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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.
Large quantities of crack and heroine. Every user...ummm...player knows this.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
They made a pact with the devil?
there are TWO stories. One is the background, which i can't recite because i ignore it every chance i get. The second is that they frequently have world event- where there is a battle, with war preparations, or there is a new enemy who appears for awhile, or things like that.
I try to ignore those, too.
So yes, there is a story, and there is endgame content that people can do, but not everyone bothers and it isn't really worth it to me as a casual gamer.
In fact, as long as i'm posting in a gaming thread: Hey blizzard! More stuff for casual gamers!
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
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?
Stories within stories. Subplots. Etc...
You see, while you are right that nobody will ever be able to 'beat wow', there are still parts of WoW you can beat. For instance, every large 40 man raid comes with a story, some better than others of course. Look at Nefarian and Blackwing Lair. There is a LONG story behind that dragon, the lair, the orcs, and the surrounding zones (searing gorge and burning steppes). In fact, before you ever get to step foot in blackwing lair you have to go through some quests that highlight some of the story and lore. And if you want, you can read up on the particular lore of the encounter you are doing.
Some say "BUT!! BUT!! Once you kill Nefarian he isn't REALLY dead!"
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
and the reason for short leveling... the ADHD market is huge!!
Story != literary plotline. MMOs like WoW are not short stories, they are not even novels. I think you need to redefine your assumption of what 'story' is in the context of MMOs.
I'd contend that a 'story' in an MMO consists of related events occurring outside the actions of the player, that in turn affect the play experience. It's nothing more than an excuse for changing the setting, which gives players something new. When done well, the players are intrigued by the story, enough so that they don't notice that it's a pretext for introducing new/different content. The point is to keep things fresh enough that people don't cancel their subscriptions.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They really overkilled the issue. They could have just said "Unlike other games, we made it not suck" or more specifically, "We decided to limit including features that people wouldn't like" and it still would have been just as accurate. All they really did was not screw up like most other MMOG companies.
now stop reading and go play Dance Dance Revolution!
By ripping off Everquest?
Take a look at Blizzard's entire track record and there's not really anything groundsbreaking original in there. What Blizzard does it take a good idea, one that has had some success, and they improve on that idea to have *more* success than the previous incarnation. Take Warcraft for example (starting with the actual RTS). It had been done, and most people will point to "Dune" as the innovator. Take Diablo for example, it's basically a roguelike so you could say rogue, nethack, or anything in that genre. Obviously MMO's were not new, Blizzard just took it and molded it to make more money.
I think it's a good thing to have ideas improved upon and perfected like this, and it helps set somewhat of an industry standard for a certain level of quality. I've played just about every Blizzard game ever made, including that stuff with Interplay back on old consoles and they do make fun games, even if it's just taking an idea and going further with it. I have issues with WoW and went back to Frozen Throne, but it was a good year of gaming.
Fear is the mind killer.
It sounds like you've only played the uber-large MMOs, and have never been in a guild. Or maybe you've never even played an MMO.
Anyway, it's very possible to have stories. You could, I dunno, roleplay and find other players who also roleplay. Or you could seek out a game that actually expands the story as it progresses.
And no, having an "actual plotline" like you describe does not necessarily mean that you are able to "beat" the game. Resolving a major conflict does not mean the game is over. This is like saying once you resolve a major conflict in life, your life is over.
"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.
Newsflash, genius: Everquest wasn't the first to the stage with MMORPG genre, they just took what was out there and made it bigger.
It is just multiple ones, they are short and they reset for the user after you. So you put to rest the cursed lover of a night elf and so did that guy before you and everyone else after you. Nonetheless it is a story and gives you a "motivation" for fighting your way to the ghost and killing it. No it ain't planescape torment but then is Oblivion that different? Be honest here.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
the levelling curve in WoW is very steep once you hit 60, after you are, say, 5/8 T2 and exalted with the BGs the impact of rerolling is HUGE, not to mention that very likely you'll be stuck in 'alt city' with your guild (having to pass on gear etc.) and have to always use your main whenever possible.
I can see somebody just hitting 60 with a mix of greens and blues thinking 'hey, that was fun, let me redo it on another character', but the situation is a lot different for the raiding crowd: yeah, it takes a couple of weeks going to 60 (esp. with friends helping you PL and so on), but it takes many many months progressing further, getting your profession's recipes, getting reputation, getting raid gear, getting PvP ranks, etc. etc. etc.
