Casual Games Quickly Transforming the MMO Market

An anonymous reader writes "Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick disclosed that their forthcoming, unnamed MMOG will have 'a little more broad appeal' than its market-leading MMO World of Warcraft. This is adding to speculation that the game might be free to play, since such games now take more in digital revenue than any other genre. In his GDC Austin keynote today, Sony Online Entertainment president Jon Smedley said, 'As a company, we knew we had to evolve ... to expand [our] audience ... and to get a much wider female audience.' The article notes that SOE hasn't abandoned hardcore MMOs, but his talk focused on Free Realms, SOE's free-to-play MMO that has grown to 5 million users in 5 months. Marketed to kids, 51% of Free Realms gamers are under 13, with around 75% under 18, who pose a challenge to attract and retain. Since they only play for about 20 minutes per session and aren't focused on the mechanics of the game, SOE can get away with changes that are unfair to some players, as shown by a recent, oddly-handled item nerf in Free Realms."

Comments

WoW was ruined

[acehole]

I used to play wow. I used to love it. I raided with my guild, did all the fun stuff. Got the rewards from putting the effort in and loved each moment of it. Then Blizzard started listening to the vocal minority crowd, the ones who wanted the rewards with no time put in. The ones who wanted to get the "Sword of OMGWTFBBQ" to kill boars in the forest and nothing more, they wanted to be shiny and wanted it now with no effort. That's when the game started to go down hill. When I first started raiding it would take weeks of running an instance before even getting close to finishing it but now... its hellokitty island adventure with a different skin. The biggest complaint I hear about people who quit now is "I'm sick of seeing everyone decked out in Epic gear." You know you've done wrong when even the 'casual' (and I use that term loosely) player base complains about it.

The casual player is a misnomer, there are people who identify themselves as this and refuse to raid but want the rewards yet they spend a lot more playing the game than most 'hardcore' raiders. Blizzard ruined the game about half way through BC and turned it basically into a game where you login and get teleported to your mail box (because walking is too much effort) to collect your epics.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you honestly that bitter about people doing "less work" to get "unearned" items as shiny as yours in an online game? Really?

Re:WoW was ruined

[johan_from_cape_town]

I somewhat understand your problem. But you see my problem - I have a full time job and a life. I also want to play WoW. So should I just always suck - never able to actually complete an instance? I don't think so. Maybe Blizzard should create "I don't have a job and my parents pay my way realms" (for people like you) and "I can only spend a couple of hours a week on a computer game" servers for people like me.

Re:WoW was ruined

[L4t3r4lu5]

Completely agree.

My biggest issue is:

- Without the gear, you cannot raid.
- Without raiding, you cannot get the gear.

How am I supposed to enjoy end-game content when I can't get into a group because my DPS is around 1k too low for these "elite" groups? I constantly see raids occurring with calls for "3000+dps" which is just unachievable without raid / heroic gear, and you can't get that without a significant time commitment that is just unachievable if you have any physical social interaction in evenings / weekends at all.

Re:WoW was ruined

[webax]

You should be playing FF, SE has not let anything stand in the way of endless grinding reaping exclusive rewards.

Re:WoW was ruined

[pHus10n]

Why does it matter if someone else gets an epic-quality item? Does it somehow strip you of your earned rewards? And why is it so wrong if a 12 year old kid wants to do *exactly that* and take his Sword of OMG to the forest and kill boars? If he's enjoying it, why do you care? How does it affect *you*?

You complain that it no longer takes weeks of running an instance to clear it. So I'm guessing that (prior to you quitting) you've cleared all the hard modes available to you in the first week? .... yup, I didn't think you did. There's no lack of challenge in the game if you want it. Many of the instances are tuned for casual play, so that nearly anyone who's interested can make reasonable progress, even if they don't fully understand the calculus involved in tank itemization (for example). On the other hand, hard modes and the new Heroic 10/25 versions of Coliseum allow those seeking extreme difficulty can have it --- and are rewarded for their efforts. As a matter of fact, at the time of this posting, there is exactly one (1) guild who has completed the "Earth, Wind, and Fire" achievement. It's *tough*, and ready for anyone who wants to meet the challenge.

Don't think I'm attacking you directly --- I'm not. I'm just tired of seeing this exact same argument passed around by forum trolls, who conveniently can't back it up with an Armory link.

