Guesting is something different. Basically, guesting is to go to another server and play there, like a free server transfer (excluding WvW, of course...), from what I've read you could practically play the whole game on another server if you wanted to. This is (from what I understand) staying in your server and creating a group with people on different servers.
BTW, do you have a source on the thing about needing to have a friend on that server as a requisite?... Completely out of curiosity, since it's the first time I heard of it.
"When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature. With guesting, your characters can play on any world where you have friends—with certain restrictions. For instance, you will not be able to participate in WvW while guesting."
"The feature does exactly what it says on the tin: When a zone is underpopulated, the players in that zone will be given the option to form a group with players from a select pool of realms (presumably the server's battlegroup) with whom they can run about and quest as usual."
Great idea! I wish all MMOs had this. *cough* SWTOR *cough* But noooo, Bioware with it's 100-300 million dollars wasn't able to plan something to work with the issue of unpopulation. Bah.
Chapeau to Blizzard.
Nothing to see here, just the same old Blizzard coppying everyone else's great ideas. I swear that company is as intellectually bankrupt as one can get.
And you are posting here on this thread for what reason, but to be the cool kid attacking Blizzard. Way to go champ.
Its what all MMORPG's should have - although a single server would be preferable.
But it does admit that server population is not healthy and not enough to self sustain? A work around rather than admit defeat by closing servers...
Rift will no doubt have this in a patch or 2.
It really does not admit that. All it says as they have been saying that the majority of WoW is 1-20 and 80+. Those inbetween get shafted as all games that are out for a long time. People in the middle feel alone. The numbers in WoW still put most games to shame and the servers look to be doing fine.
Its what all MMORPG's should have - although a single server would be preferable.
But it does admit that server population is not healthy and not enough to self sustain? A work around rather than admit defeat by closing servers...
Rift will no doubt have this in a patch or 2.
Doesn't necesarely mean server population is not healthy... but it can mean it's not healthy at lower levels, a problem all MMOs that have been out for a while have, specially if they're endgame centric like WoW or Rift.
Its what all MMORPG's should have - although a single server would be preferable.
But it does admit that server population is not healthy and not enough to self sustain? A work around rather than admit defeat by closing servers...
Rift will no doubt have this in a patch or 2.
It really does not admit that. All it says as they have been saying that the majority of WoW is 1-20 and 80+. Those inbetween get shafted as all games that are out for a long time. People in the middle feel alone. The numbers in WoW still put most games to shame and the servers look to be doing fine.
For those mid-levels in WoW I wanted to be alone however. All you're doing there is racing to 85, the last thing I wanted to see was someone else tagging my mobs, ninjaing my nodes, etc. In a competitive PvE world the idea falls a bit flat.
It would be better if players could flag themselves as soloers or lfg or sociable, and those that are lfg or social from the same server pool would join an instance of the zone together so that areas seem less empty. Simply forming a cross server group isn't the same as feeling like the server is alive.
My flagging system within a serverless instanced (not instanced per group or per individual player, but by those who share the same set of flags ie: interests), still seems like the best idea to me, and I usually tend to change my mind about things often, but not on this.
Having a set of 3 or 4 parameters players can check off like rp, pvp, and lfg would allow players to join with other players who share their interests across the entire game's population. Since it isn't group or individual based instancing, it would simply appear to be an open world shared with other players.
"The feature does exactly what it says on the tin: When a zone is underpopulated, the players in that zone will be given the option to form a group with players from a select pool of realms (presumably the server's battlegroup) with whom they can run about and quest as usual."
Great idea! I wish all MMOs had this. *cough* SWTOR *cough* But noooo, Bioware with it's 100-300 million dollars wasn't able to plan something to work with the issue of unpopulation. Bah.
Chapeau to Blizzard.
Blizzard has had 8 years to work on their game (not to mention many hundreds of millions of dollars) and they are just now implementing this. I don't think it is fair to trash SWTOR for not having it just a couple months after release...
Seriously man, that is not a fair comparison at all.
I don't really compare this with GW2 guesting. This new feature is seemless, if I go through a zone with a normally low population, there will be more people around. It isn't the same as saying, alright I wanna choose my friends server to play on today.
Many argue oh who cares, WoW is easy and blah blah blah, but thats not really the point, a lot of people once argued that WoW is so dead if you go through and try and level up, that its super boring. Well imagine now you go through and find a few players and decide hey lets go do a dungeon, instead of constantly queuing. This can lead to a lot of advancements for the genre, instead of hating on the person on top, think about how it can benefit everyone.
