Blizzards Handling of Forums

First, let me say that I am a supporter of strong forum moderation. I consider complaining about 'censorship' on open forums to be ill informed and even plain stupid. That being said, however, I also consider Blizzards handling of their forums to be .. improvable right now.

I will give you one example by Ghostcrawler:

As a rule of thumb, the better posts tend to discuss classes and mechanics and not Blizzard itself. :)

Blizzard wants us to not discuss Blizzard itself on their forums? That is not even in their own long term interest. And especially good are posts about classes and class mechanics?

Sure, as an individual developer you are constantly under pressure to get the small things done. Classes and class mechanics, for example. I can understand that a brilliant idea about class mechanics, written for free into their forum, would help Ghostcrawler more right now than a general idea about what could be improved about, i.e. low-level content.

But that does not mean that the more general ideas should not be discussed. Have a look at this. There are several recent topics about the low-level BGs. Try to find one that hasn't been closed by a moderator for being 'not helpful'. There are none.

Good posters get turned away if only the bad topics are tagged blue. This is basic psychology - don't argue with good posters being irrational. Blizzard, of all people, knows how powerful reward structures are. Why do they ignore them on their own forum?

In addition to that I would like Blizzard to reconsider what posts require locking. Complaining is not always bad. Even if it does not contain any constructive suggestions. It is important, because developers sometimes have a hard time to catch the big picture when they are working on details. (And 80% of forum posters have problems with that every single second).

The complaining about low-level PvP, for example, was necessary. Blizzard shouldn't want it any other way. Among a lot of bad posts, there have also been several very good ones on that topic. Posts that people put a lot of effort in. By closing the topic you also closed their topic!

This is no post about this specific issue, however. World of Warcraft consists not only of the small issues.. Even though these combined are very important, of course.

WoW also consists of philosophies, of directions the game is moving. For example the issue of e-sports during TBC and early WotLK. Back then there were a hell of a lot of posts about all of the sub-aspects of it. For example that a non-despellable 50% mortal strike that applies to all healers at the same time would not be balanceable in arena (without giving it to everybody).

By now Blizzard has long agreed that it was bad idea and I congratulate them. That being said, I also think that Blizzard might have come to that insight earlier if they had tried to answer constructively to well written complains about it. Not just calling it 'QQing' and be done.

Apparently, new forums are introduced soon and I very much hope that Blizzard has an easy mechanism there to tell good posters that they like their posts - without writing a lengthy answer that good posts usually require.

Concluding, I hope that Blizzard will be able to focus more on the good posts there than on the bad ones. 80% of everything is shit. But don't let that keep you from looking at the remaining 20% and always keep reward structures in mind.

Two Souls in their Chest

Perhaps it is inevitable that in any company as big as Blizzard there is more than one soul. More than one mastermind. While I have been rather unimpressed by Blizzcon, this announcement really makes me hopeful again. I almost feel like Keen :)

Once free to terrorize the world, Deathwing will randomly choose territories in Azeroth to attack each day until his ruinous reign is brought to an end. A blackened sky will be the only warning before every living creature caught in his approach is consumed by his terrible fire. The unfortunate victims of his malice will receive a rare Feat of Strength... as well as a repair bill and corpse run.
[..]
There is very little warning once he decides to strafe a zone. If you're not in the zone already, you have virtually no chance of sacrificing yourself to his flame.

If you're in the zone, you're almost definitely screwed.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/27387876560/deathwing-is-coming/

This is incredible. Not for the event itself, which is nice, but for the change of attitude. During WotLK Blizzard promoted a passive Lich King who would only appear in a gimmick fashion every now and then and miraciously always spare you. Now, he may have had his reasons, but in the end I never feared that guy at all. Was he a danger to Azeroth? Didn't feel like it! Did he ever even try to kill me although I haven't attacked him first? No.

Now comes Deathwing. And ..

1) Deathwing is part of the open world. Believe it or not, but the open world is not only one of three ways of leveling and gathering herbs (by professional farmers) anymore. There is actually something going on.

2) Deathwing can kill you, even though you did not attack him first !!

3) From a pure gameplay point of view that doesn't make any sense! Why should you be killed at random without having a chance? But from a virtual world / immersion / story point of view it makes a hell of a lot of sense! Deathwing is not only the thing that awaits you at the end of Cataclysm to give you looot. No - he is a danger for the world as we know it!


If you are still unimpressed, you probably haven't play WotLK and haven't experienced that Lich King - or Illidans army, for that matter.

Unfortunately, in this youtube video Deathwing does not seem to kill you if you are on a mount - which is rather ridiculous considering the fact that every not-leveling player has a mount and uses it constantly. I hope it is a bug.

I also hope that it is really almost impossible to flee and that some lasting effect can be seen on the ground for some time after Deathwing burned a zone. Well - persistence has never been the strong part of WoW.

On a sidenote: Also part of the open, non-instanced world will be creatures that need at least 5 players to defeat and actually drop something meaningful.

Seems like Guild Wars 2 with its focus on a persistent non-instanced world (in addition to a lot of instancing) does have some effect. I like competition.

Blizzcon, some criticism

During Blizzcon I somehow had the feeling as if the wrong questions were asked and the few good ones have been answered with some kind of this-is-a-party mentality.

Here are a few questions that I think should have been asked and should have been given an extensive answer, also in Blizzards own interest.


1) Why are old raid instances not tuned down (considerably) and used for leveling players? Shouldn't players who quest in Outland also experience the end of that story?

2) Why do you think that there is an optimal time to max level and not an optimal leveling speed?

3) Is the fact that low level enchantments are used only by PvP-twinks working as intended?

4) How important do you consider PvP before max level?

5) Have you ever considered introducing a tutorial to WoW instead of reducing the difficulty of the first few levels to take into account that

• some new players misinterpret the 'this item will be soulbound' as 'I will never be able to unequipp it'
  
• some new players do not get that they can cast from range.
• ...

6) What are the three most important factors for WoWs success in your opinion? How important do you consider the raiding game for the success of the overall game from 2005 up to now?

7) How do you explain that Wow grew the fastest while only an insignificant minority of players raided?

8) Why are all dungeons in WoW designed to take 30min with appropiate gear and all BGs to take 20min? Why do almost all level 80 mobs have 12600 health? Do you think WoW could profit from more variety?

9) Does Blizzard employ psychologists to determine player reactions to things like, anonymous Dungeon Finders, the Tx => T(x+1) gear mechanism or items / mechanisms that increase leveling speed by increasing experience gain?

10) One of your 'mission statements' is "gameplay first". Do you consider gameplay and the feeling of a virtual world to be contradictory?

11) What is your target audience in terms of age?

12) Do you consider it worthwhile to investigate ways of reacting to external information sources (e.g. Elitist Jerks, WoWiki) in addition to including all possible information in the client (e.g. boss abilities)?

13) In your opinion, are there parts of classic or TBC WoW that are better than WotLK. Could you name a few?

14) How interesting do you consider WoW as an economics simulation? Do you consider it worthwhile to extend this part of the game?

15) Is your upcoming MMO meant to copy WoW or do you try to diversify your MMO portfolio?

16) Do you think that players' focus on dps is a result of the necessity for top-dps throughout the current content, or a result of the lack of other challenges for DDs? Do you have an alternative explanation?

17) From a game developers point of view: What are the advantages / disadvantages of a RNG-based loot distribution mechanic in comparison to a point-based scheme?

18) Are there plans to make the official forums more constructive? For example with points that are given to constructive posters, by blue only?

working as intended

My level 25 feral druid without heirlooms and without enchantments has just done stockades on his own. I queued as tank (instant) and told my groupmembers that I will stealth kill the boss for them in 60 seconds so that they can gain their award. They liked it.

By the way, the endboss is level 25.