Re:WoW was ruined

[DreamsAreOkToo]

To turn this into a theme...

I used to play World of Warcraft back when Stratholme was considered an impossible instance. Then suddenly guilds started figuring out this "raiding thing" and all of a sudden, some dumbass healer could get better items than me, because he had 39 other people to pick up his slack. That's when the game started going downhill. I quit and everyone else I knew started quitting and the biggest complaint I heard back then was "I'm sick of seeing some dumbass decked out in epic gear because he can farm gold all day and raid all night." I think the game was ruined sometime halfway through it's first year.

"Casual" is not a misnomer. Anyone who wants to play whenever they feel like it is "casual." Anyone who adheres to a schedule where they get penalized for tardiness is working a 2nd (or 1st) job.

tl;dr "Remember when WoW was good?" "WoW was never good."

Re:WoW was ruined

[Jurily]

So the real complaint is that in order for him to continue to be "better" than everyone else, he has to continue to raid to stay ahead of other people, since now it's fairly simple for anyone to catch up to the point he's already at.

Well, that's an inherent property of the level cap. After you reach it, there is no real distinction between you who have been there for a year, and me, who just got there. Nothing to prevent me from getting the same stuff you have without going through the same long process you have.

On the other hand, it's in Blizzard's enlightened self-interest to make sure the newcomers can almost catch up to the veterans. It keeps both groups going.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Thanshin]

its hellokitty island adventure with a different skin

Pure marketing. It'll never reach the degree of complexity and required skill you could have in HK:IA.

I'm talking about before the Breach brought the dark avatars and the kawaru fell upon the land, of course.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Rhaban]

Maybe Blizzard should just re-think item classification.

Today we have 5 item classes, 2 of which are useless:
- grey, useless
- white, useless
- green, used while leveling, or if you just dinged 80 last week.
- blue, most people who do not raid/hero have some of this. considered as 'basic' items
- purple, everything from entry-level-80 gear (reputation items, heroic instances) to the most hardcore-level gear you can find in raids
- orange, for some special vhl items only owned by a handful of people

A lot of people complain about how everybody has epic (purple gear). why not lower the classification of low-end purple and make it blue, while keeping the same stats? Similarly some blue items could become green.

If necessary, they could even make a new class between blue and purple, or between purple and orange. A character with gear from ulduar-25 hard mode would be differenciable instantly from a character with naxx-25 gear, who would be differenciable from a character with 5-man heroics / reputation gear without having to actually know each item or even look at the ilvl.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Arkham79]

So, I've heard this before, and used to be in the same boat. It's not true anymore - you can gear up to decent raid levels without going to raids now, especially with the recent instance additions. It'll take longer than if you were raiding the whole time, but it's not that difficult. You do have to run Heroic 5 man instances though - no way around that.

With the changes they have made to the instances though they are much, much easier to run these days than they used to be in BC. Do the daily heroic each day (30-50 minutes) and you will quickly get enough badges and rewards to be running in one of the entry level raids, keep it up and you can get well beyond the 3000 DPS you mentioned. It takes some patience if you don't have hours to devote to running instances, but one instance each day you can log in should be your first priority if gearing up is what you want to do.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Av8rjoker]

I think that the the person who you replied to has a different type of mindset; one which is not too uncommon. If they had to work so hard for something, then it should not be handed so easily to those who don't put in nearly amount of effort. What was once difficult becomes easy for the newcomers due to the changes in the game. It basically boils down to a matter of pride.

The only thing I can compare this to is the Marine Corps. I was punched, kicked, tackled, thrown, slammed on a table repeatedly, forced to drink water until everyone in the platoon puked, etc... not to mention the mental abuse. I've never been punched in the face until I joined the Marine Corps. BTW, I joined in 2002 (I don't care if you believe or not, that shit still happens).

It would upset me if someone is handed that Eagle, Globe, and Anchor for doing anything less.

It is a much more... less PC... way of thinking. It has more to do with pride, and "I had to go through this bullshit in order to acquire whatever, so you should have to do the same.... blah blah blah."

I'm not saying that you are wrong, I'm just trying to point out a possible explanation to why people might get upset when someone who does far less work achieves something much easier than the work that they put into it. I'm sure many people could relate to this in many different situations. (I don't play WoW btw).

Re:WoW was ruined

[Dhalka226]

I found your post somewhat insightful upon first reading, though I didn't necessarily agree with all of it. But as I re-read it, something started to bother me.

