Saving parts of comments about WoW before they get deleted.
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Considering the crawling speed of the development and all the missing features that are still planned I think we’ll have two major patch before open beta.
Then another patch right on release day.
This is my “work in progress” list of missing features. I’m planning to build a more complex list with major issues, bugs and features. And to update it regurlarly (both before and after release).
For now:
|Partially done| Better water implementation
– Weather system (rain, snow, mist..)
|Partially Done| Zeppelins and boats
– Flight/levitation (planned at least for the ghost mode)
– Instanced Battlegrounds for PvP
– Frontier zones (unconfirmed)
– PvP rewards (treadmill)
– PvP purposes (goals)
|Done| Reputation system
– Updated netcode (smoothing movement updates)
– Decent “Line of Sight” for spells (PvE)
– Update to the ranged combat (was planned for the last patch but isn’t there)
– Hero classes (in doubt)
– Better maps with custom bookmarks
– Better LFG system
– Racial abilities
– Last Names
– Linked groups instances
– Legendary and Artifacts items
– Performance boost when many players are onscreen at the same time (announced by Sturbo)
Other design issues:
– The “collect” quest must be redesigned to be group friendly and not create bottlenecks
– Auctions houses must be reworked to be more usable and popular (FFXI is a good example)
– Cities are deserted and must have a role into the game
– Overcrowding issues during stress periods (like at launch)
– Respawn times must be tweaked
– Usability tweaks to the UI with access to more technical options
– More customization for characters during char creation (ex. heights)
A few general bugs:
– Many monsters are stuck in the game and always “evade”
– No “Line of Sight” for monsters and a bad one for players
– Hunter’s pets too big, in particular when you play inside dungeons
– Many “shiny” surfaces have flickering textures (Morlocks, crabs and mechanical things for example, like those in Gnomeragan)
– Lack of synchronization in the combat between animations, sounds and splash damage
– Bugs in the animation system producing “stuck animations”
– Bugs in the spell system when a spell is casted offscreen (effects and sounds happening in wrong locations)
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This is about communication. Quoting:
All the threads I see with “CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISISM” have been ignored – by both blizzard and the beta testers.
Exactly.
Blizzard doesn’t need and doesn’t care about constructive discussions. And this observation comes from someone (me) that spends a lot of time writing long and delving articles. The best I can.
But what I do is surely not rewarded, not incentivated and, I’m sure, not considered at all. I’m sure they look perplexedly at me wondering why I’m doing that.
So. Whining works because if the whining is loud and well-spreaded you can actually have Blizzard looking into it. It’s a way to receive a general feedback that, instead of delving on the issues, allows someone to have a quick look on “general perceptions”. Interesting and intelligent posts, instead, require a lot of time and attention to who tries to write them and, then, they finish forgotten in twenty seconds.
If I write a thread with the title: “This game sucks, the death penalty is ridiculous” I’ll receive ten times more posts if the title is: “Death penalties, few ideas to improve the game”.
This is a fact. In this forum trolls and flamers are rewarded and are often, paradoxically, an useful tool to let an idea spread.
Rule: The louder the better
Again: Blizzard doesn’t need and doesn’t promote constructive criticism. Send your /suggest and your /bug and that’s enough. The best you can do, even if it will again mostly ignored due to the load and spam.
The purpose of the boards is exactly to whine and say stupid things. That’s what Blizzard wants and what they get.
What I write here is obviously a provocation. In the worst case it will get ignored, in the best case it will push Blizzard to consider this and, perhaps, try to promote constructive discussion. Because the “quality” of this place depends solely on Blizzard and their community managers. Their behaviour determines the level of the boards.
What the boards offer now is exactly what they want.
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Oh, I forgot about the interface.
My suggestion is to integrate the rest bonus with the expereince bonus of my idea:
– If you are rested (200% bonus) your experience bar is red and you cannot gain the bonus I’ve described. You are “stuck” at 200% till it wears out.
– If you are “normal” (100% bonus) you can slowly build up the bonus till the max of 10-20%. The expereince bar will change color and will go from bright purple (bonus active) to dark purple (bonus at zero).
So:
– Red: 200% rest bonus
– Bright purple: 120% survival bonus
– Dark purple: 100% standard
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A pair of suggestions about the interface.
