subtract my needs for video games in the purchase of a PC, then all I need is one of those cheap ass cubical $300+ PCs to satisfy my internet, music, video, and programming needs. Thats only $700+ spent on all my desires between two products, and I would have the same quality experiences as a single $2000+ PC.
My question is this, are we going to see World of Warcraft ported over to any of the next generation consoles? Cause I unsubscribed to WoW last month, and there's no way i'm coming back unless I get new hardware to run the game. I'd prefer to spend as little as possible, like say, an XBox360.
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
StarCraft has the means of be a very nice MMORPG also, and with 3 main "sides" to play around (plus prolly some that deal with more then one side).
My guess is that the Star Craft universe could handle a MMORPG that could improve the game arena and improve it. Will it come to see the light someday?
Out...
Kindaian TH
World of Warcraft has a solid reputation for being open to casual gamers. Rest state, quest logs, and the ease of levelling has allowed many of us with little free time to get involved and play characters all the way to 60.
However, once you reach level 60, virtually everything you can do to advance your character (eg collecting armour sets) requires group dungeon runs or raids which have a multi-hour time committment that many casual gamers simply can't do. Is there any plan for high-level content that casual gamers solo or do in short bursts?
--- "Better to keep silent and appear mysterious than to betray your stupidity by speaking." - Me
With such a huge number of subscribers, I am very curious about how the developer team solved challenging scaling issues. What is the number of players online _at any particular moment_? How are these players partitioned among various servers? I see load-balancing as a very important and potentially hard problem here. How did the developers attack it? It would be great to know answers to these in as much depth as is possible without of course giving away any "trade secret"s...
One of the interesting design decisions in World of Warcraft is the character factions. While it has openned lots of possibilities as far as PvP (eg Battlegrounds) and the Warcraft plotline is concerned, it has had the side-effect of imbalancing the player population. On my server (Silvermoon), the Alliance players outnumber the Horde players 3-1. While the Alliance side has a very active auction house and large pool for raid groups, both of these are much more limited on the Horde side. Also, both factions have been quite frustrated that the Alterac Valley battleground (a new 40-person per side PvP instance) is almost never open as it is rare for enough Horde players to be in the queue.
Is there anything being done to address this imbalance in the Horde/Alliance play experience or to encourage more players to play on the Horde faction?
--- "Better to keep silent and appear mysterious than to betray your stupidity by speaking." - Me
Dear WoW people, Abduhl was perma banned for naming a shaman "Fukinshaman."
Why did you let that even go past the naming filters? Laughing Skull will not be the same without the accounting support of a dear chum.
Please reconsider his plight, especially in light of the known evidence and admittance of others who do much worse things in game. (IE RaidID Hijackers)
Blizzard has a weekly server maintenance from 5AM to 11AM PDT. This is a weekly 6 hour outage. Most of us in the business have to work with 99.7%, give or take, uptime rates. This maintenance window alone puts you guys at 96.4%. This alone is unbelievable but then you add in all the other outages that occur frequently, you have yourself a big problem. Why do you guys think you can run at such a poor level of service while the rest of us in the service-based Internet business live by such higher standards? Is it due to the fact that a large percent of your client base are children who don't understand this concept? I am not naive to the fact that you are running at a very large scale but someone must have thought of this during the planning stages of your project, no?
I used to play WoW, but after a while, it began to feel like I was just running around on a giant virtual stage, surrounded by fake props. You could not interact with 90% of what you see in the game and when you could, it was only because the item or person was the next step in one of your quests.
I was introduced to role-playing games with Ultima 6, which in my opinion, is still the epitome of all RPGs (U7 a close second). Just like WoW, U6 featured a seamless world, but unlike WoW, you could interact with absolutely everything and everyone in the game. You could pick up garbage, push chairs around, and talk with anyone you encountered. While there were explicit quests that took you through finite steps around the world, you were not limited to just those interactions. In my mind, all those minutia of trivial interactions led to a vastly more immersive gaming experience.