Blizzards next MMO

Let's assume for a second that Blizzard does not plan to make a groundbreaking different MMO, but rather a WoW follow-up. That is, they try to beat WoW at being WoW and since they are Blizzard they think they have a chance where a generation of game developers failed.

What could they change? What would be possible differences to WoW? What would be the lessons learnt?

1) Trade
A nice economy with meaningful trade. This would easily be an addition to WoW. You can even keep teleporting players, if you really want. You just need to forbid teleporting goods. I consider this unlikely, as it is impossible to make a two hour trade route fun to a player that plays 1 hour a week. But it is a possibility. And it would open WoW to a completely different kind of player.

2) Just one faction.
Almost every MMO in the last decade had at least two factions, sometimes more. Considering how neglected the conflict was in WoW and considering the problems it caused - especially at PvP, I am convinced one lesson learnt would be to have just one faction.

3) The core gameplay should stay the same. That is targeting, movement, controls, camera, hotbars, global cooldown. This is the real strength of WoW. No need to change a perfectly working system.

4) They might add several different resource mechanics. They actually try to do this with WoW already: Rage, energy, mana, holy power, chakra, cooldowns, random proccs …

5) Despite the obvious advantage of a cartoon style, future graphics might make it reasonable to create semi-realistic graphics. I have no idea whether it would be a good idea in the end. But it might be worth a try. After all, good graphics is something you can buy for money. And money supply will be practically unlimited for Blizzards next MMO.

6) System requirements, of course, need to stay relatively low. That's a lesson most developers have learnt by now.

7) Full voice output. Bioware does it. And it is just a question of money. So .. I guess they will do it. There isn't really a reason not to.

8) Player housing? Guild Halls? Somehow this, also, is just a question of money. Especially guild halls. But if Blizzard doesn't like these features, because all cities (in addition to the landscape?) are empty as a consequence, they might not do it.

9) Player controlled construction, land estate, ... in short: Sandbox elements. Now .. I can dream. I certainly think that this would be the direction they should go. But it also makes a game much more complex and harder to 'control'. Blizzard do not seem to be sandbox fanatics with WoW, so this might be unlikely. On the other hand, this would be a perfect opportunity to catch the other half of the MMO players. In my opinion they should try this, because the potential benefits would be huge. It is, however, possible to fail here. So this probably comes down to: How bold are they?

10) Raiding can and will be part of the new MMO. Let's hope that it does not have the kind of focus it enjoyed in WotLK.

11) Unpredictable content. This would be a logical consequence of Diablo - influence. In my opinion it is likely that some small unpredictable elements will be part of the game. More is unlikely.

12) Dungeon Masters for every server. Would be great. Is, however, unlikely.

13) Grinding will be part of the new MMO, I hope. But I don't think so.

14) Achievements. Are a pest; but they will be part of that game. The management will see to that.

15) Lore will be completely new. This is actually something Blizzard has already state. It is the right decision.

16) Vehicles will be part. How much they are used, especially for combat, is another question., considering WotLK experience. The engine, however, will be designed to allow for that.

17) Naval combat. Oh yeah. Hell, why not? Seems to be a matter of money after all.

18) Air borne combat. I'm not so sure that is a good idea. Unlikely.

19) Flying in general was a bad idea for WoW, in my opinion. On the other hand, some players seem to consider it mandatory. They will likely have 'flying mounts'. *sigh*.

20) Space combat. This really depends on the setting. I still hope for a fantasy setting. But there are settings that allow for space combat. This is tricky, but has great potential. Especially, because it can be considered a matter of money to have a team that designs this in addition to teams that design other parts of the game.

21) Massive instancing. 99% certain, unfortunately.

22) Talent trees will be removed or be completely different. Star Craft 2 comes into mind.

23) Makros and user-written add-ons will be part of that game. This is one of the success secrets of WoW - and the iPhone, for that matter.

24) Destructible environment. They will try to have an engine that supports this to some degree. Questionable how much they will use it.

25) Some kind of a Chain-of-Command. Depends on the setting. Unlikely.

26) Diplomacy between guilds / user created factions. Would be great. Unlikely.

27) Under-water combat. They will wait for Cataclysm and see how it goes. In my opinion it will be nothing but problems; and not immersive, too.

28) Inventory system will stay the same. No item weight/size - unless they have some kind of trade.

29) Mob AI will stay very simple. Better AI is incredibly hard and the benefit of better AI, even if it worked, is probably low.

30) Collision control instead of threat. Now that is hot iron. If they can make it feasible, technically, this were a real match winner. Possible.

31) Holy Trinity (tank, healer, dd) will probably remain. No good alternatives in sight.

32) Variety. Worth an own blog post. More variety between mobs, dungeons, battlegrounds, raids, etc. There is no good reason to have all BGs take 20min and all dungeons 30min and all mobs 12600 HP.

33) A Dungeon Finder. There will be some kind of DF, but it will not teleport you as much as in WotLK and it will perhaps be embedded in a server architecture that makes you care about your reputation at least a little bit.

34) Infinite dungeon crawls by procedurally created content. How I would love that! 100% worth it,  but unlikely.

35) Dangerous travel. Unfortunately unlikely.

36) Locks, traps. Unfortunately unlikely.

37) Player-owned shops. Worth it, but tricky. Unlikely.

38) Player companies, shares. Unlikely.

39) Player-run financial services. Unlikely.

40) 'Soulbound' items. Quite probable.

41) RvR. Possible.

42) PvP, in general, will be limited to instanced areas.

43) Business Model. Subscription plus careful microtransactions in EU/US. Basically the same as WoW. Perhaps some limited amount fo free content, too.

44) Server identity. No chance. They will concentrate on 'guild identity' to be able to connect servers much more than today.

45) Immersion: Relatively strong focus in the beginning. Will quickly be reduced.

46) Character progression via standard levels. They will not adopt the EVE system nor will they introduce a skill points system.

47) Size of the world will be huge. This is a matter of money.

48) Death penalty will be low, perhaps innovative. Perhaps there will not even be nominal 'death' (Guild Wars 2). They will observe GW2 very closely.

49) Arena-like PvP. Probable. One lesson learnt is that a game needs to be balanced around PvP first and the PvE content will be balanced around PvP abilities then. This does not mean that PvP will be more important. It is just the reasonable thing to do, because PvE mobs don't complain if you nerf them.

50) In general, they will concentrate on their one undeniable advantage: Money.

Blizzard Overstrained

Is Blizzard overstrained ? I say: Yes.

And I quote Ghostcrawler:

We are going to spend some effort adjusting numbers for 1-80. It's not as big a priority as 85 because frankly, more players care about balance at 85 than they do lower level balance. As some folks have pointed out, inexperienced players almost by definition, don't place a premium on balance, and experienced players tend to not worry about balance much until they're at max level since things are changing so quickly.
Rather than adjusting everything independently, we tend to focus on max level and then work backwards from there. It doesn't help to nerf say rogue damage by 5% from level 1-60 if we then find we also need to nerf it at level 85 and then buff the 1-60 numbers to compensate.
There is some goofy stuff going on at lower level, but we'll get it all straightened out. After spending so much effort revamping the old zones and quests, we don't want the leveling experience to be an odd one.

There are a lot of eloquent complains about the 'numbers' on the forums. That is about the average dps, hps and health of all mobs and players while leveling. Apparently, Blizzard considers the 'balance' while leveling just important enough to not want it to be 'odd'.

Now, if Mystic or Funcom had officially stated that they just want low-level content to not feel odd, I would have left those games even faster than I did. Until now Blizzard was an outstanding player in the industry due to their devotion to quality. With Cataclysm this does not seem to hold.

Please note, when I say 'balance' here I am not talking about some tricky stuff, like warriors not having a way to counter frost mage-kiting after the 2nd charge on cooldown.

