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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.
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.
"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.
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
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.
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
I have no idea what you're talk... HEY LETS GO RIDE BIKES!
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.
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 will have to disagree with your opinion.
I am not saying you are wrong but there is a different angle here.
You can get better items then what is crafted if you Raid often.
I have a Blacksmith who made most of his own equipment and they were great! He is 60th and he STILL uses what he made. Why? Because he does not Raid often.
So people like me the Crafting system is fantastic.
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?"