-- the cake is a lie
Asherons Call 2, for all its faults, did an excellent job of that.
Everquest 2 is doing this now. The large game updates include preludes to upcoming expansions months before the expansion is released, and zones from the original game are altered to show the expanding influence of the two major cities.
The story and lore of Warcraft are two of the reasons I'm not interested in WoW, where the opposite is true for EQ2. While I don't think story or lore matter much or at all to most MMO players though, but they do matter to some.
Unfortunately, this isn't true with WoW.
That is, unless you consider the story while levelling to be:
"Greeting [Playername], we have been expecting you for a while now. We of the [Foo] Brotherhood have been trying to drive back the [Enemy] from the [Place] and are in dire need of some [Animal Anatomy]. Please collect [1..20] [Animal Anatomy] and return to us when you're done!"
[Animal Anatomy] Collected 0/[1..20]
What do they mean designing? I thought they stumbled across this other world during some sort of weird programming experiment and just coded up a way to access that world remotely.
I mean, I know that the characters/creatures/buildings/etc. look like they are made of polygons, but they HAVE to. It would be impossible to transmit that many raw video feeds across the Internet and still have a decent framerate.
If you used the device from the movie Tron then you could get inside and see what it is actually like - but the government won't let you.
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.
For example in Everquest (sorry, not all that familiar with World of Warcraft) there was Kerafyrm, the great crystalline dragon otherwise known as "the sleeper" because he was in an eternal slumber due to the workings of other dragons, but I'll leave you to research that story on your own. Anyways he was buff - so buff no guild could ever hope to defeat him. Well, five or so years into the game several guilds (on a PVP server no less - and everquest PVP is multi factioned, not horde VS alliance, these multiple factions worked together) took down the sleeper. It took several hours and he is no more on that server.
Another instance is the city of Firiona Vie. Normally a gooodie city in evil territory it was sieged and taken over by Lanys. World event happened, players were encouraged to participate, and the zone map changed as a consequence.
Another instance is the godamn froglok race (I hate frogloks). When they came into being they kicked the trolls out of Grobb. Another big deal was made out of this, zone map changes, etc.
Everquest, at least, is a living MMO. The storyline evolves. Things die off. Other things come to life. And in the case of Everquest, the game **will** end - we know that, EQ2 is set in the future and based on the storyline there we know just about what is going to happen.
If there was an actual plotline (in terms of exposition, hook, rising action, climax,falling action, and resolution) then one would be able to "Beat Wow"
You are confusing one player's story with the story of the world as a whole.
The world has one story. I have my own. That's another interesting thing about EQ - from time to time players get commemorated for their actions and receive a title. Generally for completing an event run by a GM in game. In addition by being part of a guild or at least a group of friends, you create your own stories. And roleplaying your characters - at least in EQ you were given a huge bank of lore, I'm assuming for WoW it's the same - you could be who you wanted to be, the typical human male or a rebel Iksar. And with factions as diverse as they were you could screw your city and decide to take up residence somewhere else. Hard work, but possible. Its your story.
(Hope I don't come off as an EQ shill, just spent the better part of 4 years of my life there... and although my wife plays WoW I don't... )
I think what most people don't realize, except maybe on a subconscious level, is that they are making their own stories. Remember Sam telling Frodo during their journey about being part of a story and how it doesn't really feel the same because you don't know what's next as you're part of it?
Consider some of your adventures in WoW (or EQ, or DAOC, etc). If you were to write them down, use some pretty prose, you might even have a good story. It's not part of the overwhelming "story of the world", but then it's not that way in real life either.
"The trip from the keep was uneventful until we reached the place where the forest thins and the desert wastes begins. Our party of six nearly became a party of five as we were beset upon by a great flying Griffon. Why our wily ranger didn't notice the creature before it arrived still puzzles me, but it was his bow that gave us the time to escape into the little cave hidden in the wall of the dunes. If only we'd had time to prepare for what we found in there..."
Your group ran from Freeport to the undead dungeon of Befallen and almost was wiped out by one of those high-level griffons that inhabit the area. See...a story!
Yes, it's not really hard to hit 60 in WoW. But that's not the end. It's the beginning of the grind.
