My seeecret sources told me that the patch for World of Warcraft could arrive as early as the next week.
I’m waiting with some hope. And the fear that they’ll break the game a bit more. From June the progression hasn’t been good at all.
Tag Archives: WoW
World of Warcraft
WoW PvP plans
The lead designer of World of Warcraft posted an hint on the boards about the upcoming reward system for PvP to be added in the game:
Once we get the pvp reward/punishment system in, we will tone back the guard reinforcements in most areas.
My comment:
Ha! Finally hints about their plans.
This is quite obvious, I’d guess. I believe that this reward/punishment system will depend on the level range. So that ganking low level players will result in a punishment of some sort (like an exp hit) while killing one closer to your level will result in some sort of reward.
Still I fear that Blizzard won’t come up with a system really interesting and fun to play. I don’t believe that they’ll put many resource to develop this part enough since the main focus is about PvE content.
Eno, why noone talks about PvP *purpose* ?
I think this should be the main topic and a possible reward/punishment system should be just a part of a bigger plan where actions have some sort of meaning…
Saving comments about WoW
Saving parts of comments about WoW before they get deleted.
—
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)
—
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.
—
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
—
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.
—
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.
—
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.’
The Preacher
Writing on the beta boards:
My 2 cents:
Some of the players here point to the elite classes as the “possible endgame”. Instead I fear them, because they can possibly disrupt the game for everyone. I really hope that Jedis in SWG have taught how these ideas for “elite players” can damage the game beyond repair.
We cannot comment this because right now we don’t know how they’ll be implemented (even if I fear the apotheosis of grind). The point is that:
– Or they are worthless paths enstricted with rules so they’ll be mantained as “rare”. Like it’s happening in SWG.
– Or they’ll be simply an extension of the treadmill.
The first case is a danger. The second is pointless.
Why pointless? Because we already have a ladder to climb, this ladder has already its issues with balance, boringness and grind. Some of the players complain about the fact that WoW feels like a single-player game. We need an opening to really create a mmorpg, with the players involved together and playing in a world. With an interaction. Something solid and not something “faked” on the lore-level. Where interesting fiction is turned into obvious and stale gameplay.
What I mean is that the game has already its ladder. Blizzard shouldn’t plan the endgame by building and offering another one.
We climb a ladder, we finally reach the top, we look around expectantly and we see… another ladder.
If I was working at Blizzard I’d try to work and evolve the game into a different, positive direction. Where the world and the players start to work together. To realize the potential that is specific to this genre and makes the expereince more involving than a tweak to a single-player game.
Kaadath reached 30
Dinged level 30 today, with my Dwarf warrior named Kaadath, on the PvP server.
The menace of the opposite faction will become more tangible now that I’m forced to move on the contested zones, till now all went smooth as on the standard beta server.
WoW mini review
Awesome, but simplistic, review for World of Warcraft from El Gallo:
WoW is not revolutionary and not intended to be so. It is EQ 1.5. Slightly dumbed-down, technologically updated, much more user-friendly, low downtime, soloable, and more directly involves your character in the game’s story/lore. I have been enjoying it a lot, but then again I enjoyed EQ for a long time, I just wished that it wasn’t so punitive, had less downtime, a little more story involvement, and was more soloable. WoW fits that bill, and does so with a well-done world that matches EQ’s level of atmosphere and detail. WoW is, imo, the only “EQ clone” that is better than EQ. All the others are “EQ done worse”.
If you are one of the people who rage against core EQ style gameplay, WoW is not for you. If you spend evenings furiously masturbating over UOs dread lord days, WoW is not for you. If you want “EQ done better” then WoW might work for you.
Death System: Two ideas for WoW
Two design ideas I posted on the official forum:
These are two simple ideas to make the death system more interesting and more relevant without going against the fun or making the game more frustrating.
PvE – The idea here is to incentivate the survival without penalize for a death. My idea is about implementing a bonus. While you gain experience this bonus goes slowly up, till a cap of 10% or 20%. It means that you can gain and mantain a bonus of 10% to all the experience you gain. The problem is that if you die the bonus goes to zero. The purpose is to reward a player that survives with a small bonus, compared to an imprudent player that keeps dying. The bonus won’t make a big difference so it won’t frustrate a player if a death happen. At the same time it offers a good incentive to not just die mindlessly.
