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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.
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.
The problem is that games are supposed to be fun. You're going to have to work really hard to come up with an alternative criteria. And since fun is pretty subjective, there's really not much room for criticism.
Art, literature, poetry, drama and film all have associate bodies of academic criticism and pop-derivatives. So there's a semi-objective framework from which you can criticize these works even if they are popular. Everyone rushes out to see "Titanic", but it still had some really, really lame dialog.
Unless you're going to make a similar attack on gaming (e.g. lame dialog, bad graphics, etc.) it's really hard to make any criticism that doesn't reduce to petulant whining. There simple is no cohesive theory of gaming criticism (outside of technical elements), and so before you start slinging criticisms you need to build the framework. I don't see that happening in this article.
So basically, it's just whining.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
...Blizzard got it all wrong that is why nobody is playing it. Blizzard, Listen up! If you want people to play this little game you devised, you better start listening to random internet guy or else it will never take off.
You have been warned
So basically, he's saying that WoW is a deeply flawed game because it's not absolutely perfect? Can anyone think of a game that features all of the aspects he claims WoW lacks, plus the ones it already has? While we're at it, does anybody have the waaaaambulance on speed dail? Let's face it, WoW is the best MMO out there right now. It's also *arguably* the best ever. If you can manage to complain about it, at the risk of being labeled a troll I'm gonna assume you're a wanker.
Seeing as how the entire Vivendi company's profits rose by 190% mainly on the "higher margin of the World of Warcraft business," I think Blizzard's standard response about money being a problem in the creation of dynamic events rings a little hollow.
No, sorry to burst your bubble, but not every game, by far, wants a world which is torn asunder monthly.
Warcraft succeeds because blizzard realizes something the pundits don't, people still play games for fun.
Logging into an unknown situation isn't what most gamers want, if so many other games would have done well that haven't. For the most part players cannot be trusted, especially those who want anarchy and the like. Oh yeah they will repackage it as something other than anarchy but that is all they really want. Fun at someone else's expense drives that other off.
His ideas for character customization are fine, many would like that. Housing can wait, if ever. The game doesn't need it. As for the morals section, most players still wouldn't care. They will do the task presented. While it might be interesting to have the choice to cheat a NPC what real point is there? A lot of his ideas are best suited to PvP aspects of the game.
For the most part he seems to be lamenting that WOW does not have features he found interesting in another game. It goes without saying that that other game obviously is lacking in the rest of the department that he'd rather play WOW - just with some things added. WOW is a very good game. That people want to add features to it only proves that point. Unpopular games rarely get lauded and have recommendations placed to them as much as WOW does.
Look at it this way, there are games that do offer what he wants, and some are coming that will also. Will they succeed? Well it really comes down to one important factor : Is it fun? WOW still passes that test more than any other game for a majority of MMORPG players.
For everyone claim of WOW being lame I just have to ask, with population numbers like it has what does that make the other games?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The reason I never really got into MMORPGs, despite trying several including WOW was that you're living in a world where every real person is a hero. It reminded me of nothing so much as that Monty Python sketch where there's a world full of supermen. An offline RPG, on the other hand, lets you be the only hero or at least one of a small band of heroes, the fate of the world in your hands. Online, you're not really making any difference at all. No matter how many orcs you slay there'll always be more and more.
I know a horde of Starcraft fans who'd disagree.
Indeed. How lame is chess--all you do is move the same pieces the same way over and over again. Obviously the game would be better if there were more options. If people didn't find the game fun, they probably wouldn't play it. While there are things it could have done better, it's hard to think of WOW as a failure. And there is no guarantee that a more complicated game, like the author desires, would actually attract a bigger audience. In fact, I would argue it would do less. If you make it more possible for people to "Leave Their Mark" you are, in the process, going to create a lot of users who fail to make their mark and are frustrated.
I know an Alliance of Starcraft fans who would object to being called a Horde.
*grin*
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
The real trick is making an entire world and an engine that DISTILLS an RPG down to what it's about, item finding.
