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The Lameness of Warcraft
Slate is running an article lamenting the fact that, despite World of Warcraft's popularity, it is a deeply flawed game. Author Chris Dahlen makes the statement that Blizzard's MMOG should take its cues from single-player RPGs by offering further customization, morality based choices, and dynamic events. From the article: "Blizzard has written new storylines before. Last winter, it challenged players to team up and fuel a worldwide war effort. As a payoff, it unlocked new territory. This was a good example of letting the users drive a story, but Warcraft needs more of them. New wars should break out, cities should rise and fall, and all hell should break loose at least once a month--and the players should be the ones to make it happen. After all, in a world that never changes, you can never make your mark." I want to be snarky and point out that this guy obviously has no idea how these games are designed, but I think he pretty much nails what every MMOG player really wants out of a game. Now, if only it were feasible within the bounds of money, time, and talent.
One thing that all MMO games need is self-generating content regardless of whether that content is procedural or combinatorial; procedural is where content is created through an algorithm, combinatorial is where you have content that is split into a bunch of independant sections where the final product is a combination of all of the sections. This is so important because it would free up resources to produce more "crafted" experiences.
Asheron's Call did it right with motes. Collect 2 and it forms a bigger one. Do this for elemental immunity %. 2^100 is a lot of motes to find. Sure you can find ones in higher #s but its a collect game that will never stop.
Castles that rule housings. You have to conquer the castle to get it, then people who farm the land and run crafthouses pay tithes to you. Any band of adventurers can try and steal your Castle off you, but your offline guildmates show up and defend it.
Real time combat like Mortal Kombat or Tekken. It'd be like Zelda Ocariana of time MMOG. You would have to do all sorts of sword play or aiming bows like a FPS.
Those are just 3 of my big ideas.
I already did #3, but I'm making it multiplayer over the next couple months. I got some bugs with directdraw not working, but it doesn't stop the 3d action combat.
God spoke to me.
In EQ1 I was disappointed that the war of Evil vs Good races never went anywhere. The backstory told of an attack on Freeport by the Evil races. I wanted to be able to take Freeport, get a group of PCs and enough strength to take out the Freeport guards and other NPCs.
Was never going to happen.
DAoC had the territory system and that was good, though organising 100s of people to do a raid was always a bit random.
Dynamic systems are a tricky business though. Keeping the balance right is an obvious challenge.
Eventually it will work out, all the MMO people know it. It's just a matter of time.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
WoW is a very, very rich game, but like most MMORPGs it requires a lot of time and effort (and some cooperation with others) to see that.
If you're looking for a good marathon 2-night game, you're correct. If you're looking for potentially years of quality game-play while interacting with others, then WoW is the game for you, IMHO.
I say this, having played EverQuest for about four years, and having been impressed with much of the world and the story, but ultimately cheated by a company that wanted to milk the game without adding to its depth or richness. In many ways the depth of story and complexity of gameplay in WoW out-strip even early EQ, and they have fixed much of what made EQ painful (tradeskills, quests that weren't worth doing, etc.)
Heck, it's even beautiful, which EQ never really was for some reason (ignoring the progress that graphics have made, I almost never found the sense of art to be satisfying in EQ). When I fly into Orgimmar and see the red rooves and watchfires, it's truly imposing, which none of the EQ cities were (though the dragon city in Velios came close).
Fun story: yesterday I ran into a quest for the first time that involved nothing more than leaping off a tall mesa, presumably to my death. It was kind of cheesy, but really fun as a one-off quest. They seem to be much more playful with quests/missions than any game I've played.
I heard McDonalds has the greatest food in the world too, just look at how much they serve.
Not only I beg to differ, but furthermore, I cannot find words to express my disgust with that event. Let me explain.