PvP – A corpse run in PvP can be boring and frustrating. The death system could push a player to not “dare” in PvP because you could happen in a place too hard to reach without keeping dying again and again. This is basically unfun. My solution is simply to allow to respawn at the cemetery without taking the experience penalty ONLY if you died in PvP. At the same time this system will incentivate the PvP when (if?) killing enemies will produce experience points.
[Stress Test] More comments
More general comments from me:
I agree with Ben Sones comments. WoW is an excellent game even if with a narrow ambition.
What I criticized and still is felt as a major issue is about the massive aspect. WoW is mostly a single player/cooperative game that gives you a lot of immersion within the world only thanks to a wonderful work with the landscape. But it does very little, then, to offer gameplay that is “something else” than just whack-a-monster. The interaction with the environment is close to zero.
This is why I hope (with zero faith) that Blizzard will pour some ambition, in particular after release, into the “endgame”. For example implementing a good PvP system. Because even if I love the treadmill I still consider it just a treadmill and I absolutely need a reason and a purpose to go on. I want the war to become real and I want something to fight for that is different from reaching the next level, getting better loot and gaining a new skill.
What I fear, and I’m writing about this everywhere, is that WoW will die at this point. They probably won’t expand it. Instead they’ll probably choose a “flat” development where they’ll add more quests, loot, zones, monsters and then rise the level cap to excuse this process. All this is “flat development” because the old content will be simply cannibalized by “new shinies” and the actual depth of the gameplay will never develop. Exactly what “kills” the whole potential of the genre.
Instead I agree with the crafting system. Also for me this is the first time I’m playing with it and simply because they fixed the obvious.
Other (stupid) games like DAoC “had” to limit the possibility to achieve everything and to do so they simply choosed the stupidest, easiest solution possible: turn everything into a timesink that only a few players will endure.
This happened with the whole crafting system that is just a time/money sink with ZERO gameplay to offer and with the artifacts that, again, just require timesinks. Everything in the game is designed only from this perspective. Recently they tried to fix the “death rush” in the PvP and they simply added a second res sickness that creates another timesink. They tried to fix the population unbalance and, again, added insane timesinks in the keep upgrades. And the whole “free level each week” is exactly another solution “time based” where they basically say:
“Sorry, we are unable to make your game fun, so we give you free levels”
They move between “we need to slow you down so we add a timesink” and its obvious consequence “the game is too slow, so we cut down the time”. Schizophrenic in the incapacity to offer a game.
WoW, instead, only has parts of the games where it can offer you gameplay. The crafting *is* gameplay, it isn’t a loss of time. Instead of creating a hole for the incompetence of the design they, at least, tried to fill the hole with a gameplay that becomes fun.
As I said my expectations for the genre are set *extremely low*. This is why I love the game even with its narrow ambition and gameplay. But considering the stupid mistakes that are part of the genre, WoW is “teaching” really obvious but crucial lessons.
Should I remember that SWG launched being broken *in every single part* and, after a year, is still broken from the ground up?
WoW isn’t even on the market and can please or not. But it works and delivers exactly what it promised. Peoples are talking and commenting the game instead of ranting about lag, server and client crashes and broken systems.
The stress test is definitely a big success from this perspective.
[Stress Test] A collection of complaints
I’ve posted this on the Beta forums. I wonder why I bothered:
I’m following various boards that are frequented by jaded mmorpg veterans and even boards where I can discuss with players less experienced.
Till now the Stress Test is a success. The server was supposed to explode, instead everything seems quite smooth and, so far, beyond the level of many games at release. This made the players complain about smaller issues, like the customization of the characters, the interface, the camping of spawn points and so on.
I tried to gather a list of the complaints to examine them and see what could be the possible solutions.
– Problem: Players complain about the lack of customization, in particular after we all got spoiled by games like SWG, CoH and even EQ2. WoW feels like a 1st generation mmorpg where everyone looks the same and where you are forced to choose one of the few combinations that the devs prepared.
