Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft Interview "Responses"
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?
Response -
We monitor the economics of the game very closely. We watch the in-game economy on a regular basis and have personnel that monitor game logs every day. When we see irregularities, we take action. This can range from exploring the account further, finding and removing exploits, or even possible suspension and bans. We also look closely at out-of-game transactions involving real-world cash for in-game items. Some of those transactions occur over eBay, some do not. But in many cases, the involved parties are warned or suspended, and some accounts are also banned.
2.) What would you have done differently? by 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?
Response -
Oh yeah, there were definitely things we wished we could have done differently during the development of World of Warcraft. But we learned from those challenges and used that knowledge to improve the game at every opportunity. All of us at Blizzard strive to study the challenges of development and apply those lessons to our next project. It helps us to refine our development process and make each game better.
3.) Mutiple platforms by 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?
Response -
There was never any question that World of Warcraft would be co-developed for Windows and Mac users. Blizzard has always supported the Mac platform; you'll notice that even as far back as Warcraft II and Diablo we were there supporting Apple. However, with World of Warcraft, we wanted to improve that relationship further and shoot for a simultaneous release on both platforms. All of us are thrilled that we succeeded in that respect, and we're sure Mac users are happy as well. Both games are equal in every respect; there weren't any features in one version that didn't make it into the other.
4.) Balance by 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?
Response -
As you've implied, game balance is a very difficult and challenging thing to achieve. If it were easy, every game would be perfectly balanced. Of course we know that's not the case. Our designers work very hard to try to balance the game and we know that the more feedback we get, the better our odds of achieving that elusive balance. That's why it has always been important to us to hold closed and open beta tests for all our games, a process dating back to Diablo and StarCraft. The feedback of our beta testers has always been invaluable, and that is still the case in World of Warcraft. That's also why we have Public Test Realms and why all our patches go there first: for more testing before we reveal it to the public.
5.) More dynamic universe? by 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?
Response -
That's something we're looking into. We'd like to enhance our events and create more ongoing ones as well. Children's Week, Darkmoon Faire, and the Stranglethorn Fishing contest are all steps in that direction. Darkmoon Faire, for instance, will continue to be enhanced with new content so that players can keep coming back for new experiences. The Fishing contest is a weekly recurring event that we hope makes the Stranglethorn area more relevant for players. We can't give away too many details for what we have in store, but our goal is to always make the game world feel and act more alive.
6.) Why innovate, if you're just going to stop later? by 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?
Response -
As this question illustrates, the audience for MMORPGs and especially World of Warcraft is very wide and diverse. It is difficult to please all gamers all the time. In fact, some decisions that we make are praised by some players and then criticized by others. It's a difficult balancing act to satisfy so many needs. However, at the same time, we understand that some players just don't have the time or social circle to experience the classic 40-man raids and high-end content of an MMORPG. That's why we created and continue to create more content that can be experienced by casual gamers. Our 10-man PvP Battleground, Warsong Gulch, was a response to this need. It allows smaller groups of people to experience content that is level-neutral and still walk away with great rewards. Arathi Basin, our newest Battleground, is similar in that casual gamers without large social circles can also enjoy playing there and reap great rewards from doing so. Zul'Gurub is an example of non-PvP content that we created for smaller groups of casual players. It is a 20-man raid dungeon that isn't as much of a time commitment as Molten Core or Blackwing Lair. And further in the future, we hope to do some things in Silithus that will enable solo and 5-man groups to still have plenty of fun and questing even after they've hit the level cap.
7.) final decision process? by 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?
Response -
Well, we hope that you'll try out the game. You might be pleasantly surprised. World of Warcraft was designed to be easy and inviting for non-traditional MMORPG players to try. It has an intuitive interface, stylized and familiar settings, and very easy-to-accomplish quests for the casual gamer. As for why we decided to make World of Warcraft in the first place, well, many of us loved playing MMORPGs and we wanted to make one that had all the features we wanted to see and experience ourselves. Since no one else was making the exact MMORPG we wanted to play, we decided to design it ourselves.
8.) What are you doing to curb farming and ebaying? by 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?
Response -
We have a zero-tolerance policy against the sale of World of Warcraft items on eBay and similar activities. We investigate such allegations very seriously and those accounts that are indeed guilty of exploits or selling of in-game items for real-world cash suffer disciplinary action within the game. We have various steps we sometimes take in dealing with such issues, but trust us when we say we don't tolerate actions that destroy the economy of the game.