How am I supposed to enjoy end-game content [. . .] that is just unachievable if you have any physical social interaction in evenings / weekends at all.

If you don't have the time to run many heroics or raids to get your gear up, why do you expect to have time to run the end-game content? It's certainly not going to be any shorter. If you DO have time to do it, just not as much as the hardcore types, you can still experience it; it's just going to take longer.

For those who literally don't have the time to get to any piece of content while there are still players interested in doing it, I don't think the solution is to dumb the content down*, at least not while such content is still the highest tier of content available. I think those players are just out of luck. If that ruins their enjoyment of the game, well, there are a lot of games out there. They should find one that is less grindy so having less time for the game isn't as big of a penalty.

For what it's worth, I don't get as worked up about "ZOMG they hand out epics!" as others do. I measure my enjoyment of the game by, well, my enjoyment of the game. I just want to make forward progress, and that's independent of whether or not you or $HARDCORE_GAMER_X has made more or less progress than me.

* I do sort of like the 10 normal/10 hard mode/25 normal/25 hard mode distinctions. It seems like a relatively good compromise.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Narpak]

Why does it matter if someone else gets an epic-quality item? Does it somehow strip you of your earned rewards? And why is it so wrong if a 12 year old kid wants to do *exactly that* and take his Sword of OMG to the forest and kill boars? If he's enjoying it, why do you care? How does it affect *you*?

I agree. It would seem that for some waxing their epeen is way more important than actually co-operating with others and having a well run raid. For me getting a raid done fast, with no wipes, unnecessary deaths; while talking trash on vent was always the most enjoyable part. Gear was simply a means to an end; not the end itself. And pretty much without exception the people I talk to agree.

Now personally, as well as two close friends of mine, have been playing wow since the summer of 2005. After about six months of playing the game we started raiding MC, and later on BWL/AQ, then Kara, TK, Black Temple, and etc. Now myself dropped out of raiding after farming Black Temple (stopped playing all together until WOTLK arrived), since returning to the game I haven't really done anything but some 10 man and a few 25 man pugs in this new expansion; mostly I just stick to doing heroics and PvP. However everyone I talk to personally, both my two real life friends who have kept up the hardcore raiding, and those of my in-game friends that have dropped off and returned after prolonged hiatuses agree that the current state of the game is better and more enjoyable. This sentiment is mirrored, with very few exceptions, through the entire guild that I used to raid with. Raiding is more fun, gearing alts for raiding or PvP is less of a chore, the new instances are way better designed, daily quests makes acquiring coinage for repairs/consumables/enchants/gems less of a chore; basically the game feels, for those I have been talking to, more like an actual game. There are less people going emo (which seemed to have happened quite a lot more back when we were raiding 40 man instances and getting the gear you needed for the next step took ages and ages of repeated smacking your head against the wall until you were so full of piss and vinegar people went batshit for no apparent reason.

Obviously the changes to the game leaves some people longing for the good old glory days when men were men and everything was much better; but for the most part my personal experiences indicate a higher enjoyment level, more laughs, with most of the heated debate circling around just how much cooler Chuck Norris is than your mum.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Av8rjoker]

You are very much missing the point. People take pride in the smallest of things. It is all relative. I only used the Marines as an example.

Re:WoW was ruined

[dbet]

"Epic" never meant anything. You're romanticizing a false indicator of personal triumph.

Re:WoW was ruined

[jaraxle]

It affects you in PvP.

You spend months getting very powerful, and then suddenly people get just as powerful in only a few days. While you ruled PvP situations, and it took parties of 5 to kill you, now all of a sudden it only takes 1 or 2 people to kill you. This can ruin your fun if you PvP a lot.

Then maybe you're not as good at PvP as you think you are and were just relying on gear the entire time.

In a PvP MMO, the "equation" should really be Numbers > Skill > Gear. Basically, a large number of enemy players should be able to take you down when you're alone, a much better skilled player in similar (or slightly worse) gear should be able to take you down 1 on 1, and when you have two equally skilled players the one with the better gear should come out on top.