I am talking about oneshots and mobs that die so fast that you cannot actually play your char. When Patch 4.01 was made available I made a new feral druid to test it out. I was especially interested in the leveling, because that is what I am going to do with Cataclysm, and actually have done 50% of WotLK already. The way Blizzard designs endgame is not for me anymore - even though until mid-TBC endgame was all that I cared about.

But this post is not about complains about the World of Warcraft endgame. This blog post is about Blizzard going to destroy the leveling experience, too. I find myself commenting on forums and my blog right now, because I cannot get myself to play my new feral druid. It is just too boring. And here is why:

At level 10 I got "Mangle". Mangle instantly hits the mob I attack and creates one combo point. The combo point can later be used to launch a finishing attack. Now, when I attack a mob of same level  or slightly higher (yellow, orange) it goes like this:

1) Mangle
2) Mangle
3) Mangle
4) Mob dead.

Mangle has no cooldown on its own and since the global cooldown for rogues and ferals is 1.0 seconds, I need 3 seconds to kill the mob. Before I reach the next mob, my energy is restored and I will be able to do exactly the same again. Making bad things worse, if the first or second mangle actually crits, the mob is dead after 2 seconds. And I am not talking about some twinked char. Since I disdain heirlooms this char just wears greens/whites!

Attacking red mobs is no solution, either, by the way. The main reason fighting red mobs (mobs of significantly higher level) is 'hard' in WoW, is that your abilities miss all the time. That is no fun, of course. They do not even offer a higher reward and usually quests for red mobs are not available.

It is important to note that I do not complain about there being no challenge. That's not the point. The point is that this kind of gameplay is not fun. I cannot care about combo points, because there is no way that any mob lives long enough to build up some combo points and make a meaningful "finisher".

To actually play the char, I entered Ragefire, a low-level dungeon as damage dealer. The randomly created dungeon-finder group was not very well equipped. None of them used heirlooms, to my surprise. So I was looking forward to have some fun. Unfortunately I wasn't able to build any reasonable amount of combo points here, either. Everything died too fast; including the bosses!

Now, that cannot be the designers' intent. Can it? It seems like Blizzard considers it a minor problem and it took them several days to even make the first constructive comment on the topic. It is the comment quoted above. Was there so much need to coordinate internally before a statement could be made? Did none of the developers feel offended that his careful low-level balance was criticized?

Can it be that Blizzard decided to make a whole expansion about low-level content to attract new players and at the same time planned to not care much about the numbers at low-level? Is Blizzard a victim of the illusion that you can make things ever more trivial and it will actually feel ever more fun? Can it be that rated-BGs are the main PvP focus of World of Warcraft (something I approve a lot), but level 1-84 BGs will be about one-shoting and who first got to chain his one to three abilities of 'ultimate death' ?


Strange Mathematics

And there is even more reason to worry. Let us have a look at this sentence from the above quote:

It doesn't help to nerf say rogue damage by 5% from level 1-60 if we then find we also need to nerf it at level 85 and then buff the 1-60 numbers to compensate.

Does anybody understand the way Blizzard determines the numbers?
In WoW, the damage of a low level ability (or any ability for that matter) usually consists of some fixed damage and some scaling damage.

Mangle, for example, works like this:

Mangle the target for 230% normal damage plus X and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for 60 seconds. Awards 1 combo point.

The "normal damage" is the auto attack damage that is determined by a level-dependend fixed value and some scaling with attack power. Attack power then is two times agility plus a fixed value.

Now, that is certainly no rocket science. If I worked at Blizzard I'd solve the problem like this.

1) Define a bracket of how long combat against one mob should take. For example 10-20 seconds.
2) Determine the abilities a player of each specc is going to use when he attacks a mob and in which sequence. Do this for every level. You can use a trainee to do this.
3) Use Excel, Mathematica, or similar software to automatically calculate the level-dependent fixed damage (i.e. X) of each ability to fulfill your requirement (1). Calculate a top-geared char and a low-end char. Make sure the scaling is appropiate to still fulfill requirement (1).
4) Iterate.

Originally, WoW was designed around players having about as much health as mobs. This way, PvP combat would automatically take approximately as long as PvE combat vs. leveling mobs. The PvE mobs just did slightly lower dmg than players and did not have any sophisticated abilities. Therefore PvP combat took longer.

Some remains of that system still exist. Unless you twink your char, you will have about as much health as the mobs you fight. Over the years, and especially with Patch 4.01, however, your damage has been raised dramatically.

Let me finish with this:
There are some players (and it seems, developers) that consider the game to be better the faster it is. Like: "It was so much fun to rush through the mobs after I twinked my char. Let us make everyone rush through the mobs while leveling."

This is the fun fallacy. Fun is not an inherent property of an isolated activity.

If ever faster leveling was indeed fun, we should make us level up with each mob we kill. The reason it was fun to rush through the mobs with a twinked char was not due to an inherent fun factor. It was due to the contrast to 'normal' leveling and the illusion of power that resulted from one's own effort. If you remove 'normal leveling' for new players, they will not have this comparison and just look at the negative aspects: The fact that they have several bars of abilities, but only ever use a handful of them. That is not fun. In fact, it is a sign of lacking quality.

The Challenge Fallacy

Currently people complain that the low level content of WoW is too easy. They are countered by people who say that leveling was never challenging and should not be challenging.

I agree. With both groups.

Leveling, indeed, was never challenging. And it would be impossible to make it challenging for 30 different speccs and different levels. What the people who claim that leveling is too easy mean is not that they want it to be challenging, but interesting.

Consider two mobs.
1) This mob takes 20 seconds to kill. He reduces your health by 20%-80% depending on how 'skillful' you are (20% = pure auto attack).
2) This mob takes 1 second to kill.

Now, which mob is more challenging to beat? Neither. You have a 100% chance to succeed. But which mob is more interesting to beat ?

Exactly.

Random Nostalgia

When I leveled my second char – a feral druid at the end of classic WoW, I encountered some spiders in Stonetalon Mountains (~ level 25). They were lead by an elite spider. The second I saw it, I started to make a plan on how to beat it. I thought about my Tauren War Stomp in combination with healing up, hots, bear form, starting in cat form to place a dot. It took three attempts and an additional healing potion & bear stun to kill it. When I did, I felt great and I remember it today!! I love it when a plan comes together - everyone does.

Was killing it difficult? Not really. I mean, the plan is rather obvious if you think about it. Just use all your starting burst/healing/stuns and hope for a lucky crit. The point was not that it was challenging, but that I had to make a plan and to execute it.

At the end of classic WoW I would often go to Hearthglen with my mage and kill scarlet monastery elites over there. The (comparatively slow) power progression had made elite areas the only non-trivial areas. I could kill packs of up to three with my mage. I would just need to make sure they would not be in melee range for more than a second, because they could do some nasty special moves, like a crusader strike that reduced my chances drastically.

I would

• Pyroblast the first at 41m range.
• Start a fireball,
• add my instant pyroblast.
• Sheep the one with mana when he comes into range.
• Start a fireball,
• followed by fire blast.
• Now the two elites would stand in front of me, one of them severely wounded.
• Frost Nova both,
• 8 seconds to gain distance and finish next spell. No more than 30m, counter spell distance.
• Counter spell a healing spell from the one with mana.
• Frost Bolt at the unhurt one to snare him,
• fireball+fire blast to finish the other one of.
• Run a bit until Frost Nova CD is up again – careful with pats!
• Sheep, if necessary, evocation,
• …
• Drink mana up to full (20-30 seconds).

I remember it! But why did I do it? Well, firstly because I could. Secondly, because these elites had a (relatively) high chance to drop magical armor. Sometimes you would even get a blue item !!

(I only got one world epic ever in classic WoW. Sold it for 500G – with my personal inflation, that is about 20k gold nowadays.)

Add runecloth to that and a relatively high amount of silver per mob.