– Solution: The discussion got deeper and I think we started to agree that the customization doesn’t mean that much when just after a few levels your body will be completely covered by the armor. So we concluded that the possibility to customize and look differently with the use of equipment is way more important for this game. The fact that all the players will directly min/max the equipment will mean that if an objects is powerful everyone will use it. So the solution is about working on the “aspect” of the equipment even more that its power. Having the same stats on something, but a different aspect, could help to offer a graphical customization without having to loose “power”. On the other side Blizzard could work to, at least, add the height for a model. DAoC has three choices: small, medium, tall. I think the same system can be implemented in WoW without ruining the racial differences. It was stated before that there could be problems with animations but what I ask is a simple “rescale” of the model. So you rescale everything, animations and equipment included. It shouldn’t be hard to implement and won’t affect the performance. On the other level we’ll have a possibility of customization that will matter above the equipment.
– Problem: Crowded newbie zones. Considering that the servers held the stress, this became the biggest problem. As too many players join the game, various bottlenecks are created, ruining the experience for everyone.
– Solution: I don’t think that making the newbie zone large will help. We must remember that this is a situation that will only last a few days and a mmorpg, instead, has a value on the long distance, along the years. Blizzard could as well completely ignore this issue and let the players suffer this problem for the first days. But at the same time we all know that it’s *crucial* the impression you get of the game right at the start. So. My opinion is that nothing should be done aside working perhaps on the respawn rules. A good idea should be about tweaking them by looking constantly at the number of player in the zone. Another good idea could be about adding a “cool off” effect to a spawning mob, so that it won’t aggro a player before 15-20 seconds have passed (like spawning the mob in a shaded form and make it 100% solid after the cool off timer is over). This will avoid the problem of mobs popping over players but it’s also a cheap trick that may broken even more the suspension of disbelief. Another, even better, solution could be to instance the newbie zones. This could happen in the very few occasions when the place gets *too* crowded. So you put an “emergency” limit to these newbie zones and create another instance when things go beyond that limit. In this way we erase overcrowding during the first days without messing and triggering other problems (like making newbie zones too dispersive when the number of players will decrease).
Dealing with instances is dangerous, though. The problem is deeper and I’ve wrote about this back in May:
http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/view/162
– Problem: Players complain about default options and general interface issues. For example it’s *not acceptable* that an user must edit a config file to play in windowed mode or to set the Hertz of the monitor. Other questionable choices are about not showing NPCs names by default and the drag and drop occurring to equip an object (peoples complain about the inventory being separated from the character sheet).
– Solution: If the game is going to be released soon it’s time to focus even on the polish. You need to figure out what’s the best for the default options. EQ players complain that the inventory doesn’t come up if you press “i”. This isn’t a big issue but you need to go throughout all the options and define what’s better for a default mode that is easy to manage for a new user. In particular NPC names MUST be on by default. It’s important that everything you need should be enabled so that the user, with the experience, can choose something else. Not acceptable is when you cannot access the options from the interface. This needs to go *completely*. We must be allowed to choose the windowed mode, the refresh of the monitor and other more “hard-core” issues by the options menu. Perhaps in an “advanced” tab. But noone should be forced to mess with a config file. It’s actually ridiculous that you just put up a page for the screenshots explaining to the players how they can use the console to type a command and remove the “onscreen names” (I’m referring to the screenshot page). These options MUST be in the game and keymapped. About the issue of “drag and drop” equipment: clicking to equip isn’t possible because of the “risk” to sell stuff while fiddling with a vendor. My suggest solution is to create a “drop area” near where the bags are so that we drag and drop there, and not throughout the screen. This worked back in Beta 2 when it was possible to drag an item to an empty bag slot to equip it. Another important feature that vanished without a reason.
– Problem: Players love the “discovery exp” when you discover a new place on the map.
– Solution: Well, this isn’t a problem. but we know that it’s a broken system later on, because the experience you gain remains ridiculous. So I suggest Blizzard to look into this. Players love this feature so you need to make it a bit more valuable. Balancing the experience so that it will still matter even at high levels.
– Problem: The Rest System is incomprehensible.
– Solution: This is an issue. You cannot expect players to read complex patch notes to figure out a mechanic. If the Rest System is supposed to remain in the game it must be polished so that the players will understand how it works easily. They should be able to check how much they have rested and the exact effect that the rest will have in “x” hours. This should become easy to understand with the use of the interface. Right now I don’t know if the system is bugged or not but it’s absolutely impossible to understand its behaviour.
– Problem: The game needs a more social environment. Players complain about the lack of depth aside mob-bashing.