Welcome to the instancing of MMORPG genre. Thanks for nothing GW2. The days of connected zones and open worlds are now dead. This is just a sad way of merging servers without having to admit it.
Almost as bad as re-naming the dead servers "Test Servers." <cough, cough>
I don't really compare this with GW2 guesting. This new feature is seemless, if I go through a zone with a normally low population, there will be more people around. It isn't the same as saying, alright I wanna choose my friends server to play on today.
Many argue oh who cares, WoW is easy and blah blah blah, but thats not really the point, a lot of people once argued that WoW is so dead if you go through and try and level up, that its super boring. Well imagine now you go through and find a few players and decide hey lets go do a dungeon, instead of constantly queuing. This can lead to a lot of advancements for the genre, instead of hating on the person on top, think about how it can benefit everyone.
Compare that to GW2, where you actually want to see other players around (cooperative PvE) instead of dread those not in your party? This will do nothing to advance the genre, especially when compared to the better ways out there.
"The feature does exactly what it says on the tin: When a zone is underpopulated, the players in that zone will be given the option to form a group with players from a select pool of realms (presumably the server's battlegroup) with whom they can run about and quest as usual."
Great idea! I wish all MMOs had this. *cough* SWTOR *cough* But noooo, Bioware with it's 100-300 million dollars wasn't able to plan something to work with the issue of unpopulation. Bah.
Chapeau to Blizzard.
1. In WOW people do not quest thats why zones are empty.
2 You outscale group quests so quickly that you solo it in any case.
3. People will still power level to get to end game cycle, see 1 & 2.
This is not fixing any of the root problems with WOW, its another case of Blizzard missing the point or unwilling to invest to fundementally change their model to address these issues.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
"The feature does exactly what it says on the tin: When a zone is underpopulated, the players in that zone will be given the option to form a group with players from a select pool of realms (presumably the server's battlegroup) with whom they can run about and quest as usual."
Great idea! I wish all MMOs had this. *cough* SWTOR *cough* But noooo, Bioware with it's 100-300 million dollars wasn't able to plan something to work with the issue of unpopulation. Bah.
Chapeau to Blizzard.
1. In WOW people do not quest thats why zones are empty.
2 You outscale group quests so quickly that you solo it in any case.
3. People will still power level to get to end game cycle, see 1 & 2.
This is not fixing any of the root problems with WOW, its another case of Blizzard missing the point or unwilling to invest to fundementally change their model to address these issues.
You couldn't be more wrong. People quest all of the time, some people hate dungeons/pvp so they quest. You only outscale quests if you using heirlooms or RAF. Otherwise you'll be able to finish all of the quests in the zone you start in at the appropriate level.
As a WoW player, i'll be more likely to quest now that I won't be as alone in the world. I had to moved to less established servers get that worldly feel.
Powerleveling is a choice not a problem, it has always existed in every online game.
Simple fact zones are empty cities are not. Fact, blizzard streamlined and sped up the questing process. Would you go into TBC zones for example and find them alive with players? Finally Blizzard have announced this change - so they are tryint to address the issue (but not the root cause which is my point)
Ignoring ALTS and Daily grinds everybody hates, The levelling process before you get to end-game equates to perhaps a couple percent of your overall time. Powerlevelling exists and it is a burdon on mmorgs that is being addressed with upcomming titles - blizzard could have done the same if they truely wanted to address root causes.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
As for your whole global game design being broken, I haven't the fuzziest what you're on about.
Blizzard are applying this change to fix the issue of zones being empty, If the game design wasnt broken people would be playing in zones. Their fix however is not to make zones attractive to higher level players, their fix is to bring those people who do want to play in zones together (which is good for them) - its a dynamic amalgamation of server population. Wouldnt it be better if they somehow changed the game so all the zones remained attractive to players at max level - that would be a fix to the global game design.
1 concrete positive example, downscale player level to match zone and give reward that scales to the real level of the player. Thats 1 potential solution to the root cause of their issues. but there are many others.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
I just think Blizzard is doing what they can to keep an aging game going. Can't really blame them with a new game in the works. Haven't played WoW in a long time but it seems like a good enough idea for people still playing. I wonder when people have time to play games in between hating Blizzard.