– A caption to the “arrow” of the exp bar pointing the rest bonus, so that new players understand what it stands for.
– A graphical element that shows the middle of the exp bar (static, just a way to see clearly the middle of the screen).
– A way inside the game to understand how the rest system works. It must explain the glowie effect on the portrait and the 8 hour mechainic. I still haven’t figured out the details, maybe later.
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Another frequent complaint I hear from stress testers has been discussed many times during the beta and it’s still a big issue that shouldn’t be ignored:
– Problem: There are dreaded “collect quests” that are no fun to do (due to the incostant behaviour of drops) and disrupt the incentive to group with other players because, if you do, your chance to get the rare stack of loot will drop exponentially and you’ll hit the other big problem: not enough mobs to gather all the drops you need to complete the quest. A major issue that becomes critic when there are many players around doing the same quest and chasing the same drops.
– Solution: This goes directly against a basic issue that is being discussed in various boards and is also a basic mechanic shared between various mmorpgs. The “rule” is: a mmorpg should reward and incentivate the players to group and play together. The more the better. But still trying to make the solo experience viable, because noone wants to log and sit down for an hour to find a party. “Collect quests” are broken because they go against this concept without any good reason. Grouping with other peoples is good for “kill” quests. Because the goal is shared and so you benefit from having other players with you. Instead the drops (aside named drops) aren’t shared, this means that if you are in a group your “successful rate” will go down. This is stupid in a mmorpg, it’s a mechanic that goes *against* the social aspect, something that should be *always* rewarded even if not enforced. It’s a good thing to make solo a viable path but it’s wrong if you incentivate to play solo when it’s *possible* to form a group. This problem is also tied to overcrowding because you are creating a “competition” between the players. Since they aren’t able to cooperate, you are forcing them to go against each other and this is a CONSTANT for griefing, killstealing and other bad behaviours. This doesn’t help the game, nor the fun of the players. A very simple solution should be, at least, to let the quest-drops to be shared between the players in a group. This will reward once again grouping (so healing a broken mechanic) and will help the bottleneck that are formed when too many players are camping the same spot for the same quest.
MAKE THE PLAYERS COOPERATE IN *PvE*, NOT FIGHT AGAINST EACH OTHER.
I also suggest to make the respawn timers variable. Making them quicker if a monster-type is killed repeatedly.
Another good choice should be to add a bonus for the group directly on the experience to incentivate grouping. The experience drops too much when playing in a group and this, once again, isn’t a good mechanic.
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Other discussions are still about the depth of the game. Many are commenting that WoW offers a very narrow gameplay type. Which isn’t bad on itself. But there’s surely a need to “develop” it toward the strength of a mmorpg: the social aspect, the cooperation, the interaction with the world. Many agree when I say that WoW feels too much as a single player game. It isn’t bad because it will help newbies to slowly experience this fascinating genre. But then? It’s important that their entree is easy but, then, you also need to offer them something more. Something unique. Something that is *different* from a standard, singleplayer game.
Something that will “stand out” when games like “Guild Wars” will try to sell something else as a mmorpg.
And this is exactly what a mmorpg SHOULD offer. A community that cooperates to achieve a result, to modify or control the world and the systems ruling the world. More concretely: the players also need something that “excuses” this level-based treadmill. There’s the need of something important and different at the end and not just another, longer treadmill for powerful loot and elite professions. Or even an higher level cap.
The endgame should excuse the treadmill. To offer a purpose, to offer involvement. It shouldn’t be another checkpoint for an infinite treadmill that will become just boring and, above all, pointless.
So it’s here that the game should and needs to change. It’s where a more complex form of PvP can be deployed to give more power to the players and let them *change* the world, fight an epic war that isn’t just faked between various static quests or instanced battlegrounds with no real history.
It’s both where the players should cooperate and where the world should become dynamical. Where the mmorpg, as a genre, should show its strength.
If you fail to do so you’ll still have a beautiful game but players will keep asking themselves if it wasn’t better as a single player game:
Even though the systems for kills and quests in WoW work fairly well, it still makes me think the same thing all mmos make me think. ‘Man, this game would be sooo much better if there weren’t any other people.’