9.) More solo endgame content? by Anonymous Coward
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.
Response -
We touched on this in the earlier question, but yes, we know that some gamers want more casual content that can be experienced in short periods of time. Many of our quests are designed to be accomplished in short bursts, and that goes from low-level to high-level quests. In future patches, you'll see more casual content that continues along this philosophy.
10.) Developer blogging as done in Linux, MS groups by Sleepy
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? 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.
Response -
We care deeply about our community and definitely want to keep our World of Warcraft gamers updated, but the development and refinement of our games take first priority. However, we do our best to keep the community up to date with regular updates such as the World of Warcraft "Battle Plan," as well as interviews with various news organizations such as this one. Every company has a different way of reaching out to the community and we feel that the World of Warcraft community site is a great way to keep gamers up to date and informed about every aspect of World of Warcraft. The forums are also a great place for gamers to express their opinions and give feedback about the game.
My pancreas is going to explode from all that sugar! PR people that treat the customers as morons should be unemployed.
Trolling is a art,
That is one bitter Taco.
RTFA again for the best results.
Spot the one response written by a PR flunky...3...2...1...Time's up!
Q: What would you have done differently?
A: ...we learned from those challenges and used that knowledge to improve the game at every opportunity. All of us at Blizzard strive to study the challenges of development and apply those lessons to our next project. It helps us to refine our development process and make each game better.
So...the answer is NOTHING?
Kinda reminds me of something I'd see on G4 instead of Slashdot, but that's what you gotta expect from PR. Way to go, bureaucracy.
Truer words were never spoken. This whole thing is just more of the same: we don't want you talking to the developers, ever.
Can we resubmit these to get it routed to a technical person? Or possibly make requests on the Forums to get the real answers? This is just useless, but exactly what you'd expect out of blizzard. At least on the forums, you sometimes get a real answer of 'yeah, that's a bug, I don't see it getting fixed anytime soon, so stop doing it.'
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
If I submitted a question and after a lot of time read this, well, I'd be quite p'ed off... :-/
Pumbaa! I don't wonder; I know.
This has been a long-standing problem in the WoW community, the "ivory tower" approach (or lack of approach) that the developers have taken to the common gamer.
Compare that to a game like City of Heroes where the developers post on a daily basis.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
I am totally underwhelmed by the evolving storyline WOW is putting out. It would be nice if the entire game had the depth of a 300 page novel but sadly it doesn't. After a string of missions from any of the racial leaders there is a little more than finding an item here or there with a shoddy backstory.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
as an ashtray on a motorcycle. What a shame they could get real answers to some great questions.
This is a paragraph with absolutely no meaning. It's like cotton candy minus the spun sugar, good taste, and positive childhood associations: i.e., stinky carny air.
We care deeply about our community and definitely want to keep our World of Warcraft gamers updated, but the development and refinement of our games take first priority.
This is meaningless, but we have to pretend to care so you will keep giving us money.
However, we do our best to keep the community up to date with regular updates such as the World of Warcraft "Battle Plan," as well as interviews with various news organizations such as this one.
Our marketing drones send marketing blurbs to marketing-friendly news outlets, where they give us free publicity.
Every company has a different way of reaching out to the community and we feel that the World of Warcraft community site is a great way to keep gamers up to date and informed about every aspect of World of Warcraft.
The website is a place we can funnel the people who give us money so they can help each other out and save us on tech support costs.
The forums are also a great place for gamers to express their opinions and give feedback about the game.
Not that we will pay attention to it. But feel free to post away!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Understanding how their responses would be perceived (read: very negatively) is not as important as how their responses would be received by their bosses.
It's the same problem with HR people - they don't care about employees, they care about their bosses.
It's ------ up, basically.
I saw several questions in the last topic about support for GNU/Linux, were they included when you gave them your questions? Or did they simply ignore them?
-- Linux user #369862
These guys couldn't pass a Turing test. Eliza could do a better job at answering these questions.
Actually, let's try that:
Q: 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?
A: Is it because 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 is not done in other mmorpgs what
kind of hurdles did I have to overcome to get both windows and mac
versions to co exist and have I had to make any sacrifices because I
was only able to do something on one platfrom and not both that you
came to me?
I think Emacs' doctor has a future in PR!
Come on guys, I'd expect this kind of PR slush from Electronic Arts, but Blizzard? You've got a user base that really loves the work you do, and a chance to answer some of thier more technical questions and make them even happier with you and your games, and you just toss it right out the window.