I *must* remember to draw my DM's attention to this next time we play...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
WoW is not years of quality gaming. After the few months of leveling to max (which was fun and interesting to me), you just grind the same places over and over again. It's like reading the same storyline every time you log in. It becomes a competition with a group of other people for items. The only thing enjoyable is spending time with the friends you make. End game is very shallow. You can get involved in just about any MMO community and have years of the same level of quality game play.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I don't think Dahlen has any idea how "grinds" are created. They aren't part of the designs of the game: they are emergent phenomena that occur when players seek to isolate the most efficient method of achieving a goal, and then repeat that method.
By their very nature as rule-constituted software systems, games will tend to instrumental play. There is already one exception: Second Life, which is already available. My question is: why hasn't the world flocked there? Could it be that, despite protests to the contrary, we like a well-defined achievement path, and enjoy finding efficient methods for progressing on them? Could the grind be part of the pleasure, even if it doesn't "feel" like it is?
Clearly this guy has barely played world of warcraft at all and doesn't understand what keeps people playing once they hit the level cap.
1. 90% of the people who play this game don't give a rats ass about the story and when presented with a quest, skip the text and just try to finish it as fast as possible as the means to level up or get an item that they need.
2. The real appeal of the game is the challenging raid encounters and the social environment that has evolved around beating said encounters. People end up in every social guilds that all work together to defeat very difficult content. It's like the same reason people play team sports, there is no story around the sport that makes it interesting, it's the strategy, the socializing, the working together that makes people keep playing team sports. Also, imagine a team sport where once you have mastered one level of the sport you are presented with new and even more difficult challenges. If your "team" is good enough and cohesive enough, there is even the thrill of being able to spend months working on encounters and being the first group of people in the world to beat them. This teamplay/challenge comes into play in both PVE and PVP aspects of the game. This is what bridges the gap between the FPS/RTS type players and the RPG type players out there (being able to fullfil a class based roll in a highly strategy scenario and evolve your class/gear over time).
He clearly has misconceptions about WoW and would like to play a game that involves more role playing gayness and less strategy/teamwork/progression.
I don't want an f'n house. I want to be challenged 100% of the time.
Item finding isn't even one of the major categories of play in an RPG. There are three types of players: Dice Rollers, Problem Solvers, and Role Players. A good DM knows his players and can juggle the desires of everyone in a group. When someone looks bored, the DM can throw in a challenge suited to that player.
Dice Rollers are numbers wranglers who want a good game of chance. The most common sub-species is the Hack-n-Slasher, but that's just because most rule sets lend themselves to that kind of dice rolling. In games that have skill rolls, you'll find these guys rolling for damn near every feat up to and including getting up in the morning. "An 18?!? I spring from my bed and land in my shoes in one smooth motion! Hurrah!"
Problem Solvers like puzzles and planning. These are the guys who calculate exactly how many miles your party will average per day trekking across the Great Arid Waste and know exactly how much food and water to pack. When the party stumbles across a series of levers and switches in the dungeon, these are the guys to call. "Gruntmore the Dwarf pulls the red lever, goes through the blue door, pushes the star shaped switch, coems back out, pushes the green lever to a 45 degree angle disabling the secret blade trap and we all go merrily on our way!"
Role Players like to have long, drawn out in-character conversations with every shopkeeper and passing peasant they encounter. Whereas Dice Rollers will do whatever it takes to win, and Problem Solvers playing stupid characters will still come up with genius plans, these guys are apt to do utterly stupid things if they think that's what their character would do. They also tend to talk about their characters in the first person. "I leap from behind the tree and run screaming at the horde of orcs- What? Yes, I know the plan was to sneak up on them, but I'm overconfident with anger management issues. But you should really say that in character..."
But perhaps I missed your point, were you saying RPGs are about item finding or RTSs are? In any case, I think the real trick to either is actually basing it on a good simulation of some sort, but having story telling hooks that can effect the sim in the scripting interface, and have those hooks have flexible triggers and random details so that the same basic plotline can be activated from many different starting points using characters and locations tailored to the individual players. But I understand how hard it would be to scale a system like that up to WoW levels.
The real problem with WoW is that it isn't an RPG and it isn't for people who traditionally like RPGs so the players who would bring real quality to the game are driven away by all the Azkiker4921s and l33tWariers in the game.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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
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.