Was it challenging? Well … no. The above is quite obvious once you start thinking about it. And it is always the same. It could become more interesting if you tried to go into one of the houses, because space/kiting would be a problem. Every once in a while you would add and you needed to decide whether you could deal with the add or simply needed to run. Running was risky, too, due to circling pats, but it usually worked. Sometimes you would die – my fire mage would die in melee within 10 seconds (that was a short time back then).

If you read so far, you might ask why I tell nostalgic stories. One reason is homogeneity. I don't like it. Have you ever had a look at the amount of hp a level 80 WotLK mob has? 12600 – all of them! Sometimes a creature (e.g. bear) would have a 20% modifier, but usually all mobs are equal. In the old world all elites were removed. A level 60 mage in Hearthglen can aoe down any number of mobs. Is that fun? Yes – for 10 minutes.

There are very few pats in WotLK and if mobs can heal at all you can ignore it. There are almost no houses/caverns with dangerous mobs in them and if the mobs do a 'crusader strike' you couldn't care less.

Since mobs have the same amount of health – and since Blizzard allows us to see the exact number – all mobs seem like clones.

Now, there is one area in WotLK that I had high hopes for when it came out. Ice Crown. There are a lot of elites there – there are even some dangerous pats. Unfortunately, there is no reason at all to fight them.

• The drops are worthless.
• There is no reputation to be gained.

See, I would never have been in Hearthglen back in the time, if there had been no reason to. Usually I needed money and was hoping for a lucky drop.

The advantage of drop chances had been that you might have heard that somebody had made a fortune by farming at location X and now you did the same. But it did not feel very grindy, because you did not expect the next mob to have a blue item. In fact, you expected that you could farm the entire day and not gain one lucky drop. You were happy about the gold and simply playing your char – whenever you want.

Every once in a while, however, you would find a valuable blue item.

My main problem with WoW today is that I don't know what to do when logged in.

• Dungeons are not fun anymore.
  • they don't last long enough,
  • they are a pushover,
  • they are about aoe and aoe only,
  • they are highly anonymous,
  • there is no social interaction,
  • they don't even have a remote chance to improve your char.
• Raids
  • are PuG-only for me. That may be my fault. But there is no reason for a raiding guild – I can get all the stuff I ever need with PuGs and a flexible schedule.
  • are about one instance only for months.
  • are too much about aoe on trash. I get a headache from watching.
  • are highly scripted.
  • are about doing your rotation as flawless as possible to be #1 on dps meter.
  • are about boring gear
    • you gain upgrades all the time. Do you know the name of your items nowadays? I do not. The only thing I can say is: “I got the item-level 264 variation of the caster-haste chest”.
    • all players of your class look the same.
  • Are mostly about boss mobs that I have never heard before and will never hear about again. They are “just a boss mob”.
• Battlegrounds
  • have a very long queue compared to the time you are actually in the BG.
  • are very anonymous.
  • PvP suffers from too much burst. Something that wasn't a problem during classic WoW, because the vast majority of players didn't raid much – if at all. The occasional elite raider would be focused by the (server) community that would actually communicate in the chat.
• Arena
  

  • has been boring and frustrating from the start.
  • even more so with WotLK.
  • has all the PvP-related problems.
• There is nothing in the open world that makes me play my char.
  • no reputation to gain by playing my char (only 'innovative' dailies).
  • no rare random drops that are worthwhile.
  • no worthwhile drops at all!
  • a total pushover – even the elites in Icecrown.

During classic WoW I could log-in and farm some mobs or do BGs in the organised server groups that were aiming for the High-Warlord title. Sometimes I could get a dungeon group together. This has always been a nice variation. Every once in a while I made it into a raid.

During TBC I could do BGs and raid. Sometimes I could get a dungeon group together.

During WotLK I did daily dungeons *vomit* and .. raid.

Today, if I log in during a boring Saturday morning there is just nothing to do. That is the reason I blog instead. But I would prefer to play *sigh*.

Concluding,

• I consider small random chances for loot a very valuable tool. It feels much less grindy than predictable 'points'. I don't necessarily like the carrot to dangle in front of my eyes all the time.
• I consider variation in mob power very important! Homogenization is to be avoided when possible.
• I don't care much about challenge, but I love to make plans and see them come together.
• I consider playing my char in the open world an important part of the game – especially at max level!
• I consider interesting environments important (e.g. Hearthglen).
• The more things I can do when I log in at a boring Saturday morning the better. 
• Raiding is not the strongest part of WoW. World of Warcraft grew the fastest while only an insignificant minority of players raided.

Blizzard, are you joking?

The first BG bracket that new players will enter is the opposite of balanced. It is a joke. A sad one.

A new lvl 10 mage does not only get 1-hitted, but actually 1/3 hitted. If necessary, several times during a stun.

While a lvl 10 mage should not exspect to rock in there, this is in stark contrast to the PvE environment that makes you fall asleep (and wonder about those pro-tips in the tooltips that are obviously totally unnecessary). If I were a new player just having played my first BG against those heirloom twinks, I stopped playing instantly.
Really, Blizzard: Cut damage by 75% for all players and reduce power progression if anyhow possible.

WoW is not just endgame raiding! Especially new players need to like the low-lvl game to ever reach the end game!

Leveling in WoW V4

Since I plan to start all over in Cataclysm, I am very interested in the leveling experience. That is why I started an undead mage yesterday and got him to level 10.

In general, the game has been dumbed down even more. Yeah, yeah! It obviously, was possible. My spell tooltips do not tell me how much damage they do, but now tell me that 'this is an instant, that's why I should use it when moving'. Apparently Blizzard is convinced that

1) A large number of new players are 10 or younger.
2) These players can read, but not think.
3) These player do not feel good when figuring easy(!) things out on their own.
4) These players are a welcome addition to the WoW endgame.
5) The players won't be confused, by the fact that the first 10 levels are so incredibly easy now that it really does not matter at all what button you press when.

I needed to make this rant. Sorry.


The second part of this post is about the removal of skill ranks.
In old WoW you would gain new skill ranks when you leveled. Your fireball rank 2 would make (much) more damage than your fireball rank 1. Now, for some time already your fireball rank 1 actually already scaled with your level. But there were still ranks that improved it.

In V4 you will never again get a new rank. Your skills just scale on-the-fly. Is this good? I do not think so.

The reason for ranks was to make players feel like their character progressed, became more powerful. Unfortunately allowing players to become more powerful also has downsides:
- Problems leveling with friends of different level
- Balance issues
- 6 digit numbers are hard to read
- Immersion in the game world

That is why you do not become 10x as powerful with every level - even though there are certainly people at Blizzard HQ who pointed out that players like to feel more powerful, the more the better.

Since power progression has downsides, it is important to make perfect use of every single increase in character power. The player needs to know that his character has just become more powerful! This, however, is exactly the opposite of what is done. Basically your character becomes more powerful, but Blizzard tries to hide it from you.

In addition, you are so busy with looking/thinking at/about the next GCD now, that there is little time to look at the environment, let alone the damage numbers of your fireballs.

So the feeling of becoming more powerful is sabotaged. That is bad game design.

Pre-Cataclysm Patch

So.. WoW v4 is out. Here are my thoughts.

1) The big bang button to start WoW is annoying. DEVs already promised to 'fix that'.

2) My character now has some animations in the character selection screen. Nice.

3) Graphics are better - they can be fine tuned to optimize for fps. Works well.

4) Water looks perfect .. if you wanted to have water look like in laboratory conditions. I do not. Water should have waves. Of course that is asking for a lot, but really: The new water is perfect for a strange mysterious lake with deep waters. But it is not very immersive that all lakes - including the ocean are like this. There is a lot of work to be done here for the graphic guys. And also for the sound engineers, btw: Why is there never a storm on Azeroths coasts?