I just think Blizzard is doing what they can to keep an aging game going. Can't really blame them with a new game in the works. Haven't played WoW in a long time but it seems like a good enough idea for people still playing. I wonder when people have time to play games in between hating Blizzard.
It is a positive change, its just a pitty they don't invest the bigger money to evolve the game, its certainly possible, look at eve. Having 'delighted customers' is a phrase corporations often bandy about all too easily, but it would be no bad thing if blizzard actually embraced such a concept with geniune intent - regardless of profit margin.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
"The feature does exactly what it says on the tin: When a zone is underpopulated, the players in that zone will be given the option to form a group with players from a select pool of realms (presumably the server's battlegroup) with whom they can run about and quest as usual."
Great idea! I wish all MMOs had this. *cough* SWTOR *cough* But noooo, Bioware with it's 100-300 million dollars wasn't able to plan something to work with the issue of unpopulation. Bah.
Chapeau to Blizzard.
I would not be surprised to discover that ts not that Bioware wasn't able to plan for something like this. Its that they were perhaps arrogant enough to think that they would not need to.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
This would make sense IF the game wasn't 7 years old. Downscaling is great when playing with friends, however it is rare that someone wants to go back to play old content with an established character aside from achievments or vanity purposes.
Show me a game that has a zone for every character of every level. Also giving players high end rewards for low level content is ridiculous regardless of the character scaling.
It works for GW2. They scale you down so you're the appropriate level for where you are (you can be too low however) and they scale the rewards to match your true level instead of scaled level. The big difference is that even though you'll get level appropriate drops at lower level zones, you get less of them so it's more "productive" to be at the proper level zone. But, it also allows for all content in the game to remain viable and meaningful. As they add events into lower level zones you won't have to re-roll new alts to experience them as you see fit. You also won't be able to go back to low level zones and one-shot everything, ruining other people's experiences.
Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
As for your whole global game design being broken, I haven't the fuzziest what you're on about.
Blizzard are applying this change to fix the issue of zones being empty, If the game design wasnt broken people would be playing in zones. Their fix however is not to make zones attractive to higher level players, their fix is to bring those people who do want to play in zones together (which is good for them) - its a dynamic amalgamation of server population. Wouldnt it be better if they somehow changed the game so all the zones remained attractive to players at max level - that would be a fix to the global game design.
1 concrete positive example, downscale player level to match zone and give reward that scales to the real level of the player. Thats 1 potential solution to the root cause of their issues. but there are many others.
This would make sense IF the game wasn't 7 years old. Downscaling is great when playing with friends, however it is rare that someone wants to go back to play old content with an established character aside from achievments or vanity purposes.
Show me a game that has a zone for every character of every level. Also giving players high end rewards for low level content is ridiculous regardless of the character scaling.
There are 2 mmorgs that are out there right now that do exactly that with a similar age, and 1+ incomming. I wont mention names because this thread is about WOW. Point is Blizzard have earned BILLIONS from us customer (think about this -BILLIONS) - ofc they have money to invest to do this. We are customers, we pay over a hundred pound a year for a game that gets expansions every 2 years or so - we have a right to want great solutions that delight us. We have been conditioned by a market monopoly to accept second best because there is limited competition in this market.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
What issue did they create? How often in any game did a high level player come back to a lowbie zone other than to gank? This is just to rejuvenate a once sprawling world. Give people more interactions with HUMANs in an MMORPG, the game is 7 years old and alot of people are moved on or near max level.
However there is still countless people who like the feel of being in an alive world even if they don't play with those people, it is good to know they are there.
As for your whole global game design being broken, I haven't the fuzziest what you're on about.
You said it yourself, "once" sprawling world. There is a reason to why it is not anymore, and that is design choices Blizzard took.
Just few examples of vanilla design. When I was 60, I had arathi highlands for a cool PvP trinket and fire resistence potions. I had felwood for a food I could use in PvP. I had Silithus for reputation grind (there were no dailies back then). I had STV for arena trinket and pirate faction. The examples of cool items/grind/rewards in lowbie zones are endless in vanilla, but they were all gone once WOTLK came. Sure, most of them was simple grind, but you know what that grind did? It made so people actually ventured out in the world, which resulted in them helping lowbies or in Open world PvP battles between even levels.
