Wednesday, June 15, 2011

You want to save WoW?

Then read my lips: C O N T E N T.
More precisely, content that is accessible for all types of players and helps them advance their character without being completely uninteresting (=reasonably challenging).

Is that hard to do? No. Blizzard has done this before in TBC and classic. Consequently, WoW grew to over 10 million players.

In classic players ran 5-man dungeons, UBRS, Molten Core and 20-man raids. The random drop system prevented them from reaching Best-in-Slot anytime soon. The content was challenging, but still quite accessible. Many players complained about unaccessible raids, like AQ or NAXX, but nobody quit due to them. As long as they could advance their own character while running reasonably challenging and accessible content, they were happy!

In TBC players ran dungeons, heroic dungeons and Karazhan. The random drop system prevented them from reaching Best-in-Slot anytime soon. The early badge system didn't hurt much. Many players complained about inaccessible raids, like BT or Sunwell, but nobody quit due to them. As long as they could advance their own character while running reasonably challenging (=interesting) and accessible content, they were happy!

In WotLK players needed to run heroics. They were incredibly grindy, because they needed to be run a lot more often than earlier dungeons. They also were very trivial (=uninteresting) later on. The LFD helped with accessibility, but made them even less interesting. The very accessible respective current raid, combined with the badge system, allowed players to become Best-in-Slot relatively soon.
Nobody complained about inaccessible content, because doing the same raid at higher difficulty seemed rather uninteresting, anyway.

In Cataclysm players need to run a rather small number of heroic dungeons. Even though these are mildly challenging nowadays, they need to be run very often and are so few, that they are not interesting. The LFD helps with accessibility, but makes them even less interesting.
A lot of players cannot raid, because it is too challenging (=not accessible) and stressful. Nerfing an earlier raid tier into the ground doesn't help, because the point system prevents players from reasonably advancing their character this way.

One last thing:
The leveling-by-questing game is impossible to do without outleveling the content. For many players that means that it is not interesting anymore.

9 comments:

  1. Oddly enough Rift now has the same problem. Expert dungeons are clearly finite. You do enough T1s to hit the minimum requirements for T2s then run T2s until you have enough currency to buy the vendor armour. Nothing else is comparable pre-raid.

    I ran a raid guild that have to give up because people didn't come to raids then moved to a more progressed guild that also had to give up because of attendance. There's barely anything to do outside of organised raids. It's boring. Log on, you could perhaps do a daily or play the auction house but there's not much point. Rep farming (eg for Order of Mathos) is best done in a big zerg and needs about 4 hours /played to get all you ever need. Raid rifts are one per day and take around 30 mins. They too become pointless quite soon.

    I think people lost interest in raiding partly because the game wasn't drawing them in. It's all very well having the flashiest weapon anyone has ever seen but if none of your mates ever log on what's the point? When I think back to Vanilla people were always busy between raids, mainly because we were so short of gold. Mindless grind, made smoother because you were in awesome raid loot, and the chat with other players you raided with created the community. With no challenge to get money and nothing to do people lose interest in logging on.

    As for WoW LFD does its job too well. You gallop through the dungeons you need very efficiently but it's all rather flat. They're almost as bad at Rift in putting players in the position of having absolutely nothing to do except wait for raid night.

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  2. Wow could fix a lot of problems by limiting people to 1 character on each side but allowing them to freely change classes. That way when 10 casuals turn up to raid and no-one is a healer. Instead of oh well not tonight, you just ask who has a healer class of the right ilevel.

    People would need then need to repeat a lot of content to get items for each of their classes and they would happily do it.

    and
    would help the social situation as you're always the same person.

    add in random drop system.

    perhaps make it that raids are more flexible over numbers required. so smaller groups can still manage in some fashion.

    make the quest regions/hubs class specific not race specific.

    Inaccessibility and inflexibility is what's killing wow.