Way to go.
worst. interview. ever.
I thought at first that the story summary was a bit harsh, but it is pretty clear that Marketing neutered the answers and produced a press release instead of an interview. I commend /. for following through with the promise to publish even though the answers were so sycophantic that it made me wince more than once. I guess that's what happens when you have millions of subscribers: you can't say anything even mildly interesting for fear of creating a target for discontent.
Sig under construction since 1998.
What can I say? I'm massively dissapointed. I've been fan of Blizzard, and especially Warcraft franchise, since Warcraft 1... and it more than slightly annoys me to see the company which always seemed to care about its player base visibly more than most other companies suddenly finds it necessary to answer both the most basic and quite intriguiung questions related to their best-selling game with a load of cookie-cut, soulless and rather empty phrases instead of honest, insightful answers that'd show us Blizzard still consists of people who -enjoy- creating games.
Yes, I play on WoW. And while the game, in itself, is quite awesome (though not, by any stretch of imagination, flawless or perfect), I am increasingly annoyed and dissapointed by the kind of feedback players receive for Blizzard representatives on all levels of game - from in-game issues and assistance requests sent to GMs, through many querries directed to Bliz Forums CMs, all the way to requests for assistance regarding account and payment issues. I find it hard to believe that any company that reached its current cult status purely through great products it created by listening to its fans and customers can make such a sudden and radical turn for the worse in the ways it communicates with those same fans who helped it grow into what it is now.
{ Durmitor/Hermann, Alliance side of Terenas (US) Server}
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
I've got one more day to go at my para-corporate job as a Project Manager.
When I've been asked for my opinion, I try to give an answer with some substance to it, something that can be discussed and built on. However, I find that more often than not, people are looking for answers like the ones we see above, where literally NOTHING is being said. It makes me mad that people would rather have nothing said to them but said well than nothing at all.
That was a crap sandwich. It would have been less insulting if they had just not bothered to respond.
"Look! There! Evil, pure and simple from the Eighth Dimension!" --Buckaroo Banzai
PR people are taught never to use the word problem, except when referring to a competitor's products and services. When your own company has a problem, it's a "challenge," usually one that gives you an "opportunity" to continue to "innovate" or be creative.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
They *used* to be such a cool company, really cutting the edge in gameplay mechanics even when they lagged behind on graphics. WOW is a great game, with tons of eye candy. Unfortunately, it's a great game by a company that's now owned by some mindless,faceless multinational corporation (Vivendi Universal).
The upside of this is that Rome must fall, and the recent exedous of Blizzard's devs has already started to erode away the machine, in this instance. Witness Guild wars, which had several refugees from the Diablo team on board, there's another new one too that sprang up from a WOW team exedous in the last month.
Vivendi just doesn't get that the players can tell when the people making the games are having fun doing it. I cannot imagine that this kind of 're-routing' can be good for morale among the people who matter at Blizzard, i.e the people responsible for actually CREATING the products.
PR Department, pfft.
That's insulting.
-chitlenz
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
They've got a license to print money, for the time being. It would have been nice to have an answer to my question about what they would have done differently, but I suspect anyone that knows is NDA'ed out the ass.
World of Warcraft was a rare treat for me: It's the first MMORPG I've played, and I got into the industry last year working on a MMORPG that'll be out next year. It's nice to see what works and what doesn't while having some power to make a potentially better game.
I suspect they really wish they could have ramped up for the number of players better and faster. That may be a limit imposed by their suppliers of server and network hardware. Sure, they're the biggest game, but how many players they lost because their realms were overloaded is open to speculation. I suspect their numbers will fade in a year or so, depending on what they can do to keep people interested and what the competition is like.
It's all well and good to insult Blizzard for their czarist relationship with their players, but realize that their are things to learn from them anyhow.
I'd dare say /. did the right thing... this 'interview' paints a certain, not too impressive, image of Blizzard. Purpose of interviews is not always simply to get correct and informative answers to questions you ask - more often than not, interview is interviewer's tool to paint a portrait of interviewee. How will the target respond is more important than what he will say. will his responses be lethargic, enthusiastic, agressive or premeditated tells readers a lot about interviewee's personality, even if it leaves questions themselves unanswered. Thus, may I suggest that - while we'd love to actually see real answers to those questions - /. did owe us the posting of Blizzard's 'answers' to the questions...