There were quests which required high level to travel around several zones, even low level, collecting stuff. It too, served same purpose, world felt alive. You dont even need to argue about the only reason for max levels to visit low zones is ganking. Here is how it usually went if they did gank; gank a lowbie->he logs main/calls for help->you call for help, repeat the last two steps till you have a 10vs10 battle in the middle of Duskwood. I thought it was pretty fun despite being merely level 32.
Once they removed all that, and put focus on few places with dailies as well as dungeons for the weekly points, people had no reason to venture out in the world any more, simple as that. Game design is not just coming up with cool features, but often designing a game with humans nature in mind. You may think something is boring(grind), but it contributes to fun in the bigger picture.
It's not an issue of the game being old, it is an issue of designers not giving players enough reason to travel outside cities/daily quest hubs. It is a conscious choice they made, which they try to patch now. If you fail to see deeper into the design of a game than "cool, new feature", welp, I tried to explain but can't help if you refuse to see
One can line up lots of things vanilla did wrong, but one thing was done right, it made players visit the world even after they hit max level.
P.S. Warhammer online, for example, has tons of little secrets and lore/tome unlocks to discover in each zone, which made me go back and explore them even when I was max level.
Originally posted by Aori
Originally posted by Bladestrom
1. In WOW people do not quest thats why zones are empty.
2 You outscale group quests so quickly that you solo it in any case.
3. People will still power level to get to end game cycle, see 1 & 2.
This is not fixing any of the root problems with WOW, its another case of Blizzard missing the point or unwilling to invest to fundementally change their model to address these issues.
You couldn't be more wrong. People quest all of the time, some people hate dungeons/pvp so they quest.
Powerleveling is a choice not a problem, it has always existed in every online game.
The one being wrong is you. There is no need to even argue, just look at any low level zones, they are empty. Powerleveling is a choice, but it is a simple fact that majority of players chose the fastest way to level as it is in human psychology to take the fastest route and is something designer has to take into account. So no, people don't quest all the time.
Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
What issue did they create? How often in any game did a high level player come back to a lowbie zone other than to gank? This is just to rejuvenate a once sprawling world. Give people more interactions with HUMANs in an MMORPG, the game is 7 years old and alot of people are moved on or near max level.
However there is still countless people who like the feel of being in an alive world even if they don't play with those people, it is good to know they are there.
As for your whole global game design being broken, I haven't the fuzziest what you're on about.
You said it yourself, "once" sprawling world. There is a reason to why it is not anymore, and that is design choices Blizzard took.
Just few examples of vanilla design. When I was 60, I had arathi highlands for a cool PvP trinket and fire resistence potions. I had felwood for a food I could use in PvP. I had Silithus for reputation grind (there were no dailies back then). I had STV for arena trinket and pirate faction. The examples of cool items/grind/rewards in lowbie zones are endless in vanilla, but they were all gone once WOTLK came. Sure, most of them was simple grind, but you know what that grind did? It made so people actually ventured out in the world, which resulted in them helping lowbies or in Open world PvP battles between even levels.
There were quests which required high level to travel around several zones, even low level, collecting stuff. It too, served same purpose, world felt alive. You dont even need to argue about the only reason for max levels to visit low zones is ganking. Here is how it usually went if they did gank; gank a lowbie->he logs main/calls for help->you call for help, repeat the last two steps till you have a 10vs10 battle in the middle of Duskwood. I thought it was pretty fun despite being merely level 32.
Once they removed all that, and put focus on few places with dailies as well as dungeons for the weekly points, people had no reason to venture out in the world any more, simple as that. Game design is not just coming up with cool features, but often designing a game with humans nature in mind. You may think something is boring(grind), but it contributes to fun in the bigger picture.
It's not an issue of the game being old, it is an issue of designers not giving players enough reason to travel outside cities/daily quest hubs. It is a conscious choice they made, which they try to patch now. If you fail to see deeper into the design of a game than "cool, new feature", welp, I tried to explain but can't help if you refuse to see
Originally posted by Aori
Originally posted by Bladestrom
1. In WOW people do not quest thats why zones are empty.
2 You outscale group quests so quickly that you solo it in any case.
3. People will still power level to get to end game cycle, see 1 & 2.
This is not fixing any of the root problems with WOW, its another case of Blizzard missing the point or unwilling to invest to fundementally change their model to address these issues.
You couldn't be more wrong. People quest all of the time, some people hate dungeons/pvp so they quest.
Powerleveling is a choice not a problem, it has always existed in every online game.
