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World of Warcraft: Blizzard's B Squad
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Eric Heimburg, a long time MMO developer (Asheron's Call 2, Star Trek Online) has posted at length on a peculiar situation that may be occuring in World of Warcraft over on his blog at the Elder Game.
Giving us some insight into the world of MMOG development, Eric first opens up about his love of working on an MMOG's Live Team, and how he is definitely in the minority for feeling this way. MMOG Live Teams, Eric explains, typically consist of the younger, less experienced team members, because the more experienced ones are usually both burnt out on the project and move on to newer projects where they are needed most.
Eric also details what it's like working on a live team, the kinds of unanticipated pitfalls one can fall into, as well as the aspects that make the whole thing much more rewarding. In particular, it takes a different type of thinking to work on a game that players are actively experiencing.
For example, he mentions the fact that when he first took over balancing Asheron's Call 2 (being less experienced at the time) he had to learn the hard way that there was more to the balancing act that the numbers alone. He balanced the Feral Intendent class in Asheron's Call 2, which by his determination at least, was 30% overpowered. With everything now in line, he figured all would be well. He was wrong. The players were upset. Why? They didn't mind the Feral Intendent being overpowered, because the other classes were considered underdogs, and they liked feeling like they were playing the game's "Hard Mode".
Eric explains that it's simple lessons like considering the human equation when balancing a live game, that you just don't learn until you do it yourself. And as you learn these lessons, you're bound to make a number of mistakes along the way.
Now, Eric is seeing the tell-tale signs of this inexperienced "B Squad" taking over for the Live Team in a little game called World of Warcraft. He mentions Jeff Kaplan's departure from World of Warcraft, as a telling sign. And while he assures us he believes WoW is still in capable hands, he believes they are in less experienced ones. He uses the Hunter class as an example:
A few months back, the powers that be decided that Hunter ammunition didn’t work right. Hunters have to carry an arrow for every single shot they take, and in order to get the full benefits from them, they have to carry them in a special quiver — which doesn’t let you store other items in it, only ammo. All that ammo costs money, too. Plus, it leaves the designers unable to give out awesome “raid arrows” because you’d just shoot them all and then where would you be? Even though ammo had been a fine and fun distinguishing quirk of Hunters for years, it was time to Fix It.
The first plan was announced: WoW would no longer have consumable ammo. Instead, you would just need a single “infinite arrow” that you stuck in your ammo slot, and this would let you shoot your bow forever. Problem solved! No more quivers, no more pack space wasted, no more costs. And now raids could drop “loot arrows” that wouldn’t get used up! Perfect!
Whoops, turns out that plan would be hard. So they announced their backup plan: now ammo just stacks to very high numbers. Instead of having stacks of 200, now you can have stacks of 1000. This at least addresses the “pack space” issue. Call it a win! And they removed the magical benefits from quivers, so you no longer needed to use them. So they fixed the immediate emergency, and they’ll get to the “correct fix” later.
The thing is, there was no emergency. Sure, Hunters were happy to have a few extra pack slots. But the change threw all sorts of other things out of whack: magic quivers are still given out as quest rewards… they just aren’t magical anymore. And leathercrafters can still make them! They just can’t sell them to any sane Hunter. And so on… the game wasn’t really cleaned up after this change.
But I’m sure it felt so pressing, so urgent. So they had to address the issue, side-effects be damned.
Without somebody experienced at the helm, the voice of the myopic designer tends to be the loudest. “WE HAVE TO FIX THE HUNTER” they said. Maybe they said, “Hunters have to spend 65% more on bare essentials than any other class. I will never be able to balance class expenditures like this!” Or maybe they said, “Hunters have to waste more inventory slots than any other class. It damages quest completion rates!” Or maybe they just said, “It’s SO STUPID. It’s always been stupid, and we just need to fix it! Do it now!” Obviously, nobody thought very hard about the ramifications, and nobody spent any time easing players into the idea. And nobody stopped to make sure they did a good job.
So some tiny little mistakes crept into the game. Nothing huge. Nothing that will sink the Titanic. But mistakes nonetheless… “magical” crafted quivers that aren’t magical and can’t be sold are clearly a mistake. These little bugs accumulate, like lint on a hardwood floor.
Find out what else Eric has to say on the subject in the full blog entry here.
Let us know what you think in the comments!
Comments
Good to see I was not the only one that though the ammunition change was poorly implemented. It was great to have an extra bag now (I play as a hunter), but, when you screw up a whole quest and crafting system centered around quivers/ammo pouches, the thing is pretty much more complex than making hunters happy.
And yeah, it's nothing even remotely close for a reason to "rage quit" the game for.
And now we have something else I consider poorly implemented - Ulduar achievements. It's great to have a few achievements per raid, but when you put A HUNDRED AND FIFTY achievements Ulduar-related it surely means some devs got really excited by Ulduar and Achievements design.
I am a Asshole. I play games all day long. I have been doing this since the age of 12 and i am now 28 years old. I know games better then any designer. I get that he is trying to show the emotional connection between game designing and the people playing them, but for me being a person that wakes up every morning and starts gaming or going to a forum,website or blog about video games I can tell you this. People like me could give a rats ass how they feel. We don't care what you think is interesting or fun. We only care about how the game makes us feel. You start changing that from day to day. We'll let you hear it.
As like most, I played Wow. I played for almost 5 years then i stopped playing. The reason why I stopped wasn't because i was burnt out. The reason is that Blizzard takes fun and enjoyable aspects of the game regardless what class you play or spec and first shits all over it right before they trash it. Been happening since before release and in Beta with the Paladin class and their combat system.