5) Under water now looks non-credible. You can see as if you were looking through air. Even dark lakes suddenly look light-green once you are under water. This probably had to be done to allow for under-water content in Cataclysm. I do not like to move underwater as if I were on land, but I agree that it is the only way to make under-water content feasible. Conclusion: Scrap-under water content. (Not gonna happen, of course.)


So much for an introduction. Now let's get to the meat:
GAME MECHANICS

I played an arcane/fire/ice mage in BGs/5man dungeons so far. In theory the new game mechanics are great. You have a limited amount of abilities that are interconnected. Easy to learn, hard to master. Great.

About the fire mage: Here this seems especially well done! You have several abilities that basically set everything on fire. What I do not really understand, however, is how this goes together with the less-aoe style of Cataclysm? If tanks cannot hold AoE-aggro, why do I get so many abilities that are just about aoe? On pure single target fights I will only be able to use fireball/pyroblast now.

Arcane has incredibly insane damage bursts on single target. My average item lvl is 255 with a focus on haste (former arcane mage). During cooldowns I crit on target dummies for up to 53k with a single 2s arcane blast! That is self buffed / self debuffed!
I wonder how my 10k fireballs are supposed to beat that dps? However, Blizzard already announced to nerf mages, especially fire mages.

Here comes my main concern:
Although it is great in theory to have so many interconnected abilities, I feel like playing against my action bar instead of playing against NPCs/PCs. I do not think that this is just due to necessary training alone. There are random proccs all the time that I need to respond to. That makes me look too much on my action bar! Now, I know that there are well-visible warnings in the center of my screen now, but they do not show the running GCD! I do not have the time to look at the actual battle.

Of course, I have 24% unbuffed haste, so this char is especially demanding when it comes to quick reaction times. But I am full of doubt at this time. Also during WotLK I prefered classic BGs. They always felt more interesting. You had more time to actually look what was going on - especially in PvP. (In PvE you never should look up since WotLK, because the rampard spell effects create a headache. I doubt this will change with Cata.)

Now, I PvP with a PvE geared fire mage, so there will be a remarkable difference to a resilience-buffed 85 PvP mage. But I do not feel like I die too fast. In fact, it is ok. I have 40m range, 2-3 shields (depending on specc), blink, invisibility, mirror images, rocket boots, snares, knockbacks (arcane mana shield collapse), CC. My survivability seems ok. But the game is still too fast.


TL;DR:
So my main concern in one sentence:
I feel like fighting a very fast action bar instead of mobs/players.

What should be done about it?
My suggestion is to allow players to have a plan about what buttons to press (not so many random proccs). They should need to change this plan no more often than every 10s in a battle, better 20s. To make the entire game random-procc based diminishes your feeling to have your character under control and puts you on constant stress. The game becomes too much about the next second and not enough about the next 20 seconds.

About myself:
I play WoW since release and computer games for 15 years now. I am 30. If the games feels too fast for my taste, it certainly feels too fast for a lot of players.

Blog Moderation

It is my personal opinion that bloggers need a thick skin. I got a few personal-insult comments since I started the blog. I deleted them permanently and was done.

However, I differentiate between strong words and insult. Insult is if I think that the other person wanted to insult me. Strong words are if they just did not care too much about my feelings.

Strong words are ok. I, too, sometimes use them by accident, because I want to concentrate on the topic and not on foreseeing the others feelings.

Example: If somebody says "Nils focus on immersion in MMOs is soo stupid!", I would not feel offended. It is just his opinion and strong words.
Now, if somebody comments on my blog to mock me, ignoring the topic, I delete his comments.

I also believe in strong moderation to manage comments/forums. Thus, I might delete the above example if it is the whole comment and adds nothing to the discussion.

A strong moderation has nothing to do with "censorship", by the way. People in my country are free to state any opinion they want. They are not free to do it wherever they want. And they are certainly not free to shout loud enough for me to hear them in my house, let alone to post any comments they like on my blog.

Kill 'em all

When Blizzard started with Cataclysm one designer tried to convince the others that they should let all 80s die in a spectecular event and then really restart the game. The fear was that they would never be able to add enough high end content while also redesigning the entire game.

Anyway, this was mentioned in some interview - probably by Ghostcrawler. I wanted to write a post about it, but unfortunately I cannot find it anymore. So perhaps I have just dreamt it ...

Can somebody of you remeber it or even find the link?

Quality in MMORPGs, Part 2

Tobold wrote a reply to my post about Quality in MMORPGs. In this blog post I will reply to him. I will do so line by line. This way it is guaranteed that I do not just post my own opinion, but actually reply to his.

Nils and I have agreed that our lengthy exchanges on opinions are better handled blog-post to blog-post instead of totally overwhelming the comment section, and this already lead to a marked increase in the number of commenters here. Our current discussion is on the subject of what a good game is, sparked by a comment from Ben who said "Britney Spears isn't the greatest artist of all time, it's really not that hard to understand the discrepancy b/w sales and quality."

Nothing to add, really. For some reason those socials feel uncomfortable if somebody writes one long comment instead of several short ones *grin*.

Now it is easy to get 100 people to agree to the statement that Britney Spears isn't the greatest artist of all time. I'd sign that too. The problem is that if you ask those 100 people who they think *is* the greatest artist of all time, you will get 100 different answers. And the people making statements like the one above are usually those who think that their own subjective answer of what is good is more valid than the subjective answers of the other 99 people. They also usually think that Britney Spears is a *bad* artist, or that the Harry Potter books are bad books, *just because* they are popular. I don't agree with that.

No blogger I ever read thinks that something is of bad quality, *just because* it is popular. I do not and I am pretty sure no other blogger does, either. I’d appreciate if you had a quote that proved me wrong.

Any book, film, song, or game can be measured on two very different scales: The scale that measures their entertainment value, and the scale that measures their artistic value. Where Ben is totally right in saying is that the two are not correlated. But they aren't inversely correlated either. Something which has a high entertainment value will be very popular, but that doesn't tell you anything about the artistic value, neither that it is artistically good nor that it is artistically bad.

You introduce a beast here: A distinction between entertainment and artistic value. I will not delve into that. My post was about the individual, subjective quality that players assign to games and how an objective (or quasi-objective) measurement of quality should relate to it. This subjective quality, that is the benefit of a player when he uses a product, can be applied to art and pure entertainment, likewise. I see no need to differentiate and open another box.

I am a scientist. I do not like judgment on artistic value, because that is so highly subjective. I'd claim that for the example the Harry Potter books have an artistic value, because of the way the language of the books matures with the age of the hero, which is both very subtly done and used to great effect. But that is my subjective opinion of the art of writing, and I'm sure many people would disagree.

I studied Financial Mathematics and Physics so I guess I am a scientist, too. But I feel uneasy about the way you mention it here. It feels like those ads where people stress that their statements were tested with "scientifics tool" or by "scientists".

In my opinion, any objective measurement of quality needs to rely on subjective measurements. Otherwise, there were no connection. Now, that would be a strange definition "of good game".
Of course, also the definition by sales numbers indirectly relies on subjective valuations of quality. Do not mistake measurability for objectivity!

Furthermore I would say that games, especially massively multiplayer games are not like books, films, or songs, in that games very rarely qualify as art at all. Yes, there are a few borderline cases like Myst or Ico, but the kind of game I'm discussing on this blog is not art in my opinion. MMORPGs are huge projects created by hundreds of people, and even an "art director" or anyone else on the team can hardly claim the whole game as a work of *his* art, not like the author of a book can, or the director of a movie (and lots of movies aren't art either for pretty much the same reason). Games are most of the time not created with any artistic aspiration in mind, but *only* for entertainment value.

I agree with the last sentence. Otherwise, I already stated that I consider the distinction of art and entertainment, for the purpose of defining an ‘objective’ way to measure quality in games, redundant.