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
and I feel like I won the prize for best use of time on slashdot
these responses are scheduled to be fixed in the patch next tuesday morning.
i could live a little longer in this prison
(questions snipped for brevity, apologies if any questions were mangled. Also, please read it with a grain of salt *smirk*)
1) Question: 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?
Response: We ban bots. I've banned 3 myself today.
2) Question: ..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?
Response: Why yes, there are things we wished we would have done differently...wha.. is this a two part question?.. Brain.. hurts!
3) Question: ..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?
Response: We made a windows AND a mac version. That means, if you have a mac, you can install it, and play it! Without a PC!
4) Question: What is the process the dev team goes through for balancing character classes, items, NPCs, etc.?..
Response: It's very difficult. Otherwise it wouldn't be easy. Ppl complain all the time. Stop bitching.
5) Question: ..Are you planning to introduce "events" into the gaming world that would actually shape it permanently, like in Asheron's call?
Response: We made it so you can run around and fight stuff. It's awesome.
6) Question: ..The early game is brilliant, and playing it was a joy. Why is that so hard to retain in level 60 play?
Response: Dungeons are cool. You can crawl thru them with 39 of your friends. It's awesome.
7) Question: 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?
Response: Please play World of Warcraft. It's pretty awesome.
8) Question: 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?
Response: Dood, we answered this questions 7 questions ago. RTFA plz.
9) Question: ...So, my question is, are there any plans for more solo content for the endgame?
Response: Dungeons are cool. You can crawl thru them with 39 of your friends. It's awesome.
10) Question: would your company encourage, allocate time for and generally nudge willing developers to blog? 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.
Response: Use the forums plz, kthxbye.
1.) Economic Monitoring... by 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?
Response -
We monitor the economics of the game very closely. We watch the in-game economy on a regular basis and have personnel that monitor game logs every day. When we see irregularities, we take action. This can range from exploring the account further, finding and removing exploits, or even possible suspension and bans. We also look closely at out-of-game transactions involving real-world cash for in-game items. Some of those transactions occur over eBay, some do not. But in many cases, the involved parties are warned or suspended, and some accounts are also banned.
Marketing droid just didn't get it. I'm interested in ACADEMIC modeling. EG, Star Wars galaxies has published interesting flows. People have done economic models of Evercrack's secondary market trying to estimate the GDP assuming a convertable currency. And Freakonomics is a GOOD BOOK damnit.
Stupid marketing droid. Needs to have his memory core wiped and reprogrammed over at Hammerhead.
Test your net with Netalyzr
You've once again ran the name of Blizzard through the mud. Hundreds of thousands of people(potential customers) are seeing how frustrated your customers are getting with you. Not a good way for potential customers to be introduced to the game. And now even more your customers are even more irritated than they were before. Get your act together.
They obviously use bots to answer questions while not at the computer, a clear violation of the EULA.
Message to the Blizzard PR dept:
You fail it! The bad PR generated by these bland answers is 100 times worse than anything that you could have gotten with sincere answers. I'm not buying WoW until those responsible are sacked.
I don't understand why Blizzard is so opposed to any sort of real, technical response to questions. Other MMORPGs have done that and it's worked fine. DAoC was a very successful MMORPG (and is still around, acitve, and profitable, though fairly small) and they did it all the time. Someone would ask a question about game mechanic X, PR person would find out the programmer responsable, send an e-mail, and print the response. In that way the PR people still made sure nothing secret leaked, and that everything looked good (proper spelling and so on), but you got real responses.
I fail to see why Blizzard has such a problem with that. It also seems somewhat counter productive. Humans like reasons, they like to know why. Reasons don't always satisfy them, but it'll at least satisfy some people, and is often better than nothign for the rest.
When the server cluster I play on was having massive problems I really wanted to know why. I suppose there's no rational reason, it's not like it'd get fixed faster or I could help them or anything, but I had a need to be told what was wrong. I was mad that the response was just "we have a problem and are looking at it." Well ok, WHAT is the problem? Tell me, it'll make me feel better.
Does anyone want to give away their WoW stuff?
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
I had been mulling over getting into WoW for the last two months (I was burned by Final Fantasy XI for the PC.) I was actually looking to see if Blizzard had ever responded to the questions earlier today because I was really interested in hearing about what was going on. I was at the point where I was probably going to go out and purchase this game tonight. Now that I've read Blizzard's responses I'm convinced that if I were to purchase their game I would once again be a paying drone to a company that doesn't listen to or respect their subscribers, just like FFXI.