In WoW, every character is essentially the same. There are no "stat points" to push around (more dex, more str, more hp, more whatever), the only thing resembling "stat points" that you distribute is your talent points which can be invested in one of three trees. Now, unless they changed it HEAVYILY since I dumped it, there is (depending on your character class) 1-3 ways to stat it, unless you want to end up with a useless character.
In other words, there are 2 different kinds of healers, 2 different kinds of Fighters and, if I remember correctly, one kind of Paladin that does not suck worse than a $2 whore.
So at 60, if there wasn't anything else, everyone would be at the same level. If you're 4 years or 4 weeks old, you're the same. And here comes the difference: Equipment. That's about the ONLY thing that divides the cracks from noobs. And, of course, the best equipment (read: the stuff you need to actually join raids for the top level mobs) cannot be made or bought, you have to be lucky enough to be there when it drops (because, of course, it also cannot be traded).
In other words, you spend your next year killing the same ol' stinkin' monster over and over and over, just to see your drop finally been looted accidently by some idiot.
So yes, the leveling curve ain't steep in WoW. But the grind is there, oh boy, it is.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
You mean you don't destroy yours? I find that burning books after I read them gives them a satisfying sense of finality.
There is something to the lack of long-term effects on the game when you beat bosses, though. The fact is you aren't replaying an entire story arc in its entirety, but repeatedly replaying specific parts of the story in order to be able to progress to the next one, each time failing to see much of an even temporary effect of your actions. It's as if the ending of Dragons of Autumn Twilight had gone:
"And thus did the Heroes slay the Dragon Highlord Verminaard and free the slaves of Pax Tharkas. Then they slew him again, because he didn't drop the helm that Caramon wanted. Then they once again ventured into the fortress, hoping to find a pair of healer boots for Goldmoon. Finally, after the forty sixth slaying and subsequent celebration of the end of the greatly feared Dragon Highlord, the Heroes thought themselves prepared to move on to the next great challenge..."
Still I think it is just something that needs to be accepted as part of the game. They could make it so that you didn't repeat content and at least your own personal trek through the story was unbroken by giving you every relevent item from a dungeon on your first trip through, like a console RPG. Random drops are why you have to go back seven times seven times, but that may be a decent tradeoff for being able to find a group for dungeons instead of everyone saying they've already done it. Stories are great, but they do have to make a game (with thousands of people following the same story) out of it.
I do wish there were more examples of having at least a temporary effect on the world. For example, the quest in the Barrens which summons a mass of centaur invaders. As long as that quest is going on, anyone in the area needs to content with those invaders. They could do a lot more like this, giving the impression that your actions are doing at least something that affects those outside of your own group.
The enemies of Democracy are
Some say "BUT!! BUT!! Once you kill Nefarian he isn't REALLY dead!"
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
Wow. I had never actually thought about it like that before. (This is not sarcastic.) I think a game that truly understood this concept could be very nice.
There's been tons of games that use it unwittingly. WoW, Everquest, Asheron's Call, etc. And of course, every offline game uses it for the concept of the whole game, as you can simply play it again from scratch. But none have really presented it like this.
It's kind of funny, too, since there's been more than a few games that start off 'telling a tale' and then give you control. Some even show a book with printed pages in the beginning.
This is more of 'reading a chapter again' than a whole book, in MMOs, but still. I really like the concept.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I suppose that while we're at it we should knock on GoodYear for ripping off the first wheel and Boeing needs to be boycotted because they merely improved the "Bird"(tm) concept...
I have no idea what you're talk... HEY LETS GO RIDE BIKES!
Maybe they could make additional levels that allowed you some free play or some kinda more serious experience? I just can't believe that you couldn't add in some freaking HARD puzzles when you get to the highest of levels that challenge the hardcore without making it impossible for the novice to get to a few new levels more easily.
stuff |
WoW suffers from the internet problem of complete anonymity. Be an asshole all you want, if you end up getting the ramifications for it then you just switch to an alt. Everytime there is a problem with the big servers the smaller ones get swamped by people just being annoying because, well, because they can.
So the so-called low-levelling curve and easy re-roll capabilties of WoW also has a down side. To counter, in SWG you had one character per server and a limited number of servers. Be an asshole and you had to face the consequences.
Now imagine a MMORPG were your account gets you just ONE character with ONE name. An alt means buying the game again. So if you get ignored by lots of people that actually has an effect.