Therefore if you hear me speaking about a game as being "good" or "bad", please keep in mind my narrow definition of what a "good game" is: As I assume that the fundamental purpose of a game is to entertain, I judge a game on its ability to do exactly that. A good game for me is one that is entertaining to its players. If you personally think that to qualify for "good game" a game has to fulfill other criteria, be that some artistic value or something else, we simply risk to miscommunicate, because we are using so very different definitions.

I, too, think that a game should entertain. But I do not see any reason to assume that the entertainment value is determined well by the number of subscribers. The number of subscriber has a lot of problems if you use it as a measurement of quality. I have listed several in the last post. It would be great to read your response to that.

I'm not saying that my definition of "good" is the only one possible, or the best, or anything. But I'm saying that this is the definition I use, and have always used on this blog.

Tobold, you can use whatever definition you want. Hell, you can define your blog to be always right. (I know: You do not. That is the point). This only shifts the problem of finding a good definition to finding out whether your definition is good.
So, thanks for the clarification. We now know what you mean when you say “good game”. But I still consider your definition a bad one. And I listed many reasons for this opinion in my last blog post. What would really help would be you answering to these points and why you consider them unproblematic or non-significant.

And as my definition of "good" only judges a game by its entertainment value, and entertainment value is highly correlated with popularity and ultimately sales, I do like to use subscriber numbers.

Woa. Stop! Why is entertainment value highly correlated with popularity and ultimately sales? I agree that there is a correclation, but a high one? No.

Firstly: Careful with popularity: Second Life is arguably more popular than WoW and I am pretty sure you do not consider it better entertainment.

Secondly: Using entertainment value as a definition still has the same problem that sales numbers have. I.e. sales numbers can change without the game changing. Sales numbers are influenced by advertisement, prices, network effects, etc.
Sales numbers, as well as popularity are influenced by a lot of factors that are not inherent properties of the game. Now, in my opinion one property a good definition of “good game” should have is that it is not significantly influenced by factors that are outside of the game.

Although I of course agree with Craig Morrison that "1 million registered users" and "1 million subscribers" are not the same thing, and you need to look at all numbers closely to avoid being misled by some marketing trickery. MMORPGs with monthly subscriptions are relatively easy to compare, because the pricing tends to be similar. And unlike listening to a song, which is most often free, or reading a book, which usually just requires a single payment which you might end up regretting, a game with a monthly subscription requires a continued statement from its players, who are effectively saying: "Yes, this game still entertains me enough for me to be willing to pay $15 for another month". That constitutes a valid measure of the entertainment value of a game, and that is what I like about these numbers. But remember, that is *my* definition of what a "good game" is, to which not necessarily everybody agrees. (/wave Wyrm, Ben, Nils, etc.)

I think, you mistake measurability for objectivity here. It is the same mistake the guys on wall street did some time ago. Just because your way to measure risk produces hard numbers, does not mean that it is a good indicator of risk.

Besides, don't you think that revenue is a better measurement than sales numbers? (Not that revenue would be a good one, either, in my opinion).

My suggestion for a definition of “good game”

In my humble opinion a good measurement of quality of a product is this:

"Aggregate, potential consumer benefit"

What a monster :). Yeah. Sometimes there are no easy solutions.

You remember that table from the last post? If not, you should look it up. To find out “how good a game is”, you should ask all potential players to write down how much they like the game on a scale of 1-10. Or any other scale, of course. Then you add their ratings.

Now, why is this a superior definition?
Firstly, because all potential players are asked. Not only the ones that know about the game by watching ads. Secondly, because network effects, or any effects outside of the scope of the game itself, play no role. Thirdly, because this is a proven method in microeconomics to judge societal benefit of a product.

Annoyance and Anticipation of Fun

In a MMORPG, you cannot give rewards "just like that". You need to add something the players need to do before they get the reward.

What you put in front of the reward will most often not be inherently fun. Beating bosses that are obviously easy to beat, wiping in front of bosses that are obviously not easy to beat, searching for other players, running through the landscape, reading EJ, being killed by another player ...

Fun is not an inherent property of an isolated activity.

- Just running around in ICC and pressing buttons without any consequences (like rewards) is not fun.

- Just receiving rewards for doing nothing is not fun, either. If it were, I'd be a millionaire with my super-cheap, super-successful games :).

But the combination of running around, pressing buttons and eventually receiving rewards is fun.

I wrote about it before here and here.

At some point an activity, like running towards a dungeon, an activity that once was full of pleasant anticipation, can become annoying. That is deeply connected with 'expectations of entitlement'.

It is comparable to singing in front of the Christmas tree before you go for the presents. It can add a lot to the atmosphere. However, given specific expectations of entitlement, it can turn into an annoyance.

Another example would be cooking. Many people enjoy making their own meals. Not only because the meals taste better. (Often they do not :).
It is the pleasant anticipation that makes it fun. If you strip that anticipation away, you can access the reward faster, but you also lost something: The fun of anticipating future fun.

What also plays a role here is a feeling of natural order. If you feel that it is completely natural that you need to a walk to a dungeon before you are there, you enjoy the pleasant anticipation: The anticipation of future rewards that is fun in itself.

But once you got to know teleportation to dungeons, that feeling of natural order is gone. You have been spoiled. And there is little you can do about it. From now on, you consider the walk to the dungeon an unnecessary annoyance. Therefore, the implementation of the teleporting dungeon finder in WoW was probably only a matter of time. It is the logical consequence of summoning other players to "meeting stones" that disrupted the feeling of natural order and made walking an annoyance.

Finally, the activities prior to the rewards not only offer the anticipation of future fun, that is fun in itself. They also give meaning to the rewards. If there were no mobs to beat, the rewards in form of items that make beating mobs easier, had no meaning. In fact, they stopped being rewards to achievement-oriented players. They have become 'fluff'.

Quality in MMORPGs

How do you measure the quality of a game? A common practice is to use the sales figures. As you can see below, that approach is contentious.

Ben:
---Which objective measure of merit do you suppose to gauge quality on rather than supply and demand?---

Why must it be objective? Use the powers of persuasive argument to demonstrate why (for example) nonconsensual PVP is worse than Battlegrounds. Sales receipts aren't an "objective" measure because the feature may not be the cause of success. Maybe it's advertising, or circumstances, or a million other things.

Britney Spears isn't the greatest artist of all time, it's really not that hard to understand the discrepancy b/w sales and quality.

Tobold:
So what you are saying is that while no objective measure is able to tell us what a good game is, God Almighty has blessed YOU, and only you, with the gift of the one true subjective measure?

So, pray tell us, which one IS the greatest artist of all time?

I think it just happens that you like a smaller game more. That is okay. But trying to tell everybody that they are wrong, they are stupid, and only you can identify a good game is total bullshit.

MMORPGs are not songs. People pay for monthly subscriptions continuously, and often for years. If a large number of players does that, it is proof that the game is good.

Let’s first try to find out where we agree: We probably all agree that using sales figures is problematic. By sales figures Big Macs are the perfect meal. As are small and cheap cars the best cars around. The artist analogy has already been commented on by Ben. There are countless others. Of course, that does not mean that we should only use our own subjective taste to measure objective quality. It is a typical Tobold strawman (sorry) that can drive his commenters insane (if they care).

Now, let us do the next step. We agree that sales figures are a problematic way to measure quality. But what if it is the only one? Let’s assume for a moment that we could not come up with a better way to measure quality. Let’s assume that sales figures are the only way we know. Does that mean that we need to agree that a product that is sold often is very good?

We can certainly agree that the answer to that question is »No«.
Explanation: Assume you want to guess  the distance between sun and earth and your only tool are your eyes. Your guess is 1,000,000 km. Is it a good guess, just because you only had your eyes? No. Just because your only tool is a hammer, there is no reason to assume that all your problems are nails!