Sorry, but I'm not giving you my hard earned money if that is your attitude. Instead I'll skip purchasing WoW and start looking more into this Guild Wars everyone is talking about.
END OF LINE
Odd that when submitted, they put me down as an anonymous coward.
this post, question 9 was mine. Yet: 9.) More solo endgame content? by Anonymous Coward
Not real important, just... odd.
I noted that almost every response completely ignored the question and instead, plonked down the most pat and predictable "answer" that merely served as a placeholder for a "buy our game" message. Not like the /. editors didn't warn us though - their disappointment was very apparent.
It felt like I was speaking with my manager, lol.
Cmon Blizz! You can do better!
When you make a post like that you reveal two big things: The inside information you have and your writing style. Between the two, it'd probably be fairly easy to figure out who it was. Unless you stuck to giving information from a cross of groups, and having someone else write your posts for you, you'd run significant risk of being caught. Remember that private companies can fire you for basically any reason. They don't need probable cause even, if they think it's you, they can fire you. Whistleblower protection doesn't apply, that's only for revealing illegal things your company was doing.
You miss the point. The summary made it pretty clear what the editors thought of the interview. The 'answers' speak for themselves. They say that this company couldn't be bothered to respond and so kicked it off the PR department to spew at us. The summary makes it pretty clear, even for the dull witted, that this is nothing but mindless PR speak. That in it of itself is telling. If Blizzard doesn't like how they were portrayed, THEY can resubmit their answers.
Even shitty answers provide information. No need to hide it.
... of a White House press conference.
They're too busy counting all their money to take any of you seriously.
I think several of the questions here were speaking to this. When I hit 60, why isn't there something exciting for me to do on my own? Why are there no new places for me to discover that require some real skill and determination but not 20 to 40 other people as an escort. Anyway, I think the responses to these questions indicate a lack of understanding of a not-so-small component of the playerbase and I know it is one of the reasons I suspended my WoW account for half a year and I know it is likely the reason I will do so again when the next nice MMORPG comes out with a new solo experience that lasts for 40 or 60 or X levels.
(I should add that I do play the raid content and the BGs and I know what they offer and they can be enjoyable. For whatever reason, I personally gravitate toward doing that as a "special" occasion and prefer going out alone most of the time. Maybe it's because gaming is decompression from 8 hours of interacting with all kinds of people, :-))
I don't think Blizzard gets this.
When I read that the average age of the WoW player is 32, I was shocked.
Don't be... God plays, and he's like a bagizillion years old, so really throws off the average.
Do you Gentoo!?
I've leveled two chars to 60 (first a Shaman, then a Warlock) and had a reasonable time. Spent too much time pushing for that next level, but I figured that once I had a level 60 char, I could cut it down to an hour or two on some days and maybe 3 or 4 on a weekend -- something like most people's TV watching.
Unfortunately, WoW has simply taken EQ and done it better. And it appears that the original designers -- brilliant all -- have all left the company or have slept too close to pods from outer space or something. Instead, the developers are currently thrashing around and not really accomplishing anything beyond setting us up for an expansion.
Test realms? Please! No bugs are fixed in response to these realms. The 1.6 patch broke more Warlock features than it added or fixed, and every one of these new bugs were well-documented in the test realm forums. And the new highest-end content was so broken it took two hotfixes to get it to work. No, test realms are to generate enough buzz that people will wait another month before canceling their account.
High-end content for casual players? Notice how they mentioned "quests". Quests are only applicable to chars that are leveling, with the possible exception of Warlock/Paladin quests for their epic mounts. Other than that, you need a large guild that can guarantee 40 people attending a raid. Some of us cannot be there at some raid times (in my guild's case, set too early in the evening for me to make it from work), so as the questioner asked: what about content that a level 60 can do solo or with 1 friend in an hour or two?
No such content. How about content that may take many hours but can be worked on an hour or two at a time? Nope. Of course, there is grinding/farming, mind-numbing to raise cash for some purchase, but that's not enjoyable and the item bought requires some kind of outlet to be valued, not just using it to do more grinding.
How about PvP? As far as I can tell, they're trying to create a fourth-rate Unreal Tournament 2004. I'd hope for a third-rate or even second-rate, but they're not even close. PvP boils down to zerg-fests and the computer spec required to not be zerged AND lagged is probably 2x or 3x what UT2004 requires. (Not to mention that an RPG has many intrinsic factors that will keep PvP from being as balanced as Halo, UT2004, etc.)