Ok, Blizzard announced that in next content patch there will be some huge event, which everyone can take part which will unlock some new content. Content patch arrived, and for each server both factions (alliance and horde) needed to chinese-farm *ridiculous* amounts of materials (which drop from monster, can be gathered etc). Then, when all the materials were gathered, the Guy-with-the-key can open the gates of the new content ("Ahn'Qiraj"), which everyone should enjoy. Well, that one can sound kinda fun, but lets see some facts first.
Amount of materials were too much for like 98% of servers (look at the sheer number of materials here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wareffort/wareffor
At the same time with those huge farming effort, there was a quest line which could effectively be only taken by one(!) person in the whole server. Only that guy could initiate the boss fights, pick rewards, see quest text etc. But that guy needed help from his guild (best guild on the server) and other guilds in defeating some bosses. On some boss fights there was such a big slowdowns that server(s) couldn't handle it and crashed repeatedly. At the end of that ridiculously long quest line (for just that one guy), he got [Scepter of the Shifting Sands] by which he could open the gates of Ahn'Qiraj and ultimately unlock the new content (assuming that war effort - materials gathering was done). So what happened on our server (Ragnaros, EU)? Our server was average in gathering materials so after a month or more, they gathered them "for us". But there was a problem with the guy who needed to open the gates. Some major guilds (me included) helped him and his guild defeat some bosses and make that Scepter. When he finished the scepter somewhere in the middle of the night, he didn't came online for days, telling on the realm servers that whole realm population didn't "deserve" the gates to be opened, that he will not do it, generally flexing his e-peen. The guy single handedly held whole realm as a fools. Some seven days later guy opened the doors after some ass licking by his guild mates on forums. And this was not the one and only incident, there were a lot of them on other servers.
So to conclude, the event was total fiasco because of server crashes, non-existent story for 99.999% of players, e-peen flexing moron with the key, nolife kids telling others that they should farm materials more so they (nolifers) can go into the new instance, mind-puzzling number of materials to farm for *all* of the population etc.
We'll, that was my take on that glorious event.
PS Sorry for the grammar
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
I think that you are completely wrong. I've played WoW quite a lot. I found the trip to level 60 to be quite enjoyable, with multiple characters.
Once you hit 60, though, what else is there to do *besides* grind or start another character? Want better gear? Better run through that instance/raid/battleground about 20 times to get it. Want that epic quest reward from the Argent Dawn? Better start grinding skeletons, crypt fiends, dark iron dwarves, and all kinds of other crap for weeks to get it. Want to buy that epic mount? Better start grinding for cash. It'll probably take you several weeks, if that's all you do.
Almost nothing in the end-game instances require any skill whatsoever, and that includes raid encounters. Either you have the gear and the people and you know how to do it (note: following instructions != skill), or you don't. PvP requires a marginal amount of skill, but it's far too gear-dependent. Getting killed (or killing someone) in 2 hits, before there's even a chance to react, isn't fun, nor is it skillful play.
Unfortunately, Blizzard hasn't addressed any of this. I think it's surprising that they haven't -- because by requiring these insane grinds, they *force* people to play *all the time* to achieve their goals, otherwise they'd take years to complete. If they just made everything take less insane amounts of work to do, they could actually lighten the load on their servers.
Of course, maybe that's what they're partially afraid of -- if people have extra time, they might try other games. Those other games might show them that, at its core, WoW is really not very innovative. I mean, just look at what they had players do to for the supposed "world-changing" event when the gates of AQ opened. It wasn't a series of quests designed to be extremely challenging to even the best players. It wasn't even a massive battle that would require dozens of people working together to win. No, instead it was a massive, server-wide farm-fest. You can change the world by bringing 100 million linen cloth to Generic Alliance NPC Smith! Gee, how exciting is that?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
But the land is what's magic about Wurm. You can terraform almost everything in the game - chop down forests and make plains, plant trees and make plains into forests, dig canals, flatten mountaintops and build fortification, dig tunnel labyrinths, and more. About the only thing players haven't done yet is fill in the ocean with dirt, but that should be possible the way the game engine is written :-) . So it is more than a war game, in fact the war is almost incidental to building the villages that fight the wars.
Oooo, screenshots
New wars should break out, cities should rise and fall, and all hell should break loose at least once a month--and the players should be the ones to make it happen. After all, in a world that never changes, you can never make your mark.
Well, not in such a violent fashion, but this sort of thing is the plan for Uru Live.
Every day, there's a small change. Every week, a slightly larger change. Every month, a major change - a new area of the city opens, or you get access to a new Age.
A new story element is introduced roughly once each quarter... what the players do with it in the interim is entirely up to them. The players truly develop the story. There are no NPCs (in the computer-controlled sense), however Cyan does have actors who play the role of certain important people, ready to answer questions and react to whatever it is the players are doing.
This is a lot more impressive to me than Warcraft, although I do enjoy a good quest now and again.
Soylens viridis homines es
You're a rat, and the game keeps sending you to look for bigger pellets.
People never tire of making that analogy, do they? But it's probably about the most worthless analogy you could make. Reducing an activity to stimulus/response may seem clever, but the trouble is that it works for pretty much every human behavior imaginable. And it certainly works for every leisure activity.
A little side-note here. Stimulus/response cannot actually explain all human behavior, and this has been widely accepted in the psychological community for decades now.
Of course, I doubt the parent post was being quite so literal as to argue in favor of behaviorism. Then again, maybe the article was also not being quite so literal either and this line was intended as a similie, not a metaphor?
Because Goddess knows, players in Everquest never needed to "grind"...
Seriously, WoW is the largest game out there for a reason, and there are many other games out there trying to appeal to different audiences. Someone in this thread mentioned that travel took too long in WoW - surf over to the Vanguard forums and see what people there think about that (hint: they believe EQ1 was the golden age of gaming and auction houses and fast travel destroyed the genre).
There's only so much you can do in an online game. FFXI actually had a great story, and let the players feel very much like the hero altering world events. But the grind and forced grouping in that game were insane. EQ2 doesn't know what it is: right now it's trying to be WoW, and not doing a very good job of it. Warhammer should be a great PvP game, and Age of Conan also looks very intersting.
And of course don't miss this gem.
Loads and loads of great games on the horizon, if you just pick your head up and look around.
In the end, a GM, in some rare NPC form finally had to come along and destroy the gate the guild was defending.
Turbine finally conceded and raised statues dedicated to the defenders of that certain server's gate. The statues were viewable on all servers, and it showed everyone who played AC just how much a player's actions actually affected a game.
It's a shame more MMORPG's aren't like AC.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Actually, getting killed in 2 hits is one of the primary things that's been addressed in the expansion. The stamina stat on gear that requires level 61 and higher is calculated to be worth 1/2 as much as any other stat, meaning they can put tons of it on all the gear, which they've done, in addition to creating a new stat, called resillience, which is primarily found on PvP gear, which reduces the number of and bonus damage of crits against your character. As for the "force to play all the time", the arenas in the expansion use a rating system that encourages people to play as few games as possible to maintain their arena rank, and the "honor system" rewards have been converted to a form of currency that never is decayed or removed.
As for not wanting to "grind" raid instances and 5 man instances for specific pieces of gear, there's honestly nothing that could change in that regard that wouldn't either require a ludicrous amount of content or for people to get what they want almost instantly and never have a reason to do an instance again (and when there's no content to be done, there's no reason to pay the subscription fee). However, much of the "luck" that can cause a player to run one instance 500 times and not get what they want is being removed in the expansion, with more tokenized drop systems being added. And they're adding longevity to the new 5 man dungeons from the expansion by adding "hard mode" as a post-level cap method of both giving players new challenges while re-using old content (less development time) and allow more character progression without requiring more than a few friends.