Sadly, WoW fubared this right up from the beginning and gear trumped everything so that even the worst players imaginable could dominate in PvP simply because they were capable of raiding the top end content and anyone solely interested in PvP were left by the wayside. The Honor System attempted to fix that, but ended up being an even worse grind than any raiding ever was, so you were still better off tackling PvE content in order to PvP (unless you really had nothing else to do than PvP all day every day for weeks on end, or share your account). I quit WoW around Arena Season 4 because I was getting sick of lesser skilled players able to just crush me and some close friends just because their top end epics were far better than our mix of blues and "welfare" epics (just for the record, during the Honor Grind, I was able to get the blue Warrior set and was able to 1v1 almost anyone who wasn't decked out in 100% BWL gear).

Quite frankly, if you find that now suddenly people can get epic gear who previously were unable to and they're trouncing you in PvP I say "Good". You never deserved to be king of the heap, requiring "parties of 5 to kill you" because you relied on gear and now that the field is evened out a bit and skill is more a determining factor, your ego has taken a hit. Call me bitter, call me a troll, but I know a lot of people would agree.

~jaraxle

Re:WoW was ruined

[plastbox]

Firstly, I play WoW mostly for the pvp. I can do it alone or with a few friends, no need to get big, complimentary groups together.

Second, grinding honor is about as simple as it gets. Time-consuming, yes. Hard, no. It's like kids sports, just participating gets you a prize (honor, badge/mark). Though, since it isn't hard you don't get the best items in the game. With a bit of patience, anyone can get Hateful Gladiator set with Furious Gladiator no-set pieces. At this point, your gear is good enough that you can play Arena and get rating, thus advancing to Furious set + Relentless no-set, at which point nothing (but a bit of experience playing pvp) is stopping you from being at a rating high enough to get all the best pvp pieces in the game.

No need to do boring instances, raids and dungeons. Just go at it and whoop Alliance ass, and upgrade gear as you can afford ^^

Re:WoW was ruined

[Fozzyuw]

It affects you in PvP.

No it doesn't because anyone who PvP's tells you it's about "Skill". Getting people in reasonably the same gear simply flattens out that variable, making skill more important.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Mr. Bad Example]

> Why does it matter if someone else gets an epic-quality item?

Because you can't entrust the Sword of a Thousand Truths to a noob.

Re:WoW was ruined

[jaraxle]

This is why I believe the item rarity system should never have been used to begin with. If item quality was based on comparing just the stats and benefits with no other measure (ie. name colour, level requirement) then I highly doubt so many people would have their panties in a knot over "casuals" getting similar quality gear.

~jaraxle

Re:WoW was ruined

[Mad Merlin]

Have you tried Game!? It meets your criteria and in fact, having a limited number of turns per day is built right in as a method of leveling the playing field.

Re:WoW was ruined

[SatanicPuppy]

In WoW that's not so much the case; gear is vitally important. It's the difference between 1000 dps/15,000 hps and 4000 dps/30,000 hps.

That's actually one of the things I like least about WoW: weenies like the OP who have zero life can become little demi-deities.

Re:WoW was ruined

[MBGMorden]

With all due respect, this is the case for ANY organized activity. If you join a bowling league with your friends and you guys bowl on Wednesdays from 7 to 10 then that's time you set aside. If you join a band with some friends and you guys practice Mondays and Wednesdays from 6 to 8, and that's time you have set aside. If you have a weekly poker game on Saturday evenings then that's time you set aside.

Sticking one or two nights a week, even specific times, aside to take part in your hobby is nothing new. Guys with families have been doing it for ages now, and if you think sticking "on a computer!" behind the activity changes that then you're as naive as most modern patent clerks. It is completely possible to hold down a job, actually raid in WoW (not the hardcore 6 nights a week raiding, but there are plenty of groups out there that raid twice a week for 2 hours), and have a family that you're not neglecting.

Re:WoW was ruined

[amplt1337]

The difference is your bowling league doesn't have twenty-five people, with the whole night a bust if two of them don't show up. Or a hard limit that only ten people can be in it, and if you have three other friends who want to come along, they're shut out in the cold.

Re:WoW was ruined

[platypussrex]

this is too funny. I don't think I have ever heard a casual gamer complain that they had too many epics. The complainers are almost always the (self-proclaimed)hard-cores who think the size of their epeen depends on having more epics than anyone else. But guess what, we all pay the same (approx) $15 a month to play the game. Blizzard finally understands that to expend huge amounts of resources to create content that was only seen by a fraction of the player base was not a bright idea. So the obsessive player can get their leet gear and run the new content when it comes out, the less obssesed players get almost as good gear after a month or two, and they too can then see the high end content. Only a completely self-centered person would fail to understand the appeal of that process.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Hatta]

Maybe Blizzard should create "I don't have a job and my parents pay my way realms" (for people like you) and "I can only spend a couple of hours a week on a computer game" servers for people like me.