And did we mention no Blizzard-written voice chat? UT2004 includes it, so it's a lowest-common-denominator. WoW depends on vent, teamspeak, etc, which fragments voice comms. (Or in the case of Macs, eliminates it.)
Anyhow, I'm bored out of my skull now and thee last three times I've logged in I've been unable to get together a party to tackle the items I have left to tackle. If this continues for another week, I'll probably have to reluctantly cancel my account.
It feels like a horrible waste to throw away such cool chars. It's like I have the Batmobile and several of his gadgets but the power sources are all dead and I either have to pay for storage for them until maybe someday we discover how it's powered or just junk them. It's more fun to read Theorycraft and rumors on Blizzard's site than to enter the game. Sad, really.
Or learn to play your character. Crowd control and getting out of sticky spots are aspects of the game that requires you to employ the tactics you haven't learned yet at your level (or the char does not yet have available skills for).
If you want dozens of different sidekicks, there's always the Hunter. Tame any beast you like.
So, the fact that you can wipe out multiple monsters 10+ levels lower than you, that you struggled to kill a single one of 10 levels ago, is "not more powerful"? How many XP based games do you know that gives you great XP for killing monsters so much weaker than you that you can wipe them out in a single hit? How many games that stops throwing anything at you that's dangerous to your character once you reach a third of the level cap?
So, bascially, you won't be happy unless you can take out an entire camp of mobs the same level as you without any danger? I take it you also dislike any game without a god mode?
Yes, see, that's why there's solo content (the majority of quests), and team content (instances and some quests). It's to cater for players of both preferences, as opposed to just yours. It's an MMO game. If you want full access to every part of the game on your own, don't play an MMO game.
If that's what you want, you should've made yourself a Rogue. Or bought invisibility potions. Of course, higher level mobs will stand a greater chance of discovering you either way. As it should be.
Several classes have temporary invulnerability and other close combat survivability skills. Dwarves have stone skin as a racial trait (just mentioning it for the likeness in name, it's not terribly useful). Not all classes are meant to take a beating up close. That's why they have pets and rely on ranged attacks.
Druids get bear form at an early level. And at level 40 a bear form tailored for tanking.
Sounds like you might like the mage. The talent tree opens for several potent area of effect spells. Mobs 9 levels lower than you are very weak compared to your char. Unless you're utterly clueless of course. Just like a soldier isn't invincible against a crowd, neither is your higher level character against masses of lower level ones.
WoW is pretty much the most newbie friendly MMO around. And you found it too much of a challenge. Though I could name plenty of wrong with WoW, I think your post speaks a lot more about you than it does about WoW.
Dear WOW "Development Team" --
On behalf of the entire Slashdot Community, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to so carefully craft responses to our questions. It's thoughtful respondents like you that make our workday such a pleasure.
It's with some dismay, however, that I can anticipate that certain members of our community may choose not to respect some simple guidelines that we have established to make this board a fun and informative place for everyone. They are likely to accuse you of being a "marketing droid" or a "PR hack" or a "community-college intern" or having "screwed your way to the middle" or being "functionally retarded" or having "your head up your ass" or your "hand down your pants" or having "your other hand up your boss's ass" or various other unpleasant and discourteous phrases for implying that your responses were less than substantive.
Please be assured that our Moderation System(tm) is designed to specifically addresses many of these users, and simply because you may see a few of these discourteous posts with "+5 Insightful" does not mean we are not working very hard behind the scenes to make sure that this is a fair and objective forum for all involved.
Again, thank you so much for taking the time to respond. We look forward to hearing from you again in the future.
-- The Slashdot "Developer Team"
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
In some ways, Blizzard is smart to give as little technical information it can, and in others, it is dumb.
/bump yourself, which is a punishable offense. They still haven't learned how to run a forum for an MMO.
Let's face it, the average bnet kid is a complete jerk. If you give them even the smallest tidbit of information, they go crazy because you didn't release the source code, let them attend development meeting, and be in charge of product design. And this makes up a large portion of their player base. I mean, have you *read* their forums???? A more idiotic group of complainers hasn't been found.
Having said that, many of their best spoken critics could be silenced with a few, well spoken responses. Blizzard won't give them, though, because of the flames they take from the masses.
Blizzard's forums are a wreck, because they refuse to clean them up. If they deleted off-topic posts, flames, and the like from their General forum ad naseum, maybe things would get better. Because they don't, their forum mods end up playing tag with a ton of nutcase windbags. Posts blow off the front page of their General forum in less than 5 minutes in many cases, and then you get no response, unless you
In a nutshell, the response that Blizzard gave here was a very watered down version of things they have let their forum mods share with the public.
