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.

Comments

Addiction

[kevin_conaway]

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?

Economic Monitoring...

[nweaver]

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?

Re:Economic Monitoring...

[team99parody]

How about the reverse of this question.

Virtual worlds seem like an excelent arena for testing and experimenting with various economic models.

Have you guys considered using your world for economic model research that could be applicable helping understand real-world economics and potentially benefit to the rest of the world.

Or, if short of that; have you done any experiments with monatary supply; interest rates; etc with interesting results you can share.

OK, I have a question.

[Kenja]

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"?

Question of venue

[Fjornir]

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?

Re:Question of venue

[dave-tx]

While this is a very fair and appropriate question, the obvious answer is that the Slashdot Q&A is a one-time thing, while answering questions by their own users is a never-ending process.

Not trying to sound flippant, but that's the reality of it.

Disclaimer: I don't play WoW or any online games, but this Q&A interests me nonetheless.

What would you have done differently?

[Trespass]

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?

Server setup question

[GoatMonkey2112]

I would like to know what kind of servers, how many, network bandwidth, etc., for WoW.

World Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Mutiple platforms

[Fizzlewhiff]

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?

final decision process?

[grungebox]

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.

What are you doing to curb farming and ebaying?

[Amich]

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

Balance

[zaffir]

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?

Please...

[ImaLamer]

I'm stuck in Arathi Mountains (in the wilderness outside of Hammerfall)... can you warp me to Stromgarde Keep?

Long vs short term players

[edderly]

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?

Here's one!

[paulius_g]

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

Why don't the developers speak for themselves?

[Erioll]

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.

Still competitive?

[iamsure]

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?

Why innovate, if you're just going to stop later?

[Mirkon]

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?

OS and Database choice

[NixMonk]

If you could start over, would you use Linux and Oracle again?

Why is there no native Linux version?

[pyite69]

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.

More dynamic universe?

[Zarhan]

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..

Server/Database Structure

[Dysfnctnl85]

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?

Re:Why innovate, if you're just going to stop late

[Jason1729]

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.

Plans for the unfinished content?

[cryptomancer]

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!

Re:Why innovate, if you're just going to stop late

[Evro]

Hooray for the parent post. The following is an essay I wrote about WoW in April 2005. Some of the points are no longer valid, but many of them are. My WoW subscription has been cancelled and I won't be renewing until, at the VERY least, the class balance issues are improved, if not solved. Shamans are WAY overpowered, and the only people who don't seem to agree are Shamans and Rogues, with rogues being the second most overpowered class in the game, especially in PvP. The balance issues are so glaringly apparent that I can only assume that Blizzard intended them to be as they are.

Why World of Warcraft's Endgame Is Not Fun

April 17, 2005

I have been playing World of Warcraft since beta in August, 2004. At the time, I had been playing EverQuest for about 2 years and was growing weary of it: the raids in Planes of Power were long and tedious with very few rewards, and the entire "backflag" system caused a lot of strife within many guilds by forcing them to do long events just to flag one or two people. As the raid leader for my guild, I led everything from raids Vindi in Kael Drakkel to the Emperor in Ssraeshza Temple, to Aten Ha Ra in Vex Thal, to Rallos Zek and Fennin Ro.

Between the mess of flagging and the tedium of the raids themselves (hours of clearing) it became clear to me that Sony was incapable of designing "fun" encounters. Planes of Power introduced events which required lots of "kiting" of mobs, apparently as an attempt to introduce a new element to a game whose events are so tedious that people would put their characters on auto-attack and go AFK for 15-20 minutes at a time and be just as effective as if they'd been playing them.

It had gotten so bad for me that I had taken to reading rather than logging in to EQ. I felt bad since I was the raid leader, but the game had stopped being enjoyable months before. So when a friend let me play his WoW beta account I was stunned. WoW seemed to have everything I had wanted in EQ and none of what I hated.

Among the smaller things I appreciated at the time were: showing exp gain per mob as a number, and amount remaining in this level; showing "percent chance to crit;" showing health/mana regen instead of forcing you to count up your mana regeneration items as EQ did. Some of the major things I loved about WoW as opposed to EQ were the ability for any class to solo without serious downtime (2+ minutes) - downtime is one of EQ's most aggravating aspects, forcing people to sit around and literally do nothing. Experience loss on death in EQ was annoying, and as you gained levels it became insulting, especially when facing monsters that would death-touch. When learning a raid encounter in EQ it was not uncommon for the entire raid to wipe multiple times, and at the end of the night people could walk away having lost up to 10% of their levels (even after EQ's coveted 96% rez). Experience loss also basically prevented any sort of soloing in EQ that involved risk of death, unless you wanted to eat 20% experience loss per death or spend hours running around from zone to zone /shouting for a cleric to rez you in whatever zone you died. You would often have to pay for this "service."

Soloing itself in EQ was horrible. Unless you were able to kite (e.g. Plane of Fire "tables" camp), the only mobs you could kill were 10-20 levels below you and gave little to no experience, and even then many people faced 10+ minutes of downtime between mobs.

In WoW, monsters forget about you after you run a certain distance away from them. In Everquest, monsters chased you until you died or "zoned out." The whole concept of zoning was annoying and immersion-breaking in Everquest. The seamless world in WoW was another thing I loved.

In WoW beta, I played a paladin, as I had in Everquest and in other games. I was pretty pleased with most of the Paladin's abilities, and found the healing power a surprise, having come from Everquest, where the Paladin's heals were a jo

Moving the story along?

[ChozSun]

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?