Was that level of fit and finish on the game just not important enough, or was not practical?
I understand that cross-server Battlegrounds are impossible with the current coding of the game. Are there plans to fix this oversight in the expansion pack?
Also, because of the lack of server timezone information I levelled two characters to 60 on an EST server. Lving in Kansas, it makes raid scheduling a little tough. Are there any plans to allow for player's to transfer wherever, and whenever they like?
Thirdly, are there any plans to improve the city raiding game dynamic?
1) While WoW is a highly polished and addicting game, why are you already working on an Expansion Pack? Sure, there have been content updates and so forth but compared to older MMORPGs WoW currently lacks several things that made those games popular. 1A) Where is the Live Team? The ones that churn out content month after month. 1B) For that matter, where are the World Events? This is World of Warcraft, a living, breathing, and hurting world. Darkmoon Faire was a start, but we need to experience new things. Yes, creating these things as one-off events will mean less time for instances and other such things. That's why you need a Live Team to add content and move the storyline along. 2) The current Honor system for WoW was crafted to suit the playerbase, but I believe that there was a miscommunication. Yes, players were getting 'griefed' by higher level enemy players by killing Quest NPCs and so forth, but the Dishonorable Kill system didn't really stop that. It instead stopped massed PvP to the point where I've seen 30-odd Hordies running away from one civilian. What are your plans to address this issue? 3) While I'm enjoying the Battlegrounds experience, I'd like to know why these diversions are having such an impact in the PvP system. That is, why is my catching a flag suddenly make me more 'honorable'? They are dynamic and fun diversions, but they don't add anything overall. Winning Alterac Valley several times won't have an impact one way or another. In short, why don't these PvP 'instances' have an affect on the world itself? It leaves many players feeling like they are merely farming reputation or honour points instead of actually contributing to their faction's cause. 4) Contested Territories: Is it in the cards that sometime in the future contested territories on PvP servers will be actually contestible? As in one side would have the ability to conquer a certain location, given time, resources, and planning while forcing the other side to fight for it back. Before the BGs and DHKs town raids were common on PvP servers, slaughtering civilians and hearing their lamentations and so forth. But there was no purpose to the bloodshed other than to grief the other faction's players. Would it be possible to create two sets of NPCs for each side for all of these contested territories and have some way for one faction or another to wrest control of those lands from the other side? I guess this 'question' really ties in with the implementation of the Battlegrounds as static things that do not affect the rest of the world. Something as simple (as in easier said than done) such as declaring for the month, after the tallies of one particular BG locale were made, to award that site to one faction. If the Horde won Alterac Valley for a month then so and so would happen. Interactivity and input into the game world is what WoW lacks. 5) Really, any plans for a Live Team for quick bug smashing and content generation? Tamer questions: 6) Not-directly related to Devs, but any plans to expand the CM numbers? 7) Any hints for the Paladin changes in 1.8? Thanks!
greetings. i want to start by saying I love the game. Don't really have too many complaints. There is one big one that really bugs me. Let me preface. I'm only able to play one night a week. My leveling is happening at a good pace. However, I'm seeing that once people get to 60, they get bored and start a new character. Now the question. Why are you making things like battleground, darkmoon faire and other things, that are as much for new characters as the older character, when you have yet to develop hero levels? The level 60's need to be able to advance. They need something to motivate them to continue with the characters. If you're worried about people becoming too powerful, why not set aside some servers where the 60+ characters could be moved to or limit their ability to attack lower level characters or give them huge honor loos for killing those much lower than themselves? anyway, you have a great game. It has it's flaws. but, they all do. Keep up the good work.
How do you maintain a sense of community inside your virtual world which contains 3.5 million customers from all over the world?
Hi, I think it would be really cool to see Rain or Snow in the game. It would add so much to places like Winterspring and Feralas. Is this something that you are looking at or have discussed? Thanks, Brian A.