If sales figures are a problematic way to judge quality of a product, then using sales figures to judge the quality is just that: Problematic. It does not matter that you have no other tools at hand. In general, your conclusions do not magically become better, just because you lack the tools to achieve better conclusions.

Market Segmentation

Now, let’s have a look at how problematic, exactly, the sales figures approach is. I copy/paste from an old post.

Imagine five players and two ways to design your game: Option A and Option B. Option A could be “Introduce a feature” while option B could be “Do not introduce the feature”.

Imagine a scale of 1-10 to measure the subjective quality of the game, as rated by the individual players. 10 means a player loves your game; 1 means he hates it, considering the respective options A or B.

Let’s further assume that
1) All players buy a game if they give it at least a rating of 6/10.
2) All players pay the same price, there is no price differentiation.

Now consider this situation of possible ratings (=individual and subjective player benefit):

	Player benefit of Option A	Player benefit of Option B
Player 1	9	6
Player 2	10	6
Player 3	9	6
Player 4	3	6
Player 5	3	6
Sum:	34	30

To maximize aggregate player benefit you would have to choose option A, but with option B you sell the game 5 times. With option A you only sell it 3 times. Option B means 67% more revenue!

Thus, the game companies go for option B. It is better for them to make a game in a way that it is just good enough for every single player to play it. That means that the products that sell most are either products where consumer tastes do not differ, or option B like products.

There are a few ways out of that dilemma. For example, allowing players 1, 2 and 3 to pay more than players 4 and 5 for an option A game. This way they get what they pay for. Another way would be to make the same game twice. One version with option A and one with option B. This is called market segmentation by price differentiation or product differentiation, respectively.

Since the MMO industry does not do much price or product differentiation and since there are wildly different tastes in the MMO community about what is a (subjectively) good game, there is every reason to assume that the companies (just like Hollywood) always go for option B. It maximizes their profit. But does option B always make for a better game? Not for the majority for players. Three of five players, in the example, liked option A more. Also, the aggregate player benefit is higher for option A.

Even More Problems

There are even more problems about the sales figures approach. Firstly, there can be constrains, like money. A lot of people would like to buy better wine and better cars, but they do not have the means to do so. Secondly, as Ben already noted, some artists sell their products exorbitantly more often than other artists, not because they are so much better, but because of advertisement, network effects and the-winner-takes-it-all characteristics. A slightly worse product always runs danger to not be sold at all, because it is, well, slightly worse.

Other Tools

However, there are other ways to judge product quality. Consider good meals. There are experts who judge restaurants and chefs. They do not care about the costs of the meal, they do not care about advertisements and, hopefully, they are critical enough and do not care about network effects. They are able to rate a slightly worse meal just slightly worse. They know about some tricks, like too much fat and too much salt that can make a non-specialist always prefer McDonalds to Kathleen Daelemans.

This same tool, expert opinion, could be used in the MMORPG industry. Trust bloggers who seem to have the same taste you have (but still read the others!), trust independant game magazines (are there any?). Trust good arguments and your experience. And have a look at the sales figures if you want to. Just don’t think that they are a good indicator of product quality.

Ghostcrawler is Great

Random Player:
The Devs may be correct, in theory, that we don't need to squeeze every last drop of DPS out of our talent trees to down bosses. But in practice, you try to get in a raid with a tree that sacraficed 1% DPS for some fun utility, and you don't get an invite. Why would the raid leader take someone that didn't even spec the "right way"?

Ghostcrawler:
Posts like this make me very sad. You're portraying yourself to be at the mercy of uninformed yet tyrannical raid leaders who are quick to judge your performance based on perceived "tells." I know you need some basis to evaluate potential recruits or even pug members. But I do wish there was some way to turn around this virtual phobia of inefficiency -- this terror of being WRONG -- that we have managed to instill in our player base. I honestly think it's one of the greatest challenges facing the game.

Just realised that Larissa also found this part of the forums.

For years now I say exactly this:
The community is never responsible/guilty. It is always the developers. Ghostcrawler knows this, but that is not much of a surprise. The guys at Blizzard might not be the most dedicated virtual world/immersion guys, but otherwise they are the best of the best (payed) english-speaking MMO developers ;)

Players are predictable. They respond to the game they play. Often with considerable delay and in looping patterns that not always result in an equilibrium. That is the problem.
For example, awful DF-PUGs are an indirect result of the DF mechanic. The guilt is with the developers and Blizzard makes a stand here and accepts the responsibility.
Applaudable.

So, what needs to be done by the developers? Now, they could disable the armory, disable talent specc lookups, disable recount and things like this.
Since that is probably out of the question, they should change encounters.

Encounters should require DDs to specc into suvivability a lot. Raid leaders should not only look at "damage done", but also at "damage received". Next, they need to stop adding artificial enrage timers and add soft enrage timers that come naturally when healers run out of mana. Cataclysm seems to take some steps into this direction. I also wrote about it much more extensively before. Encounters need to be more diverse, but not too diverse that you feel pressured to respecc before every fight.

Blizzard has made players so powerful during WotLK (and late TBC) that they now have problems catching the ghosts the called. People now exspect to have dual-specc, cheap respeccs, teleports, the armory, no RNG loot, inspects, ...

As I wrote before: Rules exist to constrain players. It is their very nature. Good games have strict rules.

Actually, this is the most interesting aspect of game design. There is an endless feedback loop of player reaction to the game and game reaction to the players. Some of these feedback loops are stable, some osciallate, some are unstable or even chaotic. In this property game design and social sciences are very similar. I guess this is the reason why I love (MMO)game design almost as much as social sciences, like economics.

Dungeon Finder and Raiders

This is going to be very short about the Dungeon Finder.

Usually raiders these days like how fast they can gear up and get to the 'meat of the game'. Which, for them, is raiding about every other night.

Now, after reading a rant from a returning raider, Blacksen got doubts about the Dungeon Finder and since it is very well written, I link it for you.

The World of Warcraft Community: Just One in the Crowd

A Discussion with Tobold

Related to Tobold's post on nostalgia yesterday, I emailed him and we started a discussion. The discussion was in German, so it would be useless for this blog. I translated it into English as well as I could. In yellow you can read my emails. Tobold's are cyan. I let out a few personal parts

Hi Tobold

Out of interest:

Do you really think that nowadays games are better than older games in every single detail and that all discontent is explained by nostalgia alone? I wrote a post last Friday, arguing that there is a selection process at work. Do you think that is completely wrong?

The entire blogosphere is full of nostalgia posts at the moment. It seems very noncredible to me that nostalgia is the whole truth. Nobody denies that nostalgia plays a role.

Thought experiment: You put WoW from 2010 into a time machine and transport it back into the year 2000. Which game would all these bitter veterans have played, EQ or WoW? I think WoW, and I think that also applies to the people who claim that EQ was better.

You are right in that this is not the whole truth. But the rest of the truth is unflattering. A lot of what veterans miss is that they have been a small elite and nowadays everybody plays. I can understand that well, but it is not especially nice to refuse to give the other kids a place in the sandpit. Nor is it nice to not respond to the wishes of a broader public. In my opinion, a lot of what Wolfshead writes is very insulting. For example the idea that games nowadays are more stupid and address more stupid players.

Mmh ... As you know there are differences between you and me when it comes to ‘world vs. gameplay’. An age-old debate. We could discuss in length what is more important, but we can certainly agree that you consider gameplay more important and I consider the ‘world’ more important.

Would you agree that WoW moved in the direction of gameplay in the last 10 years? Probably – a few weeks ago you made a post saying that you are glad about it. :)

Would you agree then that this fact, combined with the fact that I am less glad about it, also is responsible for the fact that I consider WotLK (in parts!!) less enjoyable than Vanilla WoW?

Would you agree that this is “part of the truth”?

If you are talking about WoW only, I agree that there is more gameplay, but not less world (unless you insist that a world you are not forced to walk in is not there). I just don’t like the generalizations, like “all games of today are dumb”. There are a lot of games with a lot of world and not a lot of gameplay.