The one being wrong is you. There is no need to even argue, just look at any low level zones, they are empty. Powerleveling is a choice, but it is a simple fact that majority of players chose the fastest way to level as it is in human psychology to take the fastest route and is something designer has to take into account. So no, people don't quest all the time.
Last time I played wow was about 5 months ago. Back then there were tonnes of people in the low level zones. Teldrassil, darkshore, westfall, redridge - hundreds of people leveling up there (not in one day but did see hundreds during the time I was there)
Yes most people do choose the fastest way to level, however most people also play for enjoyment. The fact is that people get bored of dungeons, they get bored of pvp and they get bored of questing. The fact is most people do not choose just one form of gameplay, they play them all. So yes people do quest all the time, and the do bg's all the time and they do dungeons all the time. Probably a pretty even split between them.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
"The feature does exactly what it says on the tin: When a zone is underpopulated, the players in that zone will be given the option to form a group with players from a select pool of realms (presumably the server's battlegroup) with whom they can run about and quest as usual."
Great idea! I wish all MMOs had this. *cough* SWTOR *cough* But noooo, Bioware with it's 100-300 million dollars wasn't able to plan something to work with the issue of unpopulation. Bah.
Chapeau to Blizzard.
Meh. I think Blizzard should stop trying to innovate. They need to go back to where they ripped off ideas from MMOs and made them better... like the TBC era.
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Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
What issue did they create? How often in any game did a high level player come back to a lowbie zone other than to gank? This is just to rejuvenate a once sprawling world. Give people more interactions with HUMANs in an MMORPG, the game is 7 years old and alot of people are moved on or near max level.
However there is still countless people who like the feel of being in an alive world even if they don't play with those people, it is good to know they are there.
As for your whole global game design being broken, I haven't the fuzziest what you're on about.
You said it yourself, "once" sprawling world. There is a reason to why it is not anymore, and that is design choices Blizzard took.
Just few examples of vanilla design. When I was 60, I had arathi highlands for a cool PvP trinket and fire resistence potions. I had felwood for a food I could use in PvP. I had Silithus for reputation grind (there were no dailies back then). I had STV for arena trinket and pirate faction. The examples of cool items/grind/rewards in lowbie zones are endless in vanilla, but they were all gone once WOTLK came. Sure, most of them was simple grind, but you know what that grind did? It made so people actually ventured out in the world, which resulted in them helping lowbies or in Open world PvP battles between even levels.
There were quests which required high level to travel around several zones, even low level, collecting stuff. It too, served same purpose, world felt alive. You dont even need to argue about the only reason for max levels to visit low zones is ganking. Here is how it usually went if they did gank; gank a lowbie->he logs main/calls for help->you call for help, repeat the last two steps till you have a 10vs10 battle in the middle of Duskwood. I thought it was pretty fun despite being merely level 32.
Once they removed all that, and put focus on few places with dailies as well as dungeons for the weekly points, people had no reason to venture out in the world any more, simple as that. Game design is not just coming up with cool features, but often designing a game with humans nature in mind. You may think something is boring(grind), but it contributes to fun in the bigger picture.
lol you know what, not just good design - classic award winning wow design, I also have fond memories of most of the activites you mention above - arena trinket practically worthless but i still enjoyed waiting until 2 am when it was quiet to get another easy chest It is little stories like that which make a world. Never too late for Blizzard to change things around, if their focus wasnt purely about maximum profits.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
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Sure, found the blog right here.
"When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature. With guesting, your characters can play on any world where you have friends—with certain restrictions. For instance, you will not be able to participate in WvW while guesting."
Oderint, dum metuant.
Its what all MMORPG's should have - although a single server would be preferable.
But it does admit that server population is not healthy and not enough to self sustain? A work around rather than admit defeat by closing servers...
Rift will no doubt have this in a patch or 2.
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And you are posting here on this thread for what reason, but to be the cool kid attacking Blizzard. Way to go champ.
It really does not admit that. All it says as they have been saying that the majority of WoW is 1-20 and 80+. Those inbetween get shafted as all games that are out for a long time. People in the middle feel alone. The numbers in WoW still put most games to shame and the servers look to be doing fine.