...you've finished the game. Go try something else and stop whining.
Does Blizzard ever plan on adding some sort of on site Item Database like Thottbot/Allakhazam/WarCry
:)
Thottbot would be one of the largest WoW third party sites out there, but being owned by a disreputable company like IGE can't be good for the community. Even endorsing one of the third party sites that isn't run by pedophiles might be a step forward.
2 parts here, first is a repeat, 2nd is new question I haven't seen in this thread.
1) Itemization. The current trend is that melee/weapon based characters are getting incredible increases in damage via weaponry upgrades, yet there is no equivalent for casters in terms of a) ability to dish equal damage or b) ability to take the damage of the 'epic' empowered melee classes even with epic items found in the same instance. I think there will be a large problem in the near future given this current trend: melee will do more damage have more hitpoints than caster types to the point of absurdity. How do you feel about these observations?
2) Melee Based UI: If I'm a warrior or a rogue, I can look on my character screen, know what my attack power is, my DPS, my chance to dodge/crit/block/parry, and a wealth of information just by simply clicking a button. If I'm a caster type, I have no access to this information. I can't find out what my total +to spell damage is, what my crit percentage is, what the chance is that my spells will be resisted (or even how likely I am to resist a spell). From these observations I conclude the UI is fundamentally designed with melee taken into account and completely ignores the information relevant to caster types. Do you see this problem as I do and if so do you plan to address it at some point in the future?
Hello, I would like to ask you blizzard folks if there are any plans on selling WoW in Brazil? Because I (and a lot of friends here as well) am dying to play that game, but kinda expensive importing and paying the monthly fees in dollars :\
If no, then why? Thank you very much.
From a developers point of view, I've always been frustrated when features, capabilities and even entire sections of a game that we develop go unused. It doesn't make sense to spend the time and energy in developing, testing and supporting something that no one ever uses because it's hard to find, has no usefulness, or too dificult to use.
So my question is this, do you have a mechanism in place that evaluates how much of the game the users actually use? (areas visited, quests completed, abilities used, talents chosen, etc)
If there isn't anything in place, it could be of great use in improving overal game play for the users. You could answer questions like: Are there quests that no one ever completes? Why not? Are the rewards are uninteresting or just simply because the NPC is hard to find? Is there a spell that no one ever uses? Why not?
Sounds odd, but hear me out:
I'm not a huge fan of MMO's, but I've played a couple (EQ & CoH). How hard would it be to package the world and soloable quests into a single player, non-online game?
Why don't MMO's offer this as an introductory experience? If people like the single player, they could upgrade to the online, monthly-fee system.
And those of us with severely limited gaming time could play offline, alone, at our own pace. All while making Blizzard money off an already-developed product.
I like the idea of crafting, but if you look at the Auction House, you typically see 10 of the same item up for sale. I'd like to see some type of variables thrown in to make more diverse items.
Yeah, I can enchant a weapon to glow red, but if I threw in a blue moonstone, could it glow purple instead? Maybe double enchant items with diminished qualities (mentioned before).
Basically, reagents, whether it be stones, gems, herbs, ore, etc., would have intrinsic values that could be used to "modify" recipies. This was the idea with crafting in Diablo II. You could change the crafted item by combining different items.
This may lead to a more robust craft-based economy. Perhaps certain items would be completely unique, or only obtainable in small quantities. Perhaps only a few players would be able to make a "Glowing Blue Widget of Troll Whomping", which would lead to people seeking out that player for that item. Of course, in order not to saturate the market with items, a limitation to production would have to be imposed.
Essentially, I'd like to see some variation on crafting to keep trade interesting.
As a side note, I like the idea of being able to wield fish. It's insulting to beat someone with your bare hands, but completely degrading to do it with a "22-pound Catfish".
A large proportion of users appear to be suffering from an Error 132 which causes PCs to intermittently crash and even reboot. Are you able to issue a statement on the research you are doing to investigate these crashes and say what your plans are for dealing with them.