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  3. I am somewhat curious why you so hell bent on "saving" game which you do not play.

    I long stopped caring .Only thing I regretted for a while is that you can not run wow emu server legitely. - Official servers are mainstream and your choice is take or leave it.

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  4. Max, I understand that many readers of this blog don't play WoW anymore or never played it. You are not the only one ;)

    But I played WoW with breaks since release. Hell, I am even subscribed right now.

    Moreover, the question "Why is WoW as successful as it is?" is a hell of a mystery. I've tried to tackle it again and again - as have all kinds of well payed gurus in the industry. But even though we know many pieces of the puzzle, the question was not yet answered.

    Why did WoW grow rapidly until early WotLK and then suddenly just stopped?

    I think I have another piece of this puzzle and will write about it again tomorrow. But don't worry: eventually I'll blog about MMORPGs in general again ;)

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  5. "I am somewhat curious why you so hell bent on "saving" game which you do not play."
    Mental expercise perhaps. Or maybe Nils, like I, remembers the fun times he had and hopes to get those back. Maybe they're lost to nostalgia and first times. But maybe they can be saved and carried on. It wasn't my first time in BRD that made me love it, it was probably my 20th time, when I had it all figured out, and then noticed something new.

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  6. Personally I resent the apparent attitude of the B Team that we should only enjoy content how they want us to.

    Pushing the DF, seasonal bosses locked by the same, removing anything challenging from the world so questing in groups is pointless...

    WoW was super successful because of the flexibility of the content. Now it's far too narrowly focused.

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  7. Moreover, the question "Why is WoW as successful as it is?" is a hell of a mystery. I've tried to tackle it again and again - as have all kinds of well payed gurus in the industry.


    Really? I should make a post about it , but hell it was never mystery to me. From the first week in beta I knew wow will be an order of magnitude bigger than anything up to it.

    In short - it did everything right for diku treadmill. And then some. I mean I had a huge laundry list of bad design decisions (based of EQ/AC/Shadowbane/AO) and a smaller one of a good ones. WoW had every bad one out and many good ones in.

    The other part (which is bigger) is that because they made game good they managed to reach larger audience. And first MMO for people is a very big pull. Being first "almost" perfect MMO is what did the numbers. Perfect storm

    If EQ had design and execution nearly as good it would have over mill easily before WoW.

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  8. WoW won't be saved.

    During WoW's glory days, it was the cool thing. It had buzz, so people flocked to try it. It had an incredibly voluminous "newbie hose". So even though many players quit before level 10, the buzz kept new players coming.

    As for the players who stayed past level 10, back then it took so long to get to 60 that it took months for most players to find out that raiding wasn't for them, slowing down the churn.

    Nowadays where WoW has been released most people who want to try MMOs already have. Wow has matured and entered a long period of decline. It will take something new like GW2 or Titan to achieve the kind of buzz that draws the huge numbers.

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  9. I think it's fairly obvious that Blizzard is consciously turning WoW into less of an MMO in the traditional sense of the word. It's simple conflict of interest. Why make this old product something that competes with the new upcoming title?

    Most of the latest "convenience tools" they added to the game ideally just turn this game into a PvP or Raiding GAME, not necessarily a open world MMO. I wouldn't be surprised if they made leveling an option, rather than necessity.

    I don't know how far ago this decision was made, but it must trace all the way back to the early Tarren Mill/South Shore dilemma.

    This is quite frustrating as WoW had charismatic figures and good lore foundation to build upon. I guess the engine wasn't good enough to support bigger realms. Who knows.

    On the upside, the new MMO Titan will probably be more open ended and player driven. Hopefully.

    This answers to the question: Do you want to save WoW? At this point I don't know. I'd have to see what they have in store with the other MMO. If that doesn't appeal to me, sure.

    And there are plenty of ways and small adjustments that could be done and would change WoW dramatically in how it is played. It just doesn't seem to be beneficial for Blizzard.

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