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World of Warcraft: Learning from Past Releases
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's World of Warcraft Correspondent Darren Bridle files this report that takes a look at what Blizzard could learn from their first expansion, Burning Crusade and apply to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King.
Blizzard is set to release a new expansion for its world renowned MMO and questions need to be answered. How big do you make it? What type of player do you cater to? Are there more raids, more mobs, more loot! However the real question should be, “What have you learned from The Burning Crusade?”
What didn't work
Location location location!
It’s clear that moving away from Azeroth, away from the lands of Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Orcs and the like, was possibly a wrong move. It was a brave adventure that almost paid off. Moving away from traditional character backgrounds and giving a detached feeling from the mainland really was its failing. Wrath of the Lich King (WOTLK) has a big bonus; it’s ripped straight from Warcraft 3 and contains proven lore and strong character backgrounds. Die hard Warcraft fans will instantly feel comfortable on the new continent of Northrend. The team working on WOTLK is huge and contains personnel that have worked from as far back as the original game, this is really important in terms of deciding what works, what doesn’t working, and keeping a consistent feel across the expansions. But what about arriving there on day one, along with 9 million other people…
Read it all here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
They say we learn more from failure than success... but it is slightly humerous to talk about millions of boxes sold (TBC) and millions of subscribers (WoW Current) as a failure
. Still, one of the reasons they stay on top is that they are constantly trying to learn and improve.
"Wrath of the Lick King" ? LOL! Maybe they can get Gene Simmons to do his voice?
I stopped reading at
"It was a brave adventure that almost paid off. Moving away from traditional character backgrounds and giving a detached feeling from the mainland really was its failing."
only cause I missed the Lick King... I'd have cleared the cache, closed the browser and formatted the hard disk in that case...
WoW, that typo got fixed fast... Ever get the feeling you're being watched? ;-)
I think all these gaming companies are feeling the AoC "pinch". And further trying to make excuses. Not the some of them are valid. However, it's trying to diver to a class of customer with too high expectations. So, what do you do...but try to lower them a bit. I bet marketing just hates doing that.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~Ernest Gaines
Am I the only person who likes TBC? I love flying around all of the floating Islands and stuff, in fact it's about the only part of the game that I do like. I guess that's why I don't play anymore. Oh well, I'll just wait for Aion.
But 1 thing i truly like is this part :
" With WOTLK, you will be able to learn about the main character – Arthas - as well as see him and talk to him from the second you step foot on the new continent."
Though i still wont be killing him
RIP Orc Choppa
I don't think that any company, regardless of the volume of product has sold, can really get by without reevaluating its product on the basis that it has flaws. World of Warcraft is pop culture phenomenon in a way that no other game has been. I think that on its own has contributed to its success in North America where gaming hasn't always been deemed socially acceptable.
Vanilla WoW was a game of haves and have-nots, and Burning Crusades has turned out to be vastly different in design. I think its great that they decided to set a partition between raiding and pvp.. thus making them separate paths, but I don't think certain aspects of both were able to keep the same luster it had before the release of BC.
Release day blues? As a BC beta tester I can say that it was predicted a hundred times over, and Zangarmarsh was offered up as an early release valve. I think there was plenty of flavor all around, but the author was right by suggesting that adding in an alien (feeling) new world only detracted from the previous world that players came to love.
I have to say that personally I enjoyed 10 man raids far more then the 40 man raids of the past. I like being involved, and there is far more sense of teamwork when everyone is vital to the cause. There was definitely a different feel to larger raids that I didn't really care for, and in my mind its far more epic that a 10 man/woman team could rock the biggest baddie out there.
Hmm Aion is from NCsoft in Korea and guess what Koreans enjoy in the games, grind, grind and more grind. Sorry if I find your comment a bit funny as if grind is so much more fun.
Wow is certainly not perfect, nor will this new expansion be either, but when you stack it up against other games, it just owns them.
So go enjoy the other games you like and have fun. Attempting to riducule Blizzard or Wow is an effort in the ridiculous. It just makes you look like a wanna be. Wow is not for everyone, but it certainly satisfies most of the players in this market far better than anything else out there.
Someday one of the development companies will wake up and provide a real challenge to Wow, until then it is in fact the 800 lbs gorilla.
Hmm Aion is from NCsoft in Korea and guess what Koreans enjoy in the games, grind, grind and more grind. Sorry if I find your comment a bit funny as if grind is so much more fun.
Wow is certainly not perfect, nor will this new expansion be either, but when you stack it up against other games, it just owns them.
So go enjoy the other games you like and have fun. Attempting to riducule Blizzard or Wow is an effort in the ridiculous. It just makes you look like a wanna be. Wow is not for everyone, but it certainly satisfies most of the players in this market far better than anything else out there.
Someday one of the development companies will wake up and provide a real challenge to Wow, until then it is in fact the 800 lbs gorilla.