Why harder hitting questions, like why does it take months between patches, and the like, were left off, and these questions were included, is curious. Heck, EQ2 is patched almost daily, yet Blizzard still leaves bugs in place for as long as it can get away with. The amount of bugs in each release clearly indicate that their Q/A process is a joke. And many problems found on the Test Server are left in the release, because they don't want to go back and fix them. Important things like this were ignored for the questions that got asked?
The questions that *were* posed to Blizzard have all been answered in their forums, for the most part. We weren't going to learn anything new, especially when 2 of the questions (1 and 8) were essentially the same. Hello, economy and farming questions go hand in hand!
The fact that the results of this were lame is partly related to the poor choices of questions asked. The rest of it is that Blizzard is a bunch of weenies.
Me, I've gone back to playing CoH, and having fun again. That, and monkeying around in the CoV beta.
A few million people play this game. Many of them are obsessed by it, and are extremely argumentative and vocal.
Did you expect something along the lines of specific flaw admissions or real technical discussions?
Anything they said will be seized upon by all sorts of aggravated pinheads. If they mention a technical issue, a couple thousand know-it-alls will chime in with ridiculous high-level responses claiming it's not a problem, and that Blizzard is just incompetent. In fact, any real discussion is going to result in nothing but lost time and face on their part, because everybody seems to think they know better.
In the end, the PR approach is simply the best way to handle this type of situation.
Worldofwar.net let it's forum goers do the exact same thing as CmdrTaco did with Slashdot. It was even promoted it as a "developer interview"!
The responses brought back? A bunch of saggy PR responses that contained nothing out of any value at all. Basically worth nobody's time if you were already up to date with the WoW community happenings. I don't even think the developers even read the questions. Even many of the most devoted Blizzard-fans were displeased, as voiced on their forum.
If Blizzard's going to continue to do these things as an effort of trying to garner publicity and please their audience, at least treat the people with dignity. Because, as we're seeing now, it's biting back -- and this is completely justified. The honesty of the Slashdot community, especially CmdrTaco, amazes me. There's plenty of websites who would find that they even responded sufficient enough to be pleased with their PR-tunneled answers.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
I'm sure a good proportion of slashdot was enthused about this interview, and all we got back was a huge friggin' depository of PR crap. After initial bemusement from reading the first couple of questions...you scroll down and realize they are ALL of similar length, ALL regimented, ALL inane babble, and most importantly lacking in any substance whatsoever.
The question is though, were there any devs there to answer questions in the first place? Or did the editors just acquire some internal blizzard address and send our questions straight to the Class D marketing droids? I'd feel more comfortable knowing that at least somebody at Blizzard wanted to answer our queries.
A point a lot of dudes have been making is that there were some defections of devs to NCsoft/ArenaNet, who recently released Guild Wars. Now, every single WEEK the Guild Wars homepage links to informative and seriously written answers to questions directly from the userbase. Compare that to Blizzard who take over a month to pull a few paragraphs of nothingness out of their overly large marketing department. For shame, this is hands down the worst "interview" slashdot has ever received back.
If, for example, the answer was
"We had a major hard drive crash over here, and IBM is being super slow about replacing our RAID array. We went down to best buy and grabbed a couple fujitsu drives to try and get things up and running for now, but that's just not working out. We have a complete backup of everything, so as soon as IBM gets back to us, we'll be good to go."
then you might feel better. If, on the other hand, the answer was
"Steve and Jake were eating pizza and kicking some back in the server room, and Steve accidently unplugged the server. Jake said 'Oh Shit!', and tried to plug it back in, but spilled beer in the case, and possibly some pepperoni. Unfortunately we're not sure when the last time we ran a full backup was. I think we're going to have to restore the Christmas backup, and then patch in the 200+ incremental backups we did since then (assuming none of them are corrupt of course)."
Well, then you'd probably be MORE angry.
They could only answer when the answer was good, but then their stony silence would be a dead giveaway when they'd done something wrong. They could LIE when they did something wrong, but then you'd never be able to trust anything they said anyways, so the whole exercise would be rendered moot.
