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How They Made World of Warcraft
SiliconJesus writes "Rob Pardo, VP of Design at Blizzard, gave an interesting keynote at the Austin Game Conference outlining the Blizzard philosophy on designing game content, core and casual players, and why story should always drive the game." From Raph's writeup: "If you extend the leveling curve too far, it becomes a barrier. You hit a leveling wall. Our walls are shorter and there are less of them. The short leveling curve also encourages people to reroll and start over. We had some hardcore testers who would level to 60 in a week. There was much concern within the company. But I would tell them that we cannot design to that guy. You have to let him go. He probably won't unsubscribe, he's going to hit your endgame content or he'll have multiple level 60s. In games with tough leveling curves, it discourages you from starting over." More is available from the conference, with Gamasutra having a rundown on Mark Terrano's writer's keynote, and Gamespot's piece on the MMOG Rant session. Paneled by the likes of Matt Firor, Lum, Rich Vogel, and Jessica Mulligan, that must have been entertaining to see live. One more thing - WoW has 7 Million subscribers now.
Sure there's a story. Are you an active part of the story? That is up for debate.
The whole storyline of WoW is actually part of WC3, and to a limited extent WC/WC2. It sets the stage for the game, it justifies relationships in the game, and it helps set about the Geography of the game. Thats all you need to define a "Story". Hell, without story, you're pretty much playing a FPS, aren't you?
"If you extend the leveling curve too far, it becomes a barrier. You hit a leveling wall. Our walls are shorter and there are less of them. The short leveling curve also encourages people to reroll and start over. We had some hardcore testers who would level to 60 in a week. There was much concern within the company. But I would tell them that we cannot design to that guy. You have to let him go. He probably won't unsubscribe, he's going to hit your endgame content or he'll have multiple level 60s. In games with tough leveling curves, it discourages you from starting over."
I always thought that the best way to create a MMORPG that catered to multiple targets is to have various paths and progress rates for everyone to choose from. Suppose you have a rank based system where (by default) levels 1-50 had one rank, 51-60 had 2, 61-70 had 3 and so on (for a total of 100 levels) where each rank took about 1-2 hours to successfully get; this would provide a challenge to most of the more casual players. At the same time you could provide Hero-Classes that have 1 rank for levels 1-10, 2 ranks for 11-20, 3 ranks for 21-30 and so on; to get to the level cap with these classes would be far more time consuming.
Now, if you gave a "talent" point (to steal WoW terms) for every rank, and each of the individual tallents were pretty weak the hero classes would have more abilities (and slightly stronger abilities) than the regular classes but would (probably) not become uber-invincible; thus they could exist in the same world together.
If correctly implemented, you'd hope that 75% of people would choose the "normal" path and enjoy their travels through the game; if done poorly 75% of the people would grind their way through a hero class hating the game while alienating the 25% of people who just want to have fun.
There are several problems with the crafting system, that I would have loved to have seen fixed (Disclaimer, I stopped playing 8 months ago). the first is that you max out in crafting and it becomes fairly worthless for you in the higher levels. The second is just that crafting maxes out so easily. The third is that you can always find better items than you can craft for your level (and rather easily at that).
Crafting's only real advantage was your ability to make things for lower level characters and sell it. Making things to use for yourself as you progressed when you could almost always find better hurt that system and I maxed out all my crafting skills in the 40-50 level range.
As a side note, the lack of a special 'hunter' armor in the leather skill chain was a minus, and the 'leveling bug' exposed a large hole in the system (as well as their customer service which was the main reason I closed my account). I think if they had added to and increased the crafting chains and the amount of stuff you could make at the higher levels, it would have added a lot to the game. On the whole I think FFXI's crafting system had some advantages in that aspect.
AMEN! Games like Islands of Kesmai and Kingdom of Drakkar FAR predated EQ in the graphical MMORPG genre. The amaking thing is, KoD is STILL in active development and being played today. I stopped playing Drakkar when they started making it more like EQ to appeal to a wider audience.
That is an excellent point. About the book. Very close to how I feel about reading books, too. If I really enjoy a book, I may pick it up a second time. But that doesn't happen all that often. Same with WoW. I like reading about some of the quests once, but after that I could care less becuase they're not that epic.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
- Free Open Source
- P2P - No server, no centralized control
- No rules of engagement - Users can define their own roles and interactions, opting in or out as they wish
- Extensible - Provide framework and encourage users to create landscapes, features, graphics, etc. In short, to create the virtual reality. All such features must be freely licensed so that each can build on the work of others.
I imagine that some of the existing game engines could be modified so that every client becomes a server as well. Does anyone know of any projects like this?Test 1 2 3 4
I've been talking to other friends lately, and many of them say that they won't even finish a lot of the games they play, just because they don't have the time to do so, and playing through a game a second time quickly becomes a real luxury reserved for people with time. Yet many people who play through WoW create a second character, for three reasons - one, you don't feel like the end is so far out of reach that it's pointless to split your attention; two, the gameplay is different and has different rewards depending on the class that you choose and the paths that you take; and three, the gameplay at lower levels is still rewarding. When you look at the recent trend in console RPG's, I think there's a lesson that should be learned there about game design. I heard a lot of people telling me about how the new Dragon Warrior has some great old-school gameplay, but I just can't get myself excited enough to play through a game that innocuously huge that I know will take me a half a year to complete. The much hyped underground hit Disgaea, I picked up and began playing but sold on eBay halfway through the game because I didn't feel like I was being rewarded accordingly for the amount of time I was putting into it.
Games like Civilization, on the other hand, I'll not only play through one campaign, but eventually come back to play other campaigns, because I don't feel like I'm in an endless battle, nor do I feel like starting from the beginning puts me back on a trail that I can't complete. I can't stand to play a level 1 character in a standard RPG, because the real fun doesn't much start until you have several abilities. With games like WoW or Civilization, it's not so much that the early game is lacking so much as it's a separate entity. With Civ, you move from world building to intermediate diplomacy to the endgame race to complete your ultimate goal. With WoW, you go from simpler questing and personal grinding in the early game to the emphasis on five-man raiding after level 40 or so to the preparation for large raid content. The biggest difficulty is making early game content feel less like just a learning process and preparation for later material and feel more like its own separate part of the game. I would much rather see shorter games which emphasis on making the experience different each time you play the game than see games that focus on one huge, unique experience.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
You answered your own question.
Anyone can think of something better to do than play WoW at a given time -- but they can't think of something better to do *all* the time. WoW's damn fun in small chunks. No-one challenges that. They complain about the social aspect being weaker than other massmogs (it is), the end-game being all raiding (it is) and an interminable grind (it definitely can be). But they admit that for a couple hours a week, it's just good clean DIKU fun, turned up to 11.
The _vast_ majority of Blizzard's playerbase are not playing WoW _all_ the time.
They log on a couple times a week or less.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"