World of Warcraft, or how not to make a game
Part Two.
In the last post, I lamented the lack of depth and the oversimplified game mechanics in World of Warcraft, today's most successful (in terms of subscription numbers) MMORPG. To repeat one point, I loathe any game mechanic that intrudes into the game environment and therefore anything that directly contradicts the integrity and immersiveness of that environment.
World of Warcraft was built to be easily accessible for the casual player and the players who don't have six hours at a time to slog through the time-sink parts of online games. To that end, the first 50+ character levels and the quests/environment around them are exceedingly friendly to the player looking to kill an hour, to "play through a few quests", and such. But what happens at the "Endgame", when the character levels reach the high-point, the maximum level? The game suddenly becomes very unfriendly to those very players, as it becomes the same RAID/enforced-grouping game as WoW's predecessors (or, specifically, like EQ1, since other games have avoided the RAID=endgame trap). So we have a game that encourages so-called "casual" or solo play... right up to the endgame, when suddenly it is very UNFRIENDLY to those very same people. By its own construction, the game offers nothing to the very players who it targetted and sculpted the first 50+ levels for. Hence the huge numbers of people who play the game and leave at the same point for the same reason: the game gets excessively boring, and offers nothing to the very player-type it encourages for the first 90% of the game.
It gets boring not only for the split-personality design, but also because of the reasons mentioned in Part 1: the failure of Blizzard to support the game with regular content and game-changing updates, so as to keep the gameworld fresh and dyamic; the failure of Blizzard to release additional expansions in its first year, made worse by the fact that, so far at least, the only official word about expansions is that they're working on one and that it won't be out until "sometime in late 2006 or 2007".
It's ironic that the game company that was so brilliant in creating the gameworld for WoW (and building it in the Warcraft strategy games) and equally brilliant in creating Diablo2, a phenomenal-selling multiplayer game (with very little RPG in it)... is doing so poorly from a creative and supportive side with their game. Yes, they've got truckloads of money from their subscription base. Never said they didn't. My point is, by the standards I've listed here and in part 1, the game is a failure. That doesn't mean that they can't turn that around, but they've done nothing to indicate that they plan to do anything to "right these wrongs", so to speak.
To repeat the criteria: an immersive world where game mechanics do not intrude into the game world artificially, and where the environment encourages the players to explore, investigate, and work through mysteries and plotlines FOR THEMSELVES, without just handing all the clues to the players and requiring no real effort to "figure it out" for themselves. Creating dynamic content -- content that lets players actually impact and affect the game-world, as in Horizon's excellent crafting side (built entire structures, like bridges and housing, and demolish said structures and use these capacities WITHIN the questing/plotline content); or in Asheron's Call 1, where the live events in the past have, through player actions, changed the terrain, burned down villages, etc. Creating constant dynamic content -- the two keys being "constant" and "dynamic", so that the world is constantly changing (and therefore believable) and stays challenging... and isn't, therefore, always the same world, same quests, same everything, each and every time a player plays the game.
I've re-upped my subscription for one month at a time, twice, since leaving the game -- once in May, once in August. The game never changes -- play through as a new character, it's the same experience, same static quests, same static content over and over again. Play as my higher-level characters from the original few months -- and it's the same "run this instance" over and over again, RAID, yawn... There won't be another return to the game. Ten months of release, and the quests are the exact same, the NPCs are exactly the same, buildings and such are the same (and many unfinished or still "clones" of one another), quests are the same, repeat, repeat, repeat...
I played through EQ1 for literally YEARS and never got as bored as I did with WoW in the space of two months. Kept coming back after I finally let my subscription lapse, and it was still fun, still a great time exploring... because they had kept adding expansions and content all the time. Ditto for Asheron's Call 1 ...
But WoW, WoW is just the most unchanging, static, oversimplified game I've ever played. Like crafting? WoW offers crafting -- just oversimplified, to the "find resources, stand in right place, click combine" variety, with no chance to personalize what you make (which Horizons offered out-0f-the-box, which EQ1 and AC1 offered years ago, etc. etc.). Questing? Hope you like doing the same quests over and over again, regardless of what class you play -- the dialogue is stilted and short, it never changes, and it's only offered when there's a specific purpose to it. There's no dialogue that fills out the gameworld and makes it feel "real" - like talking to a fisherman about the weather, best places to fish, etc. And so forth. No quests that require you to think or figure out something -- it's all "go to this place, kill this, recover this item, come back". Games that came years before WoW were already doing dynamic scripting for quests -- but again, being dynamic wasn't WoW's point. Being as simplified, repetitive, and offering a chance to bash things, including other players, in a quick way was. And to that end, they got all the l33t-speaking, juvenile deliquents in the world to come and play their game.
Roleplayers of the world, rejoice. There are actual RPGs in the MMORPG world, like Asheron's Call, or even Dark Ages of Camelot, for you to play and enjoy -- WoW is simply NOT one of them.