Has Bizzard considered creating male characters which are more appealing to women? It's no secret that immense effort is put into making female characters appealing to men and I was hoping you could hook female gamers up too!
For what it's worth, i quit guild wars because of this end level cap. I naievely assumed that since you could unlock skills along the way playing the game, you should (realistically) be able to unlock them all. I put in over 250 hours into my main character in guild wars and still didn't unlock 35-40% of my warrior/paladin skills. It's an exponential curve towards the end. Guild wars' PvP itself is excellent (and the best fantasy - relatime hybrid I've played to date) but actually getting to a point that you can do so on a reasonably competitive level is insane time-wise.
Hope you like it better than I did. Best of luck.
ATI writes really horrible device drivers, and this is likely the reason your Mac performance is lower than your Windows performance. Their drivers for Windows, while not perfect, are much better and much faster than their Linux drivers, so I assume the same is true for MacOSX, a Unix derivative.
The way to test this is to see if other graphics-intensive 3D games run as fast on Mac as on Windows. If not, blame ATI. Blizzard has nothing to do with it.
~CGameProgrammer( );
WoW gives all characters of a certain class the same general capabilities, whereas Diablo 2 characters have no starting skills. For example, every WoW mage learns pretty much the same (with minor exceptions) damage spells. In contrast, every D2 sorceress starts with a blank slate, so exploring in one element talent tree meant sacrificing maximum skill in another talent tree. Was this an intentional simplification to help ease the process of balancing classes? What do you think of the results? As a former player (60 Frost Mage), I disliked the generic character that resulted from this "common base" method. Do you have any plans to enhance role development options in WoW?
Congratulations on such an impressive game.
Although WoW is impressive in many ways, one of the biggest accomplishments is that you are the largest MMPORG in North America.
Regarding online technology,
What are some examples of technology built in-house and technology licensed?
What network technology are you particularly proud of?
What were some of the biggest network component development challenges?
Did you initially think you would be able to handle the huge number of online players when the game launched?
How many players were you initially planning to handle?
What were some of the surprises in the development of WoW?
How do your game servers (player movement network traffic, etc) handle such a large evolving world?
Thanks!
Simple. A number of bugs can be used to cheat and bypass elements of the game. The delay between US and EU patch release revealed an enchanting bug that could have unballanced the game.
When, if ever, can I play with my American friends?
:)
Being in Europe, I cannot log into the U.S. servers. I've been in the same guild for 7 years, and this is the first game out of many that I cannot play with them.
I understand why you separated the servers, but I would still like the option to play with my friends
This is an interesting post and contains much to agree with; however, a number of your arguments center around a behavior being counter to the "casual" style that the game is known for. I don't think some of these arguments hold water, for the following reason: if you are playing a character at or near level 60, sorry but you are not a "casual" player. I've been for over six months don't even have a character over level 25. *I* am a "casual" gamer.
Unlike some MMOs, where all factions can talk to each other, WoW has by design a Language barrier. Horde and Alliance have anything they say translated to a sort of orderly gibberish when "heard" by the other factions. This was done to promote a feeling of togetherness with "your" side and foreign-ness to the "other" side.
Some players would like to pursue the ability to communicate with the other side, possibly via trading in talent points, a Linguistics profession, or perhaps a difficult quest series. Give that the Horde-Alliance rivalry is alrady well understood and entrenched, does Blizzard have any plans to implement the ability for some players to have an interesting experience bridging the language gap? How would it affect your game design of the language barrier to allow a relatively small and motivated percentage of the players act as emissaries by trading other abilities to learn other languages?
PS- What about learning same-side languages at the very least? I'm sick of those snotty night elves gossping right in front of me in Darnassian, me not being able to understand them!
DPSing is stupid, becuase a mage or a rogue are soooo much more efficient then them, specially in a 5 man instance
Funny, my 60 warrior out damages all the rogues in high level instances. I also out damage mages except in places like DM where there's a lot of AoE mobs.