I am not saying that it is THE way to go but just that WoW's way of doing things is not without its negatives either.
Oh and about the so called casual user being able to get on just as good as the hardcore player. What a load of bullshit. The hardcore player will be able to grind the same instance over and over again, farming all the "phat" loots and kitting himself out of with all the best gear.This allows him to win in PvP easily wich again gives the player better gear.
Sorry, but WoW like every MMORPG rewards those who can/want to play the most hours. Oh and EVE fans. Think about this for a second. While getting new skills is not based on the amount of time logged in, nonetheless you HAVE to login every now and then to select a new skill to learn plus the game is heavily based on equipment wich is gotten by money wich is only earned while you are playing. So EVE just moved the focus from grinding XP to grinding money. Still the player that can afford to put in the most amount of time gets an advantage.
Perhaps this really can't be solved. After all it is part of live, train more in a sport/hobby and you will be better then someone who doesn't.
What instead perhaps MMORPG's should focus on is on making the whole game across the entire XP curve FUN. Yes that first quest and the last quest to be the same FUN! Idiotic perhaps but think about it. Was the first level of Doom, Half-Life a chore? Or were these games fun from the moment you entered the game, not just after you passed level X and gained weapon/skill Y?
If you want my opinion on why WoW is a success then it is simply because MMORPG's upto WoW just plained sucked donkey balls. WoW still sucks in many way but at least it stays away from the donkey's. Their main competitor SOE on the other sucks donkey balls but has its eye on the horses and wonders about elephants. WoW is a success not because it is that good but because it just ain't as bad as what came before.
For those who actually played Everquest 1/2 and WoW just compare the two. What really did WoW do different? What major innovations did it make? If you compare the design spec of EQ vs WoW instead of say EQ vs UO or EQ vs SWG or EQ vs Eve then I think you would be hardpressed to tell the difference. It is a bit like comparing Doom/Quake vs Unreal. Just what is the difference?
What it comes down too is that WoW is slightly better done. Graphics that work in style and performance (but still hardly perfect). Quests that focus less on (kill 10 bears, go back, kill 10 bears, go back, kill 10 bears, go back, rince and repeat until you are blue in the face). Quests that do not have as rare spawns as their objective (although WoW just like EQ1/2 suffers from the need item X to drop wich doesn't to complete, just less).
WoW is also less obsessive then EQ2 especially about crafting. Just que the items you want and sit back instead of forcing some extremely boring mini-"game" on you.
WoW ain't a better game t
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Any game can be made to look stupid,silly, or pointless if you just pick out something you don't like and beat it to death.
Most MMORPGs have FedEx, collection, and rescue style quests. Hell many stories have the very same elements. One thing people who put forth your comment is that they never offer anything realistic as an alternative to the existance of the type of "story/quest" they bemoan.
I bet you never read the complete text of the quests involved, let alone the chat of the NPCs giving it to you? There is a great deal of lore in the game and its revealed through quests. Yeah there are many simple quests but you have to have those to cover every level of player expertise. I know players who don't do instances simply because the team coordination is beyond them or even a simple hour of grouped play rubs them wrong. Yet they still play the game. They do the simple quests.
Blizzard put these quests in the game to relay a story but also to provide a distraction from the leveling process. I know of many cases where focusing on the quest objective, even the simple/silly ones, has made a level or two go by nearly unnoticed.
Just for as many people who bemoan the quests you do there are probably an equal number who complain about the involved ones that require grouping. How does a company like Blizzard win in that case? Simple, try to give each type of player something they want.
the best reply Blizzard can make to people who complain about the game; many of whom do not subscribe or ever did, is to point you to the number of players and server where many more people are actively enjoying the game.
There are more people playing WOW than the other major US market games at any one time, whose doing the best at getting it right?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I have read Dune four times, each time enjoying it greatly.
I agree that today's games don't necessarily implement the aforementioned concept completely. They have had to find a happy medium (sometimes not so happy) between the story telling and the technical aspects of coordinating millions of people at once without costing millions of dollars a day. I could use the standard "in the future games will have (insert feature that they don't have today)...." ad infinitum, but we all know that no matter how advanced games get people will still eventuallysee them as missing something or being able to be better in some way.
That being said, they think WoW is addictive now.. just wait. WoW is only the end of the beginning of MMORPGS.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
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
If only they could have put as much time and polish into their server architecture as they did into the game itself. Obviously, it's still successful regardless, but I still consider this their biggest flaw.