In the last post, I lamented the lack of depth and the oversimplified game mechanics in World of Warcraft, today's most successful (in terms of subscription numbers) MMORPG. To repeat one point, I loathe any game mechanic that intrudes into the game environment and therefore anything that directly contradicts the integrity and immersiveness of that environment.
World of Warcraft was built to be easily accessible for the casual player and the players who don't have six hours at a time to slog through the time-sink parts of online games. To that end, the first 50+ character levels and the quests/environment around them are exceedingly friendly to the player looking to kill an hour, to "play through a few quests", and such. But what happens at the "Endgame", when the character levels reach the high-point, the maximum level? The game suddenly becomes very unfriendly to those very players, as it becomes the same RAID/enforced-grouping game as WoW's predecessors (or, specifically, like EQ1, since other games have avoided the RAID=endgame trap). So we have a game that encourages so-called "casual" or solo play... right up to the endgame, when suddenly it is very UNFRIENDLY to those very same people. By its own construction, the game offers nothing to the very players who it targetted and sculpted the first 50+ levels for. Hence the huge numbers of people who play the game and leave at the same point for the same reason: the game gets excessively boring, and offers nothing to the very player-type it encourages for the first 90% of the game.
It gets boring not only for the split-personality design, but also because of the reasons mentioned in Part 1: the failure of Blizzard to support the game with regular content and game-changing updates, so as to keep the gameworld fresh and dyamic; the failure of Blizzard to release additional expansions in its first year, made worse by the fact that, so far at least, the only official word about expansions is that they're working on one and that it won't be out until "sometime in late 2006 or 2007".
It's ironic that the game company that was so brilliant in creating the gameworld for WoW (and building it in the Warcraft strategy games) and equally brilliant in creating Diablo2, a phenomenal-selling multiplayer game (with very little RPG in it)... is doing so poorly from a creative and supportive side with their game. Yes, they've got truckloads of money from their subscription base. Never said they didn't. My point is, by the standards I've listed here and in part 1, the game is a failure. That doesn't mean that they can't turn that around, but they've done nothing to indicate that they plan to do anything to "right these wrongs", so to speak.
To repeat the criteria: an immersive world where game mechanics do not intrude into the game world artificially, and where the environment encourages the players to explore, investigate, and work through mysteries and plotlines FOR THEMSELVES, without just handing all the clues to the players and requiring no real effort to "figure it out" for themselves. Creating dynamic content -- content that lets players actually impact and affect the game-world, as in Horizon's excellent crafting side (built entire structures, like bridges and housing, and demolish said structures and use these capacities WITHIN the questing/plotline content); or in Asheron's Call 1, where the live events in the past have, through player actions, changed the terrain, burned down villages, etc. Creating constant dynamic content -- the two keys being "constant" and "dynamic", so that the world is constantly changing (and therefore believable) and stays challenging... and isn't, therefore, always the same world, same quests, same everything, each and every time a player plays the game.
I've re-upped my subscription for one month at a time, twice, since leaving the game -- once in May, once in August. The game never changes -- play through as a new character, it's the same experience, same static quests, same static content over and over again. Play as my higher-level characters from the original few months -- and it's the same "run this instance" over and over again, RAID, yawn... There won't be another return to the game. Ten months of release, and the quests are the exact same, the NPCs are exactly the same, buildings and such are the same (and many unfinished or still "clones" of one another), quests are the same, repeat, repeat, repeat...
I played through EQ1 for literally YEARS and never got as bored as I did with WoW in the space of two months. Kept coming back after I finally let my subscription lapse, and it was still fun, still a great time exploring... because they had kept adding expansions and content all the time. Ditto for Asheron's Call 1 ...
But WoW, WoW is just the most unchanging, static, oversimplified game I've ever played. Like crafting? WoW offers crafting -- just oversimplified, to the "find resources, stand in right place, click combine" variety, with no chance to personalize what you make (which Horizons offered out-0f-the-box, which EQ1 and AC1 offered years ago, etc. etc.). Questing? Hope you like doing the same quests over and over again, regardless of what class you play -- the dialogue is stilted and short, it never changes, and it's only offered when there's a specific purpose to it. There's no dialogue that fills out the gameworld and makes it feel "real" - like talking to a fisherman about the weather, best places to fish, etc. And so forth. No quests that require you to think or figure out something -- it's all "go to this place, kill this, recover this item, come back". Games that came years before WoW were already doing dynamic scripting for quests -- but again, being dynamic wasn't WoW's point. Being as simplified, repetitive, and offering a chance to bash things, including other players, in a quick way was. And to that end, they got all the l33t-speaking, juvenile deliquents in the world to come and play their game.
Roleplayers of the world, rejoice. There are actual RPGs in the MMORPG world, like Asheron's Call, or even Dark Ages of Camelot, for you to play and enjoy -- WoW is simply NOT one of them.
posted by Thurken | 7:03 PM
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