In a 15-person UBRS, 2 of the top 3 spots are always warriors.
In a 5-man, the warrior should tank the Bosses and be DPS the rest of the time.
Seriously dude, which part of MMO Role Playing Game did you not understand?
/aside/ from having instances with harder and harder monsters, perhaps there can be quests where you have to track down actually mobile mobs, and instead of killing them, interact in some other way to earn rewards?
I kid, I kid. But just a quick thought,
I have to ask, what is the point at _all_ of getting together a group of 40 and whacking the crap out of Ragnaros (several times)?
Are there currently any plans to port World of Warcraft to Linux?
If not, why not?
I was away from the game for 3 months, and when I returned I found guards who can see through invisibility, guards with incredible knockback, guards swimming around in the water in Booty Bay, and that attacking a town can spawn dozens of guards immediately. Given that questgivers and NPCs in towns respawn very quickly, and that I play on a PvP server, why are you trying to make it impossible to PvP in any city or town? I only have one 60 (a rogue) and divide my time among many low-level alts. I would gladly accept chain-gankage in Redridge if I can sneak around Ogrimmar and knock a few heads together without being spotted by the scouts who apparently can see me like I am a level 1. So the question: Where does it end?
Oh yeah, other games such as Shadowbane, etc., are SO much better. Stop complaining and give examples of someone who does it better.
A solo instance would be cool (could have some more interesting scripted events and give the designers a chance to flex all their gameplay muscle), I'm surprised there's not at least something like that for rogues...
I guess the downside is it takes the "quest terrorist alert level" (ie green, yellow, orange, red) out of the picture. Everyting would always be yellow or whatever. So you couldn't just level up and overpower the mobs to get that hard quest out of the way...
This brings up a very good point I don't see any one making. Nothing Should Ever Respawn In An Instance. There is no reason to make instances have respawns like the rest of the world does. Who are the respawns for? No one else is coming in. If people wanted to farm the trash instance mobs, resetting the instance is trivial. This is one of the (numerous) things which Diablo II got right. That game was essentially one big instance and when something died, it was dead until you restarted the game.
Well, at the moment I'm only suggesting that instances scale to the _number_ of players, not to the _level_ of them. So that would stay about as it is now, with instances getting relatively easier as you level up.
I thought about the idea of scaling to level as well. While that's kind of appealing, it would actually be a little difficult to do: you'd run into difficulties with automatically changing the level of eq dropped by mobs, and what happens when instances cross levels at which players get particularly important abilities.
So the suggestion of scaling to players' numerousness is a more reasonable one to make right now, given that it would take _very_ little work to implement.
World of Warcraft is debuted as the worlds largest MMO. What do you think was the formula for World of Warcraft's success? What is your strategy to keep it that way? And do you have any worries that 'the honeymoon may soon be over'?
40 players? Hell, Final Fantasy XI manages to do it with six! SquareEnix laughs in Blizzards face as it is able to more efficiently turn players into cogs! Mwa ha ha ha!
Rawr
Best. Show. Ever.
Why are so many of my friends losing their jobs or outright quitting their jobs just to play this game?
:-) Finally, peace and quiet. So, for the next 4 days of Quake, Doom, and various other 3D shooters and simulation games, she played Warcraft 3, embarassed the hell out of me, and made life much more painful than usual.
Why does it cost $60 in the store, only for them to get raped for another $15 every month just to play it?
Why are there NO single-player conquests in the game?
Having no single-player mode appears to be the only real marketing strategy behind this game; forcing people to pay the $15/month if they want to play the game they paid $60 for in the first place. It seems so assinine to charge $60 for something that REQUIRES you to play online. The subscription service sucks, you can't transfer characters to other servers easily, billing gets "jacked-up" and all I ever hear are complaints about server outages. When my unemployed roommates aren't yelling about those problems, I'm yelling at them to shut up and forget about the damned Enchanted Cow of Murdoch and that they're arguing and throwing things at each other over some pathetic bewitched bovine. There is a thing called, "over-socialism" and unfortunately, I'm burdened with be astranged from my friends because I no longer take part in what interests them and having to support at least one of them since their mommy and daddy can't contribute. This is a severe problem and as an added point, this unemployment problem my roommates are having has lasted since early March.