Until your sense of immersion is ruined when you see this appear in your chat box:
Kooldrooddewd tells you, "wtf u doin i was kitin that griffen".
I RTFA and am continually amazed at all the people who bother to post with "Ah, I find WoW to be too boring." or "There's nothing to do" or "There's no story, it's just grinding quests."
OK, we got it - you didn't like the game. Now eff off. 7 million other people disagree.
See, Blizzard is a company. They don't have a sacrosanct goal to keep YOU entertained. If what they do appeals to 15 people who are willing to pay (note that part), and annoys/frustrates 5 other people, that's a successful strategy. In Blizzard's terms, if they offend 1 million hardcore gamers, but bring in 7 million casuals - that is a WIN (entirely setting aside the fact that for the same $15/month, a hardcore player is going to use FAR more bandwidth than a casual, be more hypercritical of everything, whinge more on the forums, all of which cost the company more of their own cash....)
Unless the 5 annoyed people are willing to pay 3x as much as the first 15, it makes business sense to appeal to the mass. It's democracy in action, and people vote with their dollars. It's the same reason that Ultimate Deer Hunter 3D is/was commonly near the top of the game sales charts. I might find it a joke, any regular game player might find it a joke, but people BUY it.
Companies are after your dollars, not your aesthetic approval (except insofar as it brings in dollars). Don't like it? Try to pay your rent with aesthetic approval and see how far it gets you.
-Styopa
I was all set to pwn the lamer, and you totally beat me to it, and beautifully, besides. Bravo, sir!
Long answer: Hell no.
Idea is unworkable for so many ideas. The first is simply the amount of time and varied resources that would need to go in to the project. An MMORPG world requires a ton of art, sound and level design assets to be compelling. This isn't something the traditional geek is good at. However, even supposing you got all that part out of the way P2P just isn't possible. The load it would place on each client system, and line, would be crushing for any area where there's a few hundred players gathered. Also P2P has a problem of cheating. Who do I trust for what a given monster is supposed to be doing?
To work effectively as a real MMORPG, you've got to have some beefy servers. As a somewhat analogous situation, take the difference between IM and IRC. IM is something you could do totally P2P. Really the main function of the servers is just to let you find your contacts. You can send messages directly. However IRC relies on the presence of a server. After all, if you tried to have each and every client responsible for sending out hundreds (or thousands) of copies of each thing a person says, it'd crush a normal person's line, even broadband. So to work you need a server on a good line that aggregates everything and sends each person only one copy and only what they need.
Likewise with games. P2P works fine for something like C&C Generals. Each computer only has to communicate with a few others, maybe 5-6 at most. Also each game has nothing to do with any other, so if someone cheats, the other clients can just disconnect that one, doesn't affect anything overall. However it doesn't for something like WoW. If I move in a zone where there's 400 other players, they all need to know about it. It'd be just about impossible for my client to send that update to all of them at the same time, and for all of them to do the same thing. The chatter would be crushing. You need a central aggregation point.
The closest you can maybe get is a sort of half MMORPG like people do with Neverwinter nights. People run area servers, which link together. So a bunch of individuals run servers on their computer, each which supports like 64 people and represents an area. However that means only so many people can be in an area at once, and if that server dies, that area dies (and maybe delinks other areas). True P2P just isn't feasible.
Except they didn't "rip off" the one thing Everquest had in spades: mindblowingly inaccessible content that catered to only a select type of gamer. Blizzard went out of their way to make as much of the experience as fun as possible for a long time for EVERYONE. I've known total non-gamers can pick up Wow and run with it. The same can't be said with EQ.
Sounds more like Star Wars Galaxies to me. At least with WoW, if you read the quest text, they tell a good story to give you some sense of purpose to collecting [1..20] [Animal Anatomy].
Some of my favorite quest lines are the Onyxia quest line (Alliance and Horde versions), the "lost son" quest line in Eastern Plaguelands, the "Legend of Stalvan", "Hidden Diplomat", and the "Fallen Hero of the Horde" quest line in Blasted Lands... And that's just what comes to mind right now.