What's the difference between that, and you just playing something other than WoW? Seems to me that if you don't want to expend some effort to advance in the game, you don't really want to play WoW. You just want to do whatever it is all the cool kids are doing, and then complaining that it's too hard.

Think of it this way. Chess is a hard game, it takes a lot of effort to become good at it. If I decide I want to play chess, I don't ask people to change the rules so it's easier. I put in the time and effort it takes to become good at it. If I want something easy, I should play checkers instead. If WoW is too much of an investment for you, play something else.

Re:WoW was ruined

[amplt1337]

Um, I'm arguing against this assertion:

this is the case for ANY organized activity

It is technically true, yes, I have to manage/schedule my time. However, with WoW, if I'm in a guild that wants to raid 25-man content, then my ability to schedule my time is dependent on 24 other people managing their time effectively, showing up on time, and not bailing at the last minute. And if any of them do, then my scheduled time is now wasted. I'm willing to take that risk when it's four people I'm in a band with; I'm not willing to when it's 24 quasi-strangers on the Internet, because it rapidly becomes my "scheduled dicking around waiting for people to show up then logging off with nothing done" time.
Raiding in WoW is fundamentally different from other leisure activities because of the extent to which you're beholden to the schedules of others, with no good fallback when they're unreliable.

(And yes, I understand that higher levels of guild discipline would somewhat ameliorate this problem; but discipline is a two-edged sword, and disciplined guilds feel just like a second job, rather than fun.)

Re:WoW was ruined

[BlackSnake112]

It's even easier to blow/get blown off.

That can be an incentive to many.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Hatta]

He's complaining that very large parts of the game are inaccessable without an unnacceptably large, to him anyways, investment of time.

Then he should find a game to play that fits into the time he has to spend. Why try to ruin it for those who do have a large amount of time to spend in a game?

I am currently becoming enthusiastic about SHMUPs. Some of those fuckers are HARD. Yet some people can complete them with one credit. I doubt I'll ever have the time to practice that much to get that good. Do I complain that Cave should make their shooters easier so I can win too? Of course not.

Re:WoW was ruined

[An ominous Cow art]

Bilbo twinked Frodo with a unique epic ring, purple armor, and a purple sword.

Re:WoW was ruined

[ImprovOmega]

I think the achievement system was meant to partially alleviate this, and in large part it does. Someone who just now hits level 80 will probably never get the Classic Raider or Classic Dungeonmaster achievements like someone who's been playing since release likely has. It's a clever way of both preserving past accomplishments (for those that care about such things) and allowing new players to progress and get into the top end content without years of investment.

Re:WoW was ruined

[DrgnDancer]

It also levels the playing field for newer players. The fact was, back in the day, if you hit 60 say... three months before BC came out, you were NEVER, EVER going to be able to raid. Since it took weeks of working with a good guild to get to beginning raid gear, and good guilds weren't going to take n00b 60's, you weren't going to be able to catch up. Ever. BC reset progression, but within six months or so it was reestablished, and people who hadn't made 70 within the first few months and had a guild to raid with, were again locked out of the end game content. This was the beginning of the badge and heroic instance gear. Suddenly if you were willing to do enough harder 5 mans you could at least get the beginnings of something that would take you to end game. Thus you started to see some casual guilds and even PuGs doing Kara and Grull.

Everything since then has refined this policy to make it so that even casual guilds can at least see what the inside of Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader looks like even if we'll never defeat 25 man Yogg on hard mode. I'm happy. I can play a few hours a day, a bit more on weekends, take a few days off here or there, and still get to see the end game content. Being Shiny isn't a huge deal for me, except as it puts me in position to play more aspects of the game. I may never have gotten to see MC or Sunwell Plateau when they were new, but I'll probably get to fight Arthas in Ice Crown. Maybe not the day the patch is released. Maybe not on 25 man hardmode. But I'll get to see the fight, before the expansion makes it obsolete.