Jeff might be one of the greats when it comes to Boss encounters right up next to the People that developed the ones in Zelda Twilight Princes. However he drops the fucking ball when it comes with distributing loot where DDO winz teh fucking internetz and assigns it directly to the player.
We would be here all day if i was to go over all the things wrong and right Blizzard did with World of Warcraft, but i will leave with something smart that any developers can use before designing another mmorpg. What was the number 1 fail in World of Warcraft ?
There way no way in hell i could have every class max level with cutting edge progression gear all at once. This is where the game failed.
Dude, wake up! No mmo will ever let you do that. If you get all toons max at once, how are they gona milk more money from you? Its business, the longer you stay the better....
RIP Orc Choppa
Keep failing then but, expect that your true fans will never will be happy with any class changes you make. How am i suppose to appreciate the game then ? Keep windows to the game closed for however long you like but, someone some day is going to throw a rock right through those windows.
Never say never. The fact is if i had more toons to max then the 4 i have at 80 the 3 i have at 70 and the 2 at 60 able to progress at a reasonable rate together on cutting edge progression story, gear, crafting profession ect i would still be playing. The number one question i asked when playing wow was "what can i do today ." A player should never ask himself that question and if they do you as a devoloper has failed.
Dude, wake up! No mmo will ever let you do that. If you get all toons max at once, how are they gona milk more money from you? Its business, the longer you stay the better....
I totally agree with you arctarus, and honestly depending when you quit, if you quit during wotlk you have no right to complain, but if you've played pre-bc you should know this, not being able to get maxed on all classes on wotlk is a joke period you can get capped so quickly like in 2-3 weeks ,if you haven't palyed wotlk, well i jsut gave you some great information. The game went to the scrubs i hostely remeber pre-bc end game content taking so much time having to struggle through the ranks of gear (thoughs that actually played not just bought gold and such.). now instead of doing long pain-staking fun chain quests taking like 100+ gold a quest. Now you just do end game 5 man dungeons,to heroic 5 man dungeon, to 10 man raid, to 25 man raid etc. But this is just my opion which you prolly don't care about considering "Your an asshole".
i agree blizzard have taken a lot of the fun aspects out of this game . in the past you really had to work at getting epic gear . even post bc you had to put in considerable time in the battlegrounds to get decent armor and weapons . i think whats happened is blizzard made a concious decision to make the game easier so it would appeal to very young players . they ve been very successful in this and unfortunatly the community reflects that fact . i gave up wow after 4 years ( and i did play wrath of the lich king ) because i found it offered no real challenge anymore . nearly everyone i know thats currently playing warcraft or has played warcraft in the past are now looking to switch to aion if its a decent game .
Wow. Some job. Two percent of your time actually making something new; the other 98 percent of your time listening to obsessive-compulsive freaks scream like stuck pigs about even the tiniest change to their environment.
I also remember hearing that Hunter DPS suffered a bit as well because of what they said. Since they were planning on having "ammo" drop in raids, instead of having to grind rep to get a new set, they didn't bother making anything above Saronite ammo because of this expectation (I'm not a hunter, just an engineer, and my raiding guild hunters love me for my ammo machines so I'm just assuming that). But of course, they couldn't do it, and they never made any new ammo for guns, so while the guns got better, the ammo hasn't. They also didn't roll more damage into the guns to make up for it.
For me, the game started going down when they killed SoB and Spiritual Attunement in two swift strikes (I'm a ret pally, and loved SoB because of its damage and because of SA), and the fact that they've shown they don't know what to do with us besides being healers (yay for being the premiere dual-healers now!) and tanks.
They've said it before, we were originally just supposed to be heal and buff bots, the latter the only reason you'd want to group with a paladin.
I'd never thought of it in as much detail as you have, but it's been clear to me that World of Warcraft has been on cruise control for quite a while now and it's obvious that the real talent has long since migrated to the new MMO in development.
I think your article was spot on and it was interesting to read it from an insiders/developers angle, nice one!
Those "obsessive compulsive freaks" are PAYING CUSTOMERS...
Missing that REALITY is what eventually dooms a game. Its NOT fun having your class "balanced" every few weeks. Just about anyone who played the Death Knight class can tell you that from painful experience. How many skill point resets has the DK class been through now? Games are supposed to be about having FUN. Now while that means different things to different people, there are a few things that make a game NOT fun.
But thats the human factor, and it takes experience to learn it. Churn has always been a problem with long term games, but its made worse by the "lint" that collects on the floor. Eventually, these little irritations add up to the decision to end ones subscription and move on. Certainly, one can not please everyone(given human nature thats just not possible), but experienced designers know how to keep it down to a dull roar, rather than driving players out of the game. But its those very same experienced designers that one wants on ones NEW properties...Thus the inherent problem. One possible solution is to have "understudies" assigned to your experienced designers, so they learn what works, when and why. That way when you need to move your experienced designers to the new project, their understudies step into the role, and don't make as many bone headed basic mistakes as they otherwise would have.
World of Warcrafts earliest stages was run by Strain and then Kaplan have been the boss until Blizzard moved him to their new game.
That means that they had 2 of the absolutley best people in the gaming industry as head devs, of course things get confused when they quit. Few other companys have talented people like that, Bioware do, and Valve but there is almost impossibleto fill those shoes.
But it would be incredible stupid of Blizzard to have their best people working on a 5 year old game when they are working on the game they hope will take its place.
So we will see more of this problems.