Sort of don't agree fully with this, of course they do it to make money, that is why you go into business of any kind. Duh! But the key is to make something that everyone will want to play, and sure the ideas come from other places but it comes down to who does it better. To tell you the truth, other than Starcraft, WoW was the 2nd game I played from Blizzard, since then I've purchased WC3 just to get down all the background lore and thought the game itself was fun! I do now own the diablo game chest but only played it for about 10 mins or so.
Anyway back to WoW, before WoW I played FFXI - that is a game for people who have time and static groups of players. WoW is a great game because I still consider myself a casual gamer, even thought I play an average of 2-3 hours / night during the week and 20+ hours on the weekend. I have a 60 and a number of 20+ toons with a second 60 in the works, my first 60 I still haven't to this day gone into the 40 man raids. Mainly because of the times that groups I know are doing them. But if I don't want to raid, I can jump into a BG and work my way through the ranks to get the nice PvP gear. Or I can run a 5 man with some guild mates just for loot. But the one thing I do enjoy doing is exploring new areas. Blizzard has hidden alot of easter eggs in this game and that is something fun to find. For instance in the South eastern corner of Ashenvale has a nifty easter egg from WC3.
Yes they made the game to make money, but I don't think that even they realized the impact of this game. And sure they used ideas from other games/stories to fuel the development. After all Hollywood has been doing it for years but have failed miserably at it in some cases.
As for Storyline, there is a ton of storyline, but you have to look for it, pay attention to the quest descriptions and such. Each major instance has a good amount of lore behind them. Eventually all of this will come together at some point to a battle with the Lich King and the lords of the burning legion. So yes WoW is a continuation to WC3. Will it ever end? Well think of this more as a comic book series rather than a simple story, a good comic never ends, the world is always in peril from some evil being or another. With patch 1.11, we are already battling Kel'Thuzad, so who's the big boss in Burning Crusade? The Lich King? Illidan? The lords of the Burning Legion? Who knows?
Will I ever get a full set of purples?? Probably not, though I am also not killing myself or losing sleep over it. Will I farm like crazy for a flying mount when the time comes?? Hell yeah I will, because I like exploring and there is a ton of places that can be explored but getting to them is the tough part.
This game is not for everyone, in fact the genre itself is not for everyone. But anyone who thinks that this game is a grind is nuts! Its a grind if you want it to be. Play any of the Korean based MMOs and you will see a grind! Play FFXI without a static party and you will see a grind. This game is what Blizzard wanted it to be... Fun! The minute you stop having fun, you should re-evaluate the game or your play style or the guild you are in.
ok, work is calling, enjoy!
Dewser - all around techy "In the immortal words of Socrates - 'I drank what?'"
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Because of WoW's eight (count them EIGHT) characters per server per user account and no limit to the number of servers you can be on WoW has a far greater sense of your character merely being a toon or even just a nickname on irc.
It's actually 10. But how is this a bad thing? If I get bored of the character I'm playing, I can take a break and play a new toon of a new class with new professions with my friends on the same server without having to destroy all my hard work by having to delete my character, or buy another account, or force my friends to abandon their characters to join me on another realm just because I got bored.
So the so-called low-levelling curve and easy re-roll capabilties of WoW also has a down side. To counter, in SWG you had one character per server and a limited number of servers. Be an asshole and you had to face the consequences.
Now imagine a MMORPG were your account gets you just ONE character with ONE name. An alt means buying the game again. So if you get ignored by lots of people that actually has an effect.
This is what made SWG one of the worst MMORPG games. Did SOE severely nerf or break your profession after a big patch? Early Droid Engineers, I'm talking to you. Well, your choice is to give it up and delete your skills that you spend weeks or months working on (not to mention many, many credits buying supplies/weapons/armor/etc.) so you can have a PLAYABLE class for a while, or buy another account (why would you give these idiots more money for screwing up?), or just stop playing until SOE decides to fix it in a few months.
Let me take the entertainer class as an example. To me, it's fun class to play when you want to take a break and play a social class for a while. I just wouldn't want to be JUST an Entertainer, nor would I want to work my way up to be a Master Musician and then have to give it up to try something else. At least Ultima Online gave you 5 characters per server so you could try out the different skills...you could have your warrior character, your crafter/shopkeep character, your fishing/gatherer character, etc. You weren't confined to one style of gameplay only.
This really is what makes WoW so successful. I know plenty of people who are not interested in the end-game at all, but have fun building different characters up to 60. And with 10 characters on the same server, they can hang out with the same guildmates while doing it.
