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It seems as though our recent debate on instancing, which can be read in its entirety, here, has stirred up a hornet's nest of a kind over at Blizzard's World of Warcraft. As it stands now, a topic thread on their forums that was started in response to our feature has received almost 400 replies in a matter of three days. Not only that, but a Blizzard employee, Caydiem, has been actively involved in what has evolved into an extremely interesting conversation.
Congratulations to the authors of Saturday's well-thought-out debate, Garrett Fuller and Frank Mignone (both MMORPG.com staff writers), on stirring not only our own community, but the community at World of WarCraft.
Take at look for yourself, here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Was reading some of the blue responses...what a joke. Basically he's saying we dont want to try and make the game better, so like what we give you. Repeatable content will rule the game and nothing the players say will change it. I enjoy WoW as much as any other player, but god damn...why bother with warring if its not EVER going to do anything? The epitome of POINTLESS PvP.
I'm not sure what this guy wants. Does he want permanent influence on the game? No MMORPG has that. The only game that could do it is Eve because of a single server (another reason why one server is the future). Or does he merely want to say take over areas temporarily like PlanetSide?
This reminds me of the early days of AC1. There was almost a diverging storyline on one server.
The developers added a new dungeon that was PvP only. The boss at the end of the dungeon dropped some awesome loot and freed a bigger badder boss that would roam the world unstoppable, kill people, and lead to a big crucial storyline battle. None of the players cared about the bigger badder boss being released, they just wanted the loot. Everything went well on every server except one. A group of PvP'ers actually protected the dungeon on one server and kept the final guy from being released. The developers had to step in and help kill off the defenders with special characters so the storyline could advance.
Their efforts weren't completely wasted. The developers actually made a special statute for the players that only appears on the one server.
I said it before, and I say it again - instances are an absolute must for PvE players. If the company wants PvE players to play their game, they better make damn sure that their game uses instancing since clearly there is no other way to prevent griefing, and ensure meaningful storyline progression. Don't forget that PvE players generally have zero tolerance for such things - occasional griefing is not just "part of the game" for them, it's what makes them decide whether to play the game or not. And their money is just as good as yours.
LKink to WOW forum does not work?
*sorry it seems that there are no entries in general, maybe i have to log in to see them but i play in europe*
It's Blizzards site, give it awhile. When they are working on the servers the forums appear to be empty.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
After reading thru most of the thread what really strikes me are the total lack of vision Caydiem has. He seems so contempt with keeping status que and not advancing the game in any way that matters. He only talks about possible negative effects and just ignores the positive ones.
"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason."
This is exactly what I thought, as well...
All it took was reading what the expansion would be offering to figure that out.
WoW addicted carebears are funny... "Look at the numbers" they say. It's selling so it must be good?
Geez, Tobaco companies are succesfull as well... is it any... good?
There are a tons of supplements companies making big profits selling a placebo effect... does it mean it's right to do so? Nope...
It's all Marketing... and they're good at it. That's the whole point : selling as much as possible of a cheap, badly done product.
Just like gambling, MMORPGs based on grind and farm the ubb3r items until a more ubb3r item comes out with a higher level cap are addictive. It's simply... they put you on this pattern. Everytime you get THAT better item you farmed, you're excited about it, happy that your character is better than it was and the serotonin is secreted in your brain. Then you want to get better again, as the serotonin concentration drops, what do you do? Farm the next item, get excited about it, and repeat and enless amount of time. IT IS ADDICTIVE!
Like any addiction, if you're not councious about it, you will never reject what you're doing and continue to do it.
Ever since EQ, more and more companies are thrilled to use the same marketing hype to get the big profits from a bad product. Hipefully, a good MMO with a lot of interaction will cast a shadow on these piece of c***.
"I am trying to see things from your perspective but I just can't get my head that far up my @$$."
The thing is Caydiem did talk about it... I think he gave the right answers...
- The game WOW is already out, and it's pointless to try and do a big overhaul... It's better to just do a whole new game that would be specifically built for change...
- They can't allow any thing that would truly affect the storyline, because they're probably going to still make Warcraft games ...
- He admitted stuff like contested battlegrounds could have been added to the game world rather than having it instanced... But, I do agree that it doesn't look like they're going to be doing this though or atleast anytime soon...
The thrill of playing WoW for me went downhill once the honour system was implemented; pointless BG's killed it off for me. Just my opinion.
I couldn't get past the first 10 pages, but my favorite post was:
For all intents and purposes, I stopped reading here.-----------------------------------------
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"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb." -- Batman
I kinda enjoyed reading that too. Read some further, but nothing new came up.
Which made my mouse maneuvering poster hand itch badly. I really wanted to bring in something new there. It really seems that they think instancin is the only way to solve certain issues, because it is proven to work.
What I'd want to tell them is that to know that, they would also know that they had thought of every invention and idea that could be brought up. Seems they're set on not finding it.
Dev's are afraid that their important storylines will be destroyed if they are progressive, and more so if they are allowed to progress beyond staff control.
--- I want them to read this --- * sigh * ---
(I think they could actually implement it in their current game too)
Insert less important characters to deal with the open ended content. Characters whose lives may well have "ended" by the release of Warcraft 4. Make less significant areas that can actually be conquered.
Self-generating persistent storyline content
(this should make overworked developers very happy if they could just put it into place to begin with)
Allow factions to have structures built (probably by invisible NPCs). A "town base" would be a preset group of structures that gave you coded dominion in an area. This dominion could actually be lost to other factions. This generates targets that can be won / destroyed without damaging the overall storyline.
In areas that consistently generate monsters or other wilderness creatures, make sure the hazards complicate construction very much, so that the world doesn't get overpopulated.
In order to win a command structure, one must open battle. The battle might be instanced in the local zone, but anybody should be able to join at any time, as long as they have not suffered death during that battle. I posted something similar elsewhere, but it was less specific to WoW.
Encouragement for this: Make a leadership rating that increases every day you are in charge of a town structure. Population size determines increase rate (NPCs figure in, and these would be unwilling to settle dangerous areas, so getting a good town going is hard). Make another rating for those who join the army, that increases whenever that army wins a battle, and which