Doesn't necesarely mean server population is not healthy... but it can mean it's not healthy at lower levels, a problem all MMOs that have been out for a while have, specially if they're endgame centric like WoW or Rift.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
For those mid-levels in WoW I wanted to be alone however. All you're doing there is racing to 85, the last thing I wanted to see was someone else tagging my mobs, ninjaing my nodes, etc. In a competitive PvE world the idea falls a bit flat.
Oderint, dum metuant.
It's really a half-assed measure.
It would be better if players could flag themselves as soloers or lfg or sociable, and those that are lfg or social from the same server pool would join an instance of the zone together so that areas seem less empty. Simply forming a cross server group isn't the same as feeling like the server is alive.
My flagging system within a serverless instanced (not instanced per group or per individual player, but by those who share the same set of flags ie: interests), still seems like the best idea to me, and I usually tend to change my mind about things often, but not on this.
Having a set of 3 or 4 parameters players can check off like rp, pvp, and lfg would allow players to join with other players who share their interests across the entire game's population. Since it isn't group or individual based instancing, it would simply appear to be an open world shared with other players.
Someday maybe.
Blizzard has had 8 years to work on their game (not to mention many hundreds of millions of dollars) and they are just now implementing this. I don't think it is fair to trash SWTOR for not having it just a couple months after release...
Seriously man, that is not a fair comparison at all.
I don't really compare this with GW2 guesting. This new feature is seemless, if I go through a zone with a normally low population, there will be more people around. It isn't the same as saying, alright I wanna choose my friends server to play on today.
Many argue oh who cares, WoW is easy and blah blah blah, but thats not really the point, a lot of people once argued that WoW is so dead if you go through and try and level up, that its super boring. Well imagine now you go through and find a few players and decide hey lets go do a dungeon, instead of constantly queuing. This can lead to a lot of advancements for the genre, instead of hating on the person on top, think about how it can benefit everyone.
Almost as bad as re-naming the dead servers "Test Servers." <cough, cough>
Compare that to GW2, where you actually want to see other players around (cooperative PvE) instead of dread those not in your party? This will do nothing to advance the genre, especially when compared to the better ways out there.
Oderint, dum metuant.
1. In WOW people do not quest thats why zones are empty.
2 You outscale group quests so quickly that you solo it in any case.
3. People will still power level to get to end game cycle, see 1 & 2.
This is not fixing any of the root problems with WOW, its another case of Blizzard missing the point or unwilling to invest to fundementally change their model to address these issues.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Blizzard are tackling an issue they created in the first place, by removing any points of interests in the lower level zones for anyone outside of the zone level bracket. The issue with empy zones isnt lack of players but lack of propper design to make the leveling in them interesting, isntead of grinding instances/pvp which is lot faster. Once again Blizzard are going for a bandaid solution, even thou I can imagine it is too hard to fix the core of the problem at this point as it is tied to the global game design which was broken with TBC-WOTLK.
While the "Cross server zones" may sound cool, on tech level it may just be another version of zone instances used to often in other titles. Who knows, maybe their "servers" are just another version of "zone instances", but in this case they instance a whole world :P
Simple fact zones are empty cities are not. Fact, blizzard streamlined and sped up the questing process. Would you go into TBC zones for example and find them alive with players? Finally Blizzard have announced this change - so they are tryint to address the issue (but not the root cause which is my point)
Ignoring ALTS and Daily grinds everybody hates, The levelling process before you get to end-game equates to perhaps a couple percent of your overall time. Powerlevelling exists and it is a burdon on mmorgs that is being addressed with upcomming titles - blizzard could have done the same if they truely wanted to address root causes.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Blizzard are applying this change to fix the issue of zones being empty, If the game design wasnt broken people would be playing in zones. Their fix however is not to make zones attractive to higher level players, their fix is to bring those people who do want to play in zones together (which is good for them) - its a dynamic amalgamation of server population. Wouldnt it be better if they somehow changed the game so all the zones remained attractive to players at max level - that would be a fix to the global game design.
1 concrete positive example, downscale player level to match zone and give reward that scales to the real level of the player. Thats 1 potential solution to the root cause of their issues. but there are many others.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I just think Blizzard is doing what they can to keep an aging game going. Can't really blame them with a new game in the works. Haven't played WoW in a long time but it seems like a good enough idea for people still playing. I wonder when people have time to play games in between hating Blizzard.