And Cataclysm will make WoW a bit more difficult. So, even in the case of WoW one cannot say that it becomes dumped down more and more. The pendulum of balance is swinging.

Before I rejoice about the first compromise in a year: So you agree?

Yes.

*rejoicing* :)

And you say that *I* consider discussion PvP? I have never rejoiced like that about the fact that somebody tells me that I have been right.

I do not rejoice about ‘winning’, but about having found a common ground.
All you just agreed to was that nostalgia is not 100% responsible (perhaps just 99% responsible).

99% is not my opinion. My opinion is that nostalgia is about 20% responsible. But we just made a first step! The next one would be much more difficult.

We agree that nostalgia is not 100% responsible. Is it not nice to have a discussion go like this: Trying to find where we agree and then step-by-step addressing what we do not agree on?

In comments I haven’t made it so far often, if ever.

I never said 99%. My guess is a bit more than 50%, let’s say 60%. And nostalgia does not describe the phenomena completely. “Burn-out”, for example, is also part of it. “Strange, somehow these games are not fun anymore after 10,000 hours. Probably the damn patches are responsible”.

Mmh.. Neither your blog post, nor your first email today seem to be consistent with this. It appeared to me that you considered 100% to be correct. (Go read my email and your first answer again, if you want).

In this case all our emails have been for nothing. However, now there is even more reason to be happy: We even agree that there are a lot of reasons for people to consider WotLK (in parts!!) worse than Vanilla. This is in addition to nostalgia (at least 40%).

In this case you should perhaps tell Oscar, Bhagpuss, Askander, Tallyn and Syl. Judging from their comments they also thought that you were talking about 100%.

In my first Email today I wrote:
“Do you really think that nowadays games are better than older games in every single detail and that all discontent is explained by nostalgia alone?”

Why have you not answered: “No, in my opinion nostalgia is only responsible for about 60%”?

Well, in my opinion

You: Argument 1
Me : Argument 2
You: Argument 3
Me : Argument 4

Is a lot better than
You: Argument 1
Me: You are so right, holy Nils.
You: I love you, too.

Just because I answer with some argument that does not mean that I do not agree with anything you said. And if you have a look at your comments at my blog, I cannot remember you partly agreeing with me. Either you had a completely different opinion (rarely, and with some bite to it), or you attack full force, although I certainly had said something reasonable in a long blog post.

On the contrary, if I write something that is 99% correct, I get endless hate-comments about the 1%, just like some time ago by Darren.

You criticize that I try to lead the discussion and .. yes, you are right.

You are welcome to send a question to me tomorrow and we will discuss that question and that question alone. Considering your emails today, if I had responded to all I disagreed with, we had been jumping around like bouncing balls, always past each other. Just like in the comments: The one guy says 1+1 =2 and the other guy does not say “You are right”, but criticizes the space in front of the =.

A discussion, to achieve some kind of result, requires a precise question to be tackled. If there is no moderator, the participants themselves need to concentrate on the precise question at hand.

Of course, I could have responded to burn-out and vanilla raider epeen. But that have just been distractions, have they not?

My offer is serious: You are welcome to lead a discussion with me and I will try to not distract, but come up with a true answer to your question. And if you can detect some inconsistency on my part you have ‘won’. And so have I!

Well, you cannot expect rhetoric on the level of Aristoteles or Cato on the internet. If Wolfshead writes that WoW and Farmville are the same, I will NOT say: “I agree in so far as I also welcome Cataclysm becoming more difficult again”. That is not the core statement of his post. If some discussion on the internet concentrates on a core statement it is already one of the better discussions.

The kind of discussion you would like to have, were only possible if the starting point were moderate. If Wolfshead just writes a hate post and claims things that are not true, there will never be a moderate discussion. On all objective scales of complexity, World of Warcraft is far away from Farmville, with thousands of players in between. If WoW were as simple, we would not have gigabytes of databases and thousands of addons. That these databases and addons make the game more simple is true, but it is not the responsibility of Blizzard, but the responsibility of the players. And if millions of players work hard to make a game more simple, it cannot have been that simple to begin with.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia. This word is really popular in current MMO debates. That has two reasons:

1) There are a lot of influential players who think that WoW: WotLK was a relative failure and there were much less such players at the end of Vanilla WoW or The Burning Crusade.
2) A lot of players think of themselves as especially insightful when argueing that the only reason for (1) is nostalgia.

Now, as you can see by the way I wrote (2), I am not a fan of this point of view.

It is not that I think that there is no nostalgia involved. Nostalgia plays a role. Nobody sane could deny it. But nostalgia is not everything. Nobody sane should deny that, either.

Let's stay with WoW: It has changed. Not just a little, but a lot. There was a time without raids, without battlegrounds, with regular open PvP, with totally unbalanced classes, superfluous damage dealers in groups, forced healing speccs in raids, only one tank specc, few flying routes, almost no teleports, strange bugs, severe stability problems, extremely expensive normal mounts, unreachable epic mounts, almost no epics, only two legendaries, farming raid groups, long distances to travel to get to anywhere, no flying mounts, only one viable weapon enchant, bad graphics, no shadows, many elites in the open world, too much auto attack, terrible UI, not enough addons, strong advantages for Alliance when raiding, ...

I tried to list good and bad things and you might see that the bad things probably outnumber the good things - no matter your preferences. So was early WoW better than current WoW? That is a really tough question .. and a totally unimportant one!

What is important is that the vision behind early WoW was something I like much more than the vision behind current WoW. But since early WoW also had a lot of execution problems, it is hard to say that it itself was better.

Early WoW tried to create a seamless (no loading screens!) virtual world. A world with a lot of quests and some sandbox elements, like open PvP. WoW never tried to beat Eve Online at being a sandbox, but it tried to resemble a virtual world.

Current WoW does not have the vision of a virtual world. .. If you do not agree, I can weaken that statement to: Current WoW has a lesser focus on the virtual world aspect than early WoW had.
Two examples: The rewards in dungeons suddenly change during patches without any immersive explanation. Some NPCs seem to have all the equip you need to defeat the Lich King: Why don't they just give it to you ? You can suddenly teleport to automatically assembled groups of strangers from other servers and do a random dungeon with them. After that you automatically get teleported back to were you were. Not even by some NPC, but just by the game mechanics.

The vision has changed and with it changed the game. The fact that some players nowadays often feel like early WoW was better, is not just nostalgia. It is also due to the fact that people who had liked WotLK in 2005 did not end up playing Vanilla! There was a selection process at work! Those who did not have the time to play Vanilla stopped playing Vanilla! They are not around to tell you that they like WotLK more!
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that those who mourn after early WoW, in fact, are not nostalgic, but actually are only present, because they liked early WoW.

If there is one thing I learnt from participating in the MMORPG blogosphere, it is that people, indeed, prefer different games. As incredible as I think it is: Some people indeed like to be teleported around the world. They do not consider it an immersion problem. They like AoEing in dungeons, hate crowd control and do not want leveling to be hard at all!

In the last 5 years, the market did not just grow. It grew by attracting players with different attitudes, different gaming mentalities. If you want to play WoW the way you play a console game, you will like WotLK more than Vanilla. Regardless of when you started to play WoW. But it is more likely you started during WotLK as you would not have liked Vanilla.

Up to now the companies still try to make games for all players. But in the future there will have to be market segmentation and product differentiation. A polished Eve Online-like fantasy MMORPG will attract players. But these players will not want to play together with other players who consider a teleporting dungeon-finder a necessity. And vice versa!

MMORPGs cannot cater to everybody anymore. The market became too big, too diverse. At some point the developers need to make a stand and try to convince the players that their vision of a game is actually fun. That does not mean, however, that game developers cannot pool ressources. In fact, they should!