For World of Warcraft users, The Register ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/21/wow_virtua l_plague ) reports that "When Blizzard introduced the God of Blood - Hakkar to his mates - in a new World of Warcraft scenario called Zul'Gurub, little did it know it was summoning up the online equivalent of Ebola or AIDS. According to a posting on WoW fansite Shacknews, anyone who ends up in a fusticuffs-style confrontation with Hakkar will be attacked with a magic spell called Corrupted Blood. It's a nasty one. There's little the victim can do to resist it, and it should do sufficient damage to wipe them out." ... "the contagion continues to spread from non-player characters to non-player character and anyone else entering the game."
Sound like they would be perfect for this, as test subjects.....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Did anyone else find it ironic that, by having their PR professionals handle the questions instead of the engineers, the interview resulted in terrible PR for Blizzard?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Q. How much do you monitor the economics?
A. We monitor it.
Q. What would you have done differently?
A. We learned a lot!
Q. What challenges were involved with simultaneous development of the game for both Mac and Windows?
A. We released the game on Mac and Windows at the same time!
Q. What is the process for achieving class balance?
A. It's hard.
Q. Are there going to be events like in Asheron's Call that really impact the game?
A. You can go fishing! Every week!
Q. The game is boring at 60 if you don't know 15-40 people to play with, how are you doing to deal with it?
A. By adding new content that requires 15-40 people to enjoy.
Q. I don't play your game, but I'm curious about what made you decide to make it?
A. PLAY OUR GAME! PLAY IT YOU WILL LIKE IT! PLAY IT! IT HAS TONS OF FEATURES FOR YOU! YOU WILL LOVE IT! YOU WILL MARRY IT! YOU WILL SLEEP WITH THE BOX UNDER YOUR PILLOW! YOU WILL FORNICATE WITH THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL! YOU WILL FRAME THE CDs AND HANG THEM ON THE WALL! THE UI IS AWESOME! THE QUESTS ARE EASY, IT'S TOTALLY FOR THE CASUAL GAMER JUST LIKE YOU, IGNORE ALL THESE OTHER QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW YOU NEED A SOCIAL CIRCLE LARGER THAN THE POPULATION OF WYOMING TO FINISH BLACKWING LAIR! THEY'RE JUST BITTER! PLAY IT! PLAY IT! PLAY IT PLAY IT PLAY IT PLAY IT PLAY IT.
Oh, and we made it cuz we wanted to.
Q. What are you doing to deal with farming and boting?
A. Making it against the rules and saying loudly and frequently in public that it's against the rules. Nobody breaks the rules when you repeat them loudly and frequently. Don't farm or bot. Vote Quimby.
Q. I don't want to PvP or Raid, and the game is dull at 60 for me. Now what?
A. Tough shit, most people love it. Roll an alt and keep paying your monthly fee until some unpaid intern slops together some bullshit you might like.
Q. Why don't you let the developers blog, it helps a lot?
A. We think it's far more useful to set up forums for you to read, in which you can be insulted and accused of being a stupid, immature 12 year old by people who are stupid, immature 13 years old.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
A more idiotic group of complainers hasn't been found
You're new here, right?
It's no surprise that the PR suits responded. But that needn't be the end of the story.
Now it's the dev's turn. Come on guys, answer the questions properly, ie. technically. You're in a position of strength anyway, the suits probably don't want to lose more of you to NCsoft (well, not if they have a clue anyway), so if you approach it in a constructive fashion there shouldn't be any fireworks.
And if there are, well, perhaps it's not the right company to work for after all.
You're the key people, remember that. The suits are two a penny, and you ought to remind them of that occasionally.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Not that CmdrTaco will be any more likely to answer a question from the unwashed masses than the Blizzard devs are, but one of the things being argued about on the official WoW forums is whether there was an actual agreement between Blizzard and Slashdot that indicated that Blizzard would have developers answer the questions rather than just whoever. Was there actually such an agreement that Blizzard reneged on, or was it just a big misunderstanding?
*ahem* The average age of the *PERSON WHOSE NAME IS ON THE CREDIT CARD* is 32. I might believe that..
You're new here, right?
Haha, touche'! But seriously, as bad as Slashdot may be, it has nothing on the WoW forum whiners.
Any time an incredibly minor rebalancing is introduced, the shrill cries of "OMG WTF, I can't play anymore!!! I'm canceling!!!! GG Blizzard! $@$#" fill page after page.. Q: "So.. with the slowest weapons in the game you'll now do 4% less damage, 5% at the most on an attack you can't exactly spam?" A: "SHUT UP!! They nerfed the whole class! FU. I should be able to p0wn all the other classes, that's what my class does, now this will make it harder!! Forget it! I'm quitting!"