Is there a rehabilitation process for people who are so addicted to this game?
I recently visited QuakeCon in Grapevine, TX and surprised as she was, one of my roommates started crying over the fact that the ports for World of Warcraft were closed at the router.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
u r gay
Everything in WoW seems to be pushing players to join enormous homogenous communities. Why?
Why is there no concept of a "group of guilds" like an alliance in Dark Age of Camelot? Sure, you can attempt to approximate this with a custom channel, but guild administrators could control who has access to the alliance channel if it was actually supported with code.
Why is there no way for players to find groups quickly without being in one geographical location or another? The lag in Ironforge is horrid on my server, which is not high population. A simple "Looking for Group" interface (useable from anywhere as just part of the player GUI) that allowed you to select the type of group, classes you need, instances you are interested in, and so on would help so much in reducing the time sink of looking for groups.
I completely agree. I've started seven characters because the low levels are fantastic and allow significant accomplishment in one-hour spurts of play, while the higher levels require hours of continuous play that casual gamers (or new parents in my case) just don't have.
I understand that the game has to accomodate casual and hardcore gamers, but keep some solo content for those above lvl 50. And I don't mean grinding hunting quests. Some multi-part solo-able quests leading up to a nice item would be cool.
My reply that I finally got around to writing:
Dear sirs or madams:
This is, for lack of a better phrase, complete bullshit.
I find it flat out offensive that you can ban me for a mundane thing like "Fukinshaman" while cheating, exploiting, instance cascading, and terrain bypasses continue to go unpunished by your GM team. It is blatant two-faced favoritism.
First, "Fukinshaman" was banned for:
Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
This category includes both clear and masked names which:
. Are inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions
. Are pornographic in nature
This is wrong. Fukinshaman has nothing to do with the act of fucking, the act of sex, the act of intercourse, the act of sticking a penis into a vagina, or any other bodily or pornographic function. It is a merely a testament to your design team's inability to balance a class that is so blatantly overpowered. It is an exclamatory remark. It has nothing to do with the offense listed. The ban should be lifted on basic principle. Police can't just write tickets for crimes that never happened and, in my opinion, your GM staff (as incompetent and unhelpful as they are) should be held to the same standards.
My guild and I have brought in more customers to WoW than any other company or organization that you aren't paying. The fact that you would turn on your customers that contribute to the community like this while you leave others who have more serious offenses untouched speaks a great deal about why your customer service is rated as horrible.
I speak for the entire WoW community when I say your customer service is unsatisfactory, horrendous, incompetent, and more corrupt than a Bangkok prostitution ring.
Please don't message me with insulting and condescending hypocritical crap like "The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players." This is not your bottom line otherwise you'd be dealing with the other exploiters instead of banning people over things that are slightly offensive.
Sincerely,
Abduhl
Banned Rogue
PALS FOR LIFE
http://www.thepalsforlife.com
PS - I'd like my account to have its ban removed.
- Hide quoted text -
On 8/15/05, wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com <wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com > wrote:
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello Jacob,
Account Name: G0TNWA
Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
Details: Old Character Name: Fukinshaman
The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This World of Warcraft account has now been closed by the Account Administration staff based on review of all account infractions incurred. This action has been taken in accordance to our Terms of Use ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.ht ml) and our game policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm0171 2p ). The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players.
We thank you in advance for your time and for respecting our position.
Regards,
Khedris
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support
Customer satisfaction is a top priority here at Blizzard Entertainment, and we would like your feedback on the level of service you have received. Please feel free to provide such feedback at the following web address: