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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.
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
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.
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."