Re:WoW was ruined

[TheLink]

Maybe you could look here:

http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/Free-MMORPG?sort=&dir=&data%5Bgenre%5D=&data%5Bdeveloper%5D=&data%5Bstate%5D=&data%5Brating%5D=9

I dunno about the validity of that site's ratings but I guess it's a start :)

Re:WoW was ruined

[drsquare]

Am I the only one amused at people thinking they're putting in effort and hard work by sitting at a keyboard playing one of the easiest games ever created, and only getting ahead of everyone else because they don't have anything else to do?

The whole point of WoW's success is that everyone can get to the top levels, do all the raids and get all the gear. Five years and twenty million sales later, poopsockers are still telling us how Blizzard got it all wrong.

Re:WoW was ruined

[Blakey Rat]

The problem is that you reach a point in the game where it switches from:

"Just play a couple hours on weekends, or whenever you feel like"

To:

"You MUST be on and at the instance at exactly 5:45 PM PST you MUST remain on for 4 hours MINIMUM, then be free the next day at exactly 5:45 PM PST in case we don't finish the instance today. You MUST research all the bosses before entering the instance. You MUST be using one of the 2 acceptable specs for your class online, or you will have to respec, grinding gold to afford it. You MUST carry a minimum amount of healing potions, meaning you have to grind gold to buy them. You MUST install seedy chat software, and WOW add-ins, you can't participate with the default program."

There's no transition. The end-game raiding content is a complete 360 from the rest of the game, and it's an extremely jarring change that people don't expect.

Up until MAX_LEVEL, you're in a world where almost everything can be done on your own schedule, in your own way. (By yourself, if you like, and with whatever character spec you want.) You have no reason to expect that this would change when you hit MAX_LEVEL, unless you've experienced it in other games.

So you end up with games in the first category either getting slowly sucked into the second category bit-by-bit, or simply giving up and leaving the game.

Now the smartest thing WOW ever did was add end-game content *other* than raids, for example, battlegrounds and arena. The dumbest thing WOW ever did was then modify battlegrounds and arena so that only hard-core players could be successful at them, making them just as useless as raiding to the casual player.

Re:WoW was ruined

[amplt1337]

I mean, a lot of it does depend on a guild-to-guild basis. It sounds like your organization was better than ours was. My only point is that the activity is built such that it demands more structure from the players than do many other leisure activities, which can make the scheduling aspect a less rewarding experience -- enough so that, in my opinion, it's a substantially different type of activity than other hobbies.
(I'm not trying to jump down your throat or belittle your point here, which was generally a good one. There are times I'm trying to be a dick, but this wasn't one of them.)

Re:WoW was ruined

[DrVomact]

My biggest issue is: - Without the gear, you cannot raid. - Without raiding, you cannot get the gear. How am I supposed to enjoy end-game content when I can't get into a group because my DPS is around 1k too low for these "elite" groups?

I certainly know whereof you speak...I pretty much soloed my Warlock to level 80 in PvE. Then I had to find something else to do, so I thought I'd try raiding. I quickly found out that my DPS was dismally substandard for raid groups—if I even got into a group, I was quickly ejected —sometimes very rudely indeed. Words like "freeloader" and "parasite" were used to describe me.

Actually, I don't have any quarrel with these groups—though I wish they had been more polite; I wasn't trying to commit a crime, for crying out loud. As far as I'm concerned, a group is certainly free to set its own criteria for admission. I think the problem is really one of game design; it's a fundamental flaw that I first noticed in the later, degenerate days of Everquest, and it is this: DPS is everything.

I think the drift to DPS-centric game design is probably due to a couple of factors. First, it's relatively easy to design a game around this concept—it's just a matter of hit points and how much damage you allow players to inflict over time. Second, I think that a lot of players like it because it's so easily quantifiable. (And if you look, you will find web sites dedicated to the precise calculation of Damage Per Second for every WoW class that would put some dissertations on quantum physics to shame.)

To me, this is just awful. I want the game to be a fantasy in which I can vacation after a hard day of Reality[TM]; I want it to require skill, pluck, and quick thinking. I want to be part of a group of adventurers who have a sense of humor, and whose primary goal is to have fun. I don't want winning or losing to be a matter than can be calculated at all. That makes it work! (Can you just imagine a fantasy story in which the Noble Knight yells at the Damsel in Distress to shut up because he needs quiet while he works his PDA to compare his DPS to that of the dragon? "Sorry," he says after much brow-furrowing, "I'm just not geared for this. The dragon is gonna take me apart, so sit tight while I round up some higher tier armor, ok lady?")