And believe me, there were plenty of assholes and spammers in SWG, even with only one character per server allowed.
Well not to smear Blizzard or anything - I actually think they are one of the best studios out there .But what Blizzard really does is takes and old idea and implements it very well. Wow is no exception. Starting with warcraft - idea ripped of dune 2(and then sequels ) starcraft -just another RTS , not a single fresh idea. Diablo could be sorta considered "fresh" idea -if the idea of stripping down RPG of everything but items and action can be passed as a novelty.
,replaced with what was proven to be fun (quest based leveling , fun combat, fast travel, practically no death penalty, creative classes ). On top of that they added awesome world/dungeon design, good itemization, flawless server/client code ( noobs complaining about Wow "bugs and downtime" haven't seen previous generation MMORPGS) , awesome lore and world. And here you go - 7 mln subscribers ,when it was estimated "that total US market for MMORPG is 500k subscriptions"
,because Verant/SOE and hordes of others could not even implement their original ideas right.
Wow does not have single new element in MMORPG genre, but every single element they borrowed is implemented very well. Blizzard designers know how to take an old idea and make it fun . In Wow they just looked carefully at most outrageous and unfun elements of current generation MMORPGs (such as long level grinds, unnecessary travel time, outrageous death penalties, cookie cutter classes) and removed them
And really Wow is EQ done right. -This does not diminish achievement of Blizzard in any way
Strength of Blizzard is to polish and popularize old ideas. But innovation?- that the wrong thing to expect from them. And thats why I like them - they see trough bullshit and cut straight to fun.
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.
Or:
After dispatching the griffen, an orc mage accosted us. I ran up to it and with all my might, swung my word down at him, as he was busy casting a spell. My sword cleaved straight through him, as he was not even dodging or defending himself, yet not only did I not damage his body, I didn't even interrupt his delicate magical hand movements. Why am I so weak? Why wouldst anyone useth a sword when it mysteriously cuts yet doesn't cut a simple robe-wearing fool like this?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
One acronym: MUDs. A good MUD pulled off the full MMOPRG experience, with story, character interaction, grinding, etc... All within a pure text enviroment. These are why I put off playing modern MMOs (starting with UO), because I realized that they could eat a large portion of my life. Almost the entirety of the 90's was wasted on killing Fidos. Hell, your not hardcore until you break up with your real girlfreind because she is distracting you from your leveling grind.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
http://www.planeshift.it/ I've seen a lot of so-called FOSS MMO games in the works, but this one seems to be the only one I've found that has any real dedication. Still, they've been working on it for years now and there's not much to see. But it does have a working client/server and is pretty damn good for a volunteer effort.
Rerolling your char is a PITA though, and leveling is slow as hell. And to get all the nice rares you have to grind for a lot of money. It's got nice graphics though, and no lag! I give it 3 stars of 5.
.. competative as a game.
:)
My personal preferences for rules of enguagement: I win.
It might be good for an RP oriented setup or something, but not really as a zero sum game. There has to be something enforcing a set of balance rules, or else the giefers will win.
Enforcement means sometimes people are forced to do thing they would rather not, which is counter to the openness of your idea.
greed for shinies, social interaction or ePeen
This is why I am currently replaying Secret of Mana. It really is a pity that some games are not available around the world (even 15 years after release).
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Except they didn't "rip off" the one thing Everquest had in spades: mindblowingly inaccessible content that catered to only a select type of gamer. Blizzard went out of their way to make as much of the experience as fun as possible for a long time for EVERYONE.
*cough*raids*cough*
I suggest you refine your definitions of "inaccessible" ("accessible" == "has 39 other friends in the game") and "Everyone" (WoWraiders \subset Everyone).
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?"
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY man. I was hoping that this article would be how they actually made the game and would illustrate their server architecture and netcode so the /. communtiy could rip it up.
Tonight, my guild will enter BlackWing Lair and spend 2hrs of lag-induced death resulting in huge repair bills. This Fri night lag has been going on for a year now and it still isn't fixed.
"But if I don't want to raid, I can jump into a BG and work my way through the ranks to get the nice PvP gear."
Good luck hitting top of the PVP ladder without epic gear, a crapload of free time and a static group ("preformed").
PVP is a lot more fun in the sub 60 category in my opinion. Although it's best to be using a twinked out alt - since almost everyone else is.
Sometimes my arms bend back.