Dude, he said he liked TBC. There have been far more negative posts about WoW; Ugottawantit's was pretty upbeat in comparison to most.
Coupled with a bit of ignorance about the design direction of Aion, this reaction sounds even worse than a typical knee-jerk fanboi defense rant.
Strange it doesnt mention equipment gap as a failing from WOW to TBC. Does that mean our current lvl 70 epics will once again be out-done by Northrend lvl 71/72 greens come WOTLK?!
I don't think that the dev meant that TBC was a failure. Merely that the developement team had taken a long, hard look at what was popular, and 'seemed to work for the WoW players' with its first expansion, and use that info as a starting place for developing Wrath.
I know what he means when he says the 'other worldly' aspect of TBC. I hate The Exodus, and don't like the Drenai as a whole. I do love TBC though, and it is good that you can go to this other dimension for awhile, but equally, I am glad that for the second expansion we will be returning to Azeroth, and Northrend.
TBC had a much more 'story-themed' feel to it, that I loved. The NPC's spoke a lot more, although more actual speech ala EQ2 would have been cool. This new expansion seems to be going to elaborate on this theme even further, which has the big thumbs up from me. I love the narration and cut-scenes you get when you make a new character, and I would like to see a lot more of those in this expansion, as I feel it helps with immersion.
I play for these games for the escapism aspect, not the competitive rush for uber gear. I couldn't care less about stats. The story comes first with me (although I do respect other people have their own preferences, and the bulk of these will be stat orientated).
To me, it looks as though it is going more down the road of Lord of the Rings Online. Which is a good thing in my mine - oops fruedian slip there!
Won't be touching the new expansion with a barge pole, let alone wow anymore.
New expansion only means the same thing - new content with the same old routine, more bugs that will get ignored for another 2 years, like the pre-TBC and the current TBC issues, exploitation of the players by breaching their own ToS, taking yet more money from players wallets. Last but not least, everyone's favorite friend, the nerf bat to knock players down another notch when they realize they forgot to scale things properly, again.
No thanks, ever.
There are better games, with a tad less graphics that cost far less to play.
what is odd, is that blizzard is STILL acknowledging that 1% (or possibly less and it was rounded up?) of the playerbase engages in raids. yet, they still are adding larger (25man) raids...
why?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
You can't fault WoW. You can only outgrow it...then again, there's not much greener grass anywhere else.
...because they're tailoring the raids for 10- and 25-man groups, in the same dungeon. That opens up "raiding" to the unwashed, non-hardcore masses, much like Karazhan and (arguably) Zul'Aman did, and dumps that prior 1% in with an even larger proportion of generic players.
I can see why Bliz are doing it this way but, personally, I liked being in a guild that was able to 1-shot Nefarian and frequently even C'thun (pre-TBC obviously), putting us that much higher up the food chain than the folks with a lack of skill or lack of co-ordination and leadership; back when wearing certain guild-tags was a badge of accomplishment and even pride, of sorts, and the equipment was visibly different - not this pathetic new excuse of "set B and set C are just set A re-coloured" rubbish.
Now any muppet can wander into Zul'Aman and Black Temple with a pre-written guide and some arguably competent buddies or grind themselves to oblivion (using one of the various exploits, if they care to) for the latest broken-resilience-stat arena gear and be right on par with the skilled PvE folk who could actually kill Vashj and Kael'thas for their vials before Bliz removed the attunement requirement (they were called the Guild-Breaker Bosses for a reason).
Sure, the last couple of paragraphs may sound elitist but I had more alts in non-hardcore guilds than I did mains and just see it as Bliz removing some peoples' ability to shine and prove that they are, in fact, capable of out-performing your normal, everyday player; I had almost as much fun searching out quality players in those alt guilds as I did taking down the end-game bosses.
For me, the more Bliz dumb the game down, the less fun the game becomes. If there's nothing challenging left to do, then what's the point?
The downside of being the minority, I suppose.
...and so much for me not ranting. Heh.
There is nothing wrong with WoW, its the game it is. SImple as, im sorry for all those people who have gotten bored, or hate that it has consumed so much of the market that they feel thier tiny game has been squeezed out. No im not a fan boi, there are alot of things i miss, like the old UO pvp and sandbox style. BUT WoW does alot of good, and has alot of polish, and the fact that a company as sucessful as Blizzard can look back at such a huge success as TBC was and say look where is where we FU%$ED up....here is a step towards fixing. And no i dont expect massive sweeping changes...thats what you do when you had it all wrong from the start or you wanna screw things up big time often in the other direction.
Blizzard has and will continue to make good fun quality games that copies will sell in the millions because of this very idea they hold that every past release had flaws and ways to improve....its not about making huge sweeping changes, its about making the right ones that fit...and that is what Blizzard does. Sorry to all you people who want to see them screw thing up like AoC or the such...but they dont do that...or they would be as small a company as Funcom...or sucked into SoE or EA....Get over your childish hate, and enjoy the good solid fun games Blizz will and always will make.