Blizzard is a smart company. They learn from their mistakes, and they listen to what players consider "unfun" mechanics and try to adjust them. The expansion is an excellent example of this. However, given your perception of the game at level cap, I don't really think much would improve for you with the expansion. It sounds like it's just the dynamic of level cap progression that you don't like.
You may find EVE online a little more fun. There is no skill cap which does in some ways mean that "everyone who started playing before I did is automatically better than me", but it also means that the game doesn't just end after your character reaches a certain point. The skill tree and market and the vast multitude of ways someone can fit their ships adds an extreme amount of flexibility to the situation so fighting someone who has been playing for longer than you is not an automatic loss. EVE also has the "dynamics" that you crave. The players have a large degree of control over the markets. Territory in "alliance space" can be won and lost as Alliances go to war - these are entirely player controlled events. Finally, if I understand it correctly, there are a number of "event actors" working for CCP which help to move the main storyline of EVE along, again, with player input of course. You'll see these events and their outcomes in the news item that you see every time you pick your character when logging in.
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I feel it is fair to mention some of the downsides as well: skill training takes a really long time. It runs 23/7 (one hour of downtime every day), whether you're logged in or not. Simple skills take 20 minutes. Complex skills take 15 days to a month. Insane skills... I don't even want to know.
While the storyline of Eve is somewhat dynamic, the missions are completely static, at least as far as I can tell. A few variables may change but as far as I can tell the missions are completely based off templates: "kill 10 grue", "deliver this stuff there", etc. Of course, I counter my own negative point: at a certain point the player interaction can help with this a lot, there is a fully open player controlled courier and escrow section of the game, where the missions are obviously unique (CCP is also supposedly planning some sort of contract support in the near future). Mercenaries and pirates are extremely common and while they don't have something built directly into the UI for managing relationships they are very much a part of the game. Need your expensive cargo hauled through space infested by other people playing as pirates? Better hire a good hauler, who will in turn hire a good merc corp.
Finally, yes, the grind still exists. I don't think this will ever be done away with in MMOs. The simple fact of the matter is that the more time you throw at any MMO the better your character is going to get, be it money, skill, rep, connections, whatever.
CCP is offering free 14 day trials. If you ever do give the game a shot, fire me off an email and we can perhaps converse in-game.
Trial link: https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=100972&nogr
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
The problem here is that this is a great idea for L60 players with nowhere else to go. But for someone new to the game just trying to level up, well you're just making it harder for them than for the established players. Maybe you need starter worlds (servers), each of which evolve over time into more challenging storylines that everyone can move to together.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I just wanted to elaborate a bit more on the EVE skill system for those that aren't familiar with it. What you say is true, "everyone who started playing before I did is automatically better than me," but in a different way than that statement implies. Having more skill points for the most part simply opens more doors for you (more ships to fly, bigger and better weapons to use, etc.). This causes the game to tend to specialization for most players. A new player that decides to specialize in their race's primary combat frigate will, after only a few weeks time (that is, real-life time), be able to put up a very respectable fight against a much older player in a similarly classed ship. And several new players banding together can easily destroy an older player in a larger ship.
;). It still does not make you invincible though; having lots of ISK really just eases your burden in your virtual life. It can give you that extra edge in combat if you have the best gear, and make it less of a problem when your uber expensive ship gets pwned because you thought you were hot stuff. So, in my opinion anyway, that shortens the gap between the power gamers and the casual gamers.
There is definitely a certain amount of grind though, as with any MMORPG. For EVE, this is really almost entirely related to ISK (the game's currency), however. If you have the ISK, you can buy more skills for your characters and better weapons and ships (read "gear"
Finally, as an aside, I think skill training is 24/7. Unless I'm mistaken, training time continues even during downtime (hence CCP always suggesting setting a long skill to train when there will be an extended DT for hardware upgrades or patches - so your skill doesn't finish in the middle of DT and then you lose the rest of DT for training).
Anyway, I also highly recommend EVE Online. It can be a lot of fun and there are so many things to do that it will likely please most people.