As I said, I noticed this design drift back in my Everquest days. I started playing right when EQ (the first one, not that sorry waste of pixels, EQ2) first came out. I can truly say that some the most enjoyable recreational experiences I have ever had were in that game. I played a dark elf enchanter, and I'd picked that combo because it was supposed to be difficult. After the first couple of years, during which I had put a lot of energy into becoming a first rate crowd-control specialist, I gradually realized that nobody really needed crowd control anymore. During the early period of EQ, a crowd control specialist was just as essential to any adventuring group as a healer or a tank, because the game was designed to make "adds" just about inevitable in every fight. When adds happened, my chanter would hit them with a stun and a mezz, and I'd often be keeping 3 to 5 mobs staring blankly into space, waiting for their turn to be slaughtered. But then they jacked up the DPS of just about every melee class to the point where adds could be "off tanked" by a bard or pally or berserker, or anybody that wasn't wearing a nightshirt for armor.

This totally ruined the game for me. Sure, my guildies would have pity on me and let me come along (heck, they might need a dose of crack, and I could slow almost as good as a Shaman), but it was just charity. Plus, there were too many nights when there weren't enough guildies on, and I just couldn't get a group. Seeing as soloing a chanter in EQ was as much fun as walking a tightrope in a ice storm wearing greased turtles strapped to your feet instead of shoe

Re:WoW was ruined

[Yuuki Dasu]

The problem is that you reach a point in the game where it switches from:

"Just play a couple hours on weekends, or whenever you feel like"

To:

"You MUST be on and at the instance at exactly 5:45 PM PST you MUST remain on for 4 hours MINIMUM, then be free the next day at exactly 5:45 PM PST in case we don't finish the instance today. You MUST research all the bosses before entering the instance. You MUST be using one of the 2 acceptable specs for your class online, or you will have to respec, grinding gold to afford it. You MUST carry a minimum amount of healing potions, meaning you have to grind gold to buy them. You MUST install seedy chat software, and WOW add-ins, you can't participate with the default program."

I see this sentiment a lot, but I really don't feel it has that much basis in reality. The truth isn't nearly as jarring.

There are plenty of guilds with no attendance requirements, who do what they can with the people that show up. They don't kill the latest content, typically, because they aren't organized enough and don't care enough. However, by comparing yourself as a newly-max-level character to those who are killing the latest content, you're skipping quite a few steps in the middle, which is why you see such an abrupt lack of transition.

Yes, if your performance is sub-par, people will sometimes try to get you to change the way you use your talent points (a system with unique skills for each class, by which you specialize to gain some abilities and make others stronger or faster), but it's not for no reason: it makes you better, and more efficient. It's not some evil conspiracy; other people won't want to play with you if you're not pulling your weight.

The gold you're arguing about grinding for is negligible: re-specializing costs at most 50 gold, when you can earn about 150 gold in half an hour doing a double handful of daily quests.

This is the first time I've heard of people call Ventrilo seedy software. Yes, it helps to have the equivalent of a VoIP party line going to coordinate things and chat. There are a couple of really useful add-ons that people often ask their teammates to use, and they can be a hassle, but I don't see why they themselves are such a deal-breaker. Overall, if you have no problem with Blizzard Warden, I don't know why a couple of other programs would be so odious.

I feel a little dirty for being a Blizzard apologist here. There are plenty of things to criticize about the game. But arguing that it's still necessarily "too hardcore" isn't one of them.

Wider Female Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

'As a company, we knew we had to evolve ... to expand [our] audience ... and to get a much wider female audience.'

OMG! Ponies MMO!

Re:Wider Female Audience

[Thanshin]

'As a company, we knew we had to evolve ... to expand [our] audience ... and to get a much wider female audience.'

OMG! Ponies MMO!

Nonono, it's "wider female, audience" not "wider, female audience".

So, OMG! Full blown shire horses! XMMO.

Re:Wider Female Audience

[L4t3r4lu5]

So, OMG! Full blown shire horses! XMMO.

The appropriate term is "Hipponies!"

Lies, damn lies, and my birthdate

[milosoftware]

I don't know about the rest of you, but i always make a point of lying through my teeth when it comes to online subscriptions to anything - especially a game. When asked, I'm a 12 year old redhaired girl living in Namibia.