PEACE
I mostly agree with you but .. Blizzard made huge error in the past . Wow is a quality product the problem for me ? it seems since Expantion the game is not improving anymore its getting easyer and easyer and worst and worst . They broke the World in world of warcraft .. can the new expantion bring it back ? i truly hope so .. but i have a real good doubt .
"But what about arriving there on day one, along with 9 million other people"
/sigh 9 million people do not actively play this game. It boggles my mind that informed people, even those writing for mmorpg.com, don't know the difference between "accounts" and "active players."
That being said, the only real positive thing I see in WotLK is the 10 man progression path. Other than that it will be the same game. Grind terribly written quests until you hit 80. Raid, battleground, or arena until your fricken eyes bleed and the next expansion arrives in 2112.
This article was not done by a blizzard representative. Blizzard does not acknowledge anything in that post. The author of that post is "MMORPG.com's World of Warcraft Correspondent" He is not a Blizz Developer. He does not even know what inscripting will be about as it will add no new spells whatsoever.
I quote: "the addition of inscriptions is certainly a new and extremely innovative idea. Not only does it mean bringing in tons of new spells which make the old spells redundant, but it means having sets of new spells along with increased old ones, giving spell casters a huge arsenal of potential spells to look forward to."
Inscripting will be a method of augmenting spells - not creating new spells in the examples I have heard you will be able to add a knockback to your fireball for instance or additional slowing to your frost bolt or additional bleeding to your cleave
It isn't clear exactly what will be available with inscripting but it's clear that this guy has little idea what he's talking about.
Darren Bridle isn't a Blizzard Developer.
Darren Bridle isn't a Blizzard developer.
Just so we're all clear this is a report by a private author it's not a release from a Blizzard representative. Blizzard may not acknowledge any of these things as failures and in fact I have read elsewhere that the developers had fun changing the setting away from the main story and going a sci-fi route with TBC.
Stradden should have called the article exit interview for a dead grind fest
1% of the population raids -and managed to kill Illidan-. The whole concept of 10-Mans bugs me though. Unless they help classes substantially, they will always have a problem with group construction requirements. There will be classes and talent builds that will continue to be pidgeonholed into oblivion and specifically be suitable only for precise situations. Play that class and build? Well, good luck finding help for a dungeon that you are not part of the "proper build" for.
"This 10-man requires precisely three priests (Need to have the shields, Tree or Shaman or Pally won't do), one Prot pally (for AOE Tanking), one bear (Off-tank of special mobs), one prot warrior (Main tank, Pally or Bear won't work for this part), one rogue for 'real DPS', one mage for DPS and sheeping, one 'lock for adds, and one hunter to trap-dance with that annoying thing that can't be sheeped. Can't use any other combo otherwise it gets harder, and we don't want things to be an actual challenge."
The real downsite to WOTLK expanison is that actually doesn't bring out anything new. Ok - 1 new class that is more likely to create problems that have positive effects on class blances. Flying mounts were HUGE factor in TBC and gave the game new drive. Sadly there doesn't look to be any that lvl of New in this WOTLK.
(Very simple example, but I don't have any other stanza screenshots handy.)
I think the Outlands and the Draenei are the best part of WoW, but I'm a science-fiction and science-fantasy fan. Plus I have a soft spot for Draenor and the lore surrounding it since reading and enjoying the "Rise of the Horde" novel.
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In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
First off, let me say that Wow has tons of great features, and I've enjoyed it enough that I've played it for about 3 years.
However, this quote above is quite correct in that it points out a major flaw in Wow. Depending on the server, you can easily spend 30-60 minutes (or more!) trying to find a healer or a tank, and entering most instances without both of these is almost guaranteed to wind up in multiple wipes.
To me, there is one other factor that bugs me so much that I have put the game on hold (again). At max level, you have one of two options for any real gear progression: pvp or raid. It is virtually impossible to make any significant gear upgrades once you've been max level for a bit thru solo efforts.
PvP - I simply do not enjoy pvp in this game. Gear imbalance, not to mention exploits for rating, underskilled or afk'd teammates are just some of the reasons. Blizzard's increasing focus on something that was never originally intended to be much more than a diversion has gotten to the point where it seems more than half it's efforts are spent on this part of the game.
Raiding - Raiding can be fun. However, the strict adherence to schedules, elixir and other buff costs, and frequent lack of inclusion due to guild hierarchy detracts severely from that fun. Also, often we have the same 'needed class' problems mentioned above. Only so many of each class type are needed for a given raid; no ones going to take 5 healers or 9 dpsers on a ten man raid.
Simply put, when I log onto an MMO, I want to play. I do not want to wait around for an hour trying to convince others of specific classes to do what I want to do.
Will I play the expansion when it comes out? Probably. And I'll wind up levelling my 5 70s to level 80, and then hit the same wall, and once again Wow will go on hold.