– Solution: This is a complex issue that I’ll partially dodge here. My solution is about giving more depth to the cities without forcing downtimes into the players. We need fun and interesting activities to pass time in a city. A lot, a lot of potential lies here. So please step down from EverQuest’s model for a moment and start to develop something that will offer this. Different activities not directly involved with achieving more power (treadmills). Different development paths, different aims. I’m not asking for a completely new game but just for something that will give the game some depth aside the treadmill. I have too many ideas about this. Just use some creativity and detach on this aspect the game from the mmorpg model.
—
Now I want to add a few words on the “general impression”. The impression of the players varies a lot. There are some who love the game but I think that in general everyone is pleased but absolutely not surprised or particularly excited. Many have already branded the game as EQ 1.5. A lot is about the expectations. My personal expectations are set *extremely low* after years of experience in the genre and in fact I love WoW. I love the setting and I love how it plays. But one thing is sure: this is far from being a “dream mmorpg”. It feels like a single player game and, as you see, as we introduce the “massive” aspect everyone starts to fight because there’s competition for a spawn point.
After a bit all this feels faked, pointless and boring. WoW is really, really polished but not different from a single player game with basically no purpose and depth that tries hard to roleplay as a “mmorpg”. Because this is what I criticize in the game from months: a single player/cooperative game roleplaing as a mmorpg.
What this Stress Test teaches is about the genre as a whole. This time we are not at Star Wars Galaxies launch, dealing with server and client crashing and broken design and bugs everywhere. This game isn’t about broken promises. WoW delivers what it is expected to deliver:
Yes, it’s a polished EQ type game. That is the aim, that is what they are delivering.
Or as someone else defines it: “It’s a nifty world as a background for a specific narrow type of gameplay”.
So peoples are pleased and at the same time already bored because things have improved without really changing. Something that is shared with other games. For example this is what Loral wrotes on Mobhunter, one of the most places discussing EverQuest:
Omens of War brings us over a dozen new zones, half of them instanced. It expands the physical worlds of Norrath even further. I wonder if SOE might best spend their time working on new expansions that take Everquest into directions other than new zones to explore. Everquest is certainly wide, it is the largest physical game I’ve ever played, but it isn’t very deep. The vast majority of content builds around combat against bosses. The numbers increase but the gameplay is generally the same. New lines of progression need to be developed.
I really think that it’s still possible to push on the experimentation without loosing the touch with the mass market. Actually I think that this genre still isn’t mass market BECAUSE there’s little to no improvement.
One of the directions that WoW should explore is about creating systems and dynamics. In particular when it comes to PvP. Systems make the game lively, with a purpose. This without throwing continuously at the players “more of the same”. Rising the level cap to excuse the process.
I think that veteran players are bored of this but I’m also sure that new players are full of dreams that will shatter when they’ll touch what this genre really delivers:
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/swgteamcomment.html sorry Raph ;)
I keep hearing that Blizzard is working on a PvP reward and I really fear this because noone talks about a PvP “purpose”. A reward without a purpose is “yet another treadmill” and this is depressing.
A lot should be done to polish and work out the problems that will become manifest with the time. In particular the combat can result fast and fun in the initial levels but after a bit it also becomes completely chaotic and messy. This is due to many technical problems like a lack of integrity. Mobs warp everywhere, have strange pathing issues, lack of a Line of Sight. The animation system is broken with stuck and out-of-synch animations. And the spells behave strangely when offscreen, appearing in wrong locations. The last straw was about adding Hunters and enormous pets that in a dungeon take the whole screen making nearly impossible to play.
What will happen when we are supposed to fight in large raids both in PvE and PvP? The game will become a random mess of colored polygons? Things must be looked at. The animations and spell effects must be polished and synchronized. The mobs should move around in a realistic way and should stop “cheating”. Hunters’ pets must be rescaled.
And along this work about basic issues, the design should be developed to give some depth to the game. To stop adding treadmills and attach to the game a real purpose. Without it the PvP will continue to be a grief fest. Because griefing is still the only “impact” possible you have on the world.
I also suggested some time ago a complete system to make the PvP fun and interesting:
http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/view/135
What is important is that a different path must be choosed and developed to give the game a future and some ambition *after* release. Both for new players and mmorpg veterans.