Now back to their stats. How do they know 50% is 13 years or younger? Right. They ask for your birthdate. And then assume that you click the truth...

Re:Lies, damn lies, and my birthdate

[IBBoard]

Kids go the other way, though. Because of the US COPPA legislation my wife's website doesn't allow under-13s. What you find is that kids want to pretend to be older than they are, sign up as 15, 16, 17 or 18 year olds because they think it is cool (and they can get to stuff that they shouldn't).

Either that or kids don't have the imagination to lie like that, and most people can't be arsed either.

I end up the other way and just going "I'm over 18, so why do you need to know my DoB?" and proceed to just hit "end" on their day/month/year picker and end up somewhere in the region of 113 having been born on New Year's Eve!

Casual players vs. unmanaged development

[192939495969798999]

I disagree that casual players are the reason that a game change was posted without notifying anyone. That sounds a lot more like unmanaged development processes. How hard could it be to have some area where you say things that all the players can read, let's call it an "official website", where you post messages like "FYI, we changed the shoe items"? Do they really think people will buy the "our customer base doesn't care" argument? I'm more inclined to think that even if none of the customers would care, certainly the development team cares that they made the change, and they'd want to tell people about it. Presumably it either fixes a bug, adds a feature, or something. If the change really was purposeless, then why make the change at all? What's worse, can you imagine a development environment where the process driving these changes was so ad-hoc that you didn't have a way to communicate the changes to the users? From some older coding positions I held, sadly I *can* imagine that.

Re:Casual players vs. unmanaged development

[ZekoMal]

It's more common than you think.

In most "free" MMOs, the process is roughly similar: release something, screw something up, patch it and screw people over. I'll list an example from Goonzu (they call it Luminary sometimes). There was a glitch where if you claimed a hunting ground for your guild, your guild would gain roughly 30-40 levels. So, some guilds went from level 30-70 overnight. They patched it swiftly but did nothing to undo the guild level ups. So there was a huge gap between the 20 or so guilds that did it, and the hundreds that couldn't. And that's just one example: glitches, bugs, hacks, cheats...just spend about a week on any MMO and you'll see it. Another example: Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine recently had an FC (Fortune Card) snafu where they forgot to code in the rare item you could get from it. To fix it, they changed it into a raffle: the more rl cash you spent on the FC's, the more rare items you would get. This didn't count prior purchases, though, so anyone who spent money trying to get it before the patch was shit out of luck.

Just some examples; I'm sure I could find more. And somehow, MMO free-to-players are fine with the constant bludgeoning they get...

Pizza and promises

[wild_quinine]

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick disclosed that their forthcoming, unnamed MMOG will have 'a little more broad appeal' than its market-leading MMO World of Warcraft.

Seriously? Love it or hate it, the one thing WoW has is a broad appeal. I know loads of people who play WoW who, apart from Wow, only play casual games. In fact, amongst the people I know who play WoW, over half of them are (typically) casual gamers. Hardly any of them would touch Crysis, or even Arkham Asylum, and know what the hell to do with it.

Hell, WoW has broader appeal than a casual game, because Casual and Hardcore gamers both play it! You want to expand on that? The only thing I can think of with broader appeal than that, is Pizza. Actual bread, cheese, tomato, to your door in 30 minutes or less. Are activision branching out, or going nuts?

Re:Pizza and promises

[Chris Mattern]

You want to expand on that? The only thing I can think of with broader appeal than that, is Pizza. Actual bread, cheese, tomato, to your door in 30 minutes or less.

Everquest II did that. WoW countered with Chinese, but that turned out to be an April Fool's prank. The EQII /pizza command, however, was real, but I believe it's been discontinued.

Re:Pizza and promises

[elrous0]

It's kind of scary to even contemplate something with more broad appeal than WoW. It's sort of like a drug dealer announcing that Crack wasn't addictive enough, so he's working on a new "Super Crack."

!surprise

[wjh31]

c.f The effect that the wii has enabled on the casual games market.

Broad appeal

[Hognoxious]

Broad appeal ... that means they're marketing it to women?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.

[Petersko]

"Playing WoW is not actually playing, its working for some variables in Blizzard's DB."

And playing baseball on a field is working for little numbers in boxes on a scorecard. And playing golf is working for even smaller numbers on a smaller scorecard. When kids play cops and robbers, it's for... nothing.

Play is about what's fun.