I'm glad Guild Wars 2 and WoW are being frontrunners in the serverless movement
It is a positive change, its just a pitty they don't invest the bigger money to evolve the game, its certainly possible, look at eve. Having 'delighted customers' is a phrase corporations often bandy about all too easily, but it would be no bad thing if blizzard actually embraced such a concept with geniune intent - regardless of profit margin.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I would not be surprised to discover that ts not that Bioware wasn't able to plan for something like this. Its that they were perhaps arrogant enough to think that they would not need to.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
It works for GW2. They scale you down so you're the appropriate level for where you are (you can be too low however) and they scale the rewards to match your true level instead of scaled level. The big difference is that even though you'll get level appropriate drops at lower level zones, you get less of them so it's more "productive" to be at the proper level zone. But, it also allows for all content in the game to remain viable and meaningful. As they add events into lower level zones you won't have to re-roll new alts to experience them as you see fit. You also won't be able to go back to low level zones and one-shot everything, ruining other people's experiences.
Oderint, dum metuant.
There are 2 mmorgs that are out there right now that do exactly that with a similar age, and 1+ incomming. I wont mention names because this thread is about WOW. Point is Blizzard have earned BILLIONS from us customer (think about this -BILLIONS) - ofc they have money to invest to do this. We are customers, we pay over a hundred pound a year for a game that gets expansions every 2 years or so - we have a right to want great solutions that delight us. We have been conditioned by a market monopoly to accept second best because there is limited competition in this market.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
You said it yourself, "once" sprawling world. There is a reason to why it is not anymore, and that is design choices Blizzard took.
Just few examples of vanilla design. When I was 60, I had arathi highlands for a cool PvP trinket and fire resistence potions. I had felwood for a food I could use in PvP. I had Silithus for reputation grind (there were no dailies back then). I had STV for arena trinket and pirate faction. The examples of cool items/grind/rewards in lowbie zones are endless in vanilla, but they were all gone once WOTLK came. Sure, most of them was simple grind, but you know what that grind did? It made so people actually ventured out in the world, which resulted in them helping lowbies or in Open world PvP battles between even levels.
There were quests which required high level to travel around several zones, even low level, collecting stuff. It too, served same purpose, world felt alive. You dont even need to argue about the only reason for max levels to visit low zones is ganking. Here is how it usually went if they did gank; gank a lowbie->he logs main/calls for help->you call for help, repeat the last two steps till you have a 10vs10 battle in the middle of Duskwood. I thought it was pretty fun despite being merely level 32.
Once they removed all that, and put focus on few places with dailies as well as dungeons for the weekly points, people had no reason to venture out in the world any more, simple as that. Game design is not just coming up with cool features, but often designing a game with humans nature in mind. You may think something is boring(grind), but it contributes to fun in the bigger picture.
It's not an issue of the game being old, it is an issue of designers not giving players enough reason to travel outside cities/daily quest hubs. It is a conscious choice they made, which they try to patch now. If you fail to see deeper into the design of a game than "cool, new feature", welp, I tried to explain but can't help if you refuse to see
One can line up lots of things vanilla did wrong, but one thing was done right, it made players visit the world even after they hit max level.
P.S. Warhammer online, for example, has tons of little secrets and lore/tome unlocks to discover in each zone, which made me go back and explore them even when I was max level.
The one being wrong is you. There is no need to even argue, just look at any low level zones, they are empty. Powerleveling is a choice, but it is a simple fact that majority of players chose the fastest way to level as it is in human psychology to take the fastest route and is something designer has to take into account. So no, people don't quest all the time.
Last time I played wow was about 5 months ago. Back then there were tonnes of people in the low level zones. Teldrassil, darkshore, westfall, redridge - hundreds of people leveling up there (not in one day but did see hundreds during the time I was there)
Yes most people do choose the fastest way to level, however most people also play for enjoyment. The fact is that people get bored of dungeons, they get bored of pvp and they get bored of questing. The fact is most people do not choose just one form of gameplay, they play them all. So yes people do quest all the time, and the do bg's all the time and they do dungeons all the time. Probably a pretty even split between them.
Meh. I think Blizzard should stop trying to innovate. They need to go back to where they ripped off ideas from MMOs and made them better... like the TBC era.
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lol you know what, not just good design - classic award winning wow design, I also have fond memories of most of the activites you mention above - arena trinket practically worthless but i still enjoyed waiting until 2 am when it was quiet to get another easy chest
It is little stories like that which make a world. Never too late for Blizzard to change things around, if their focus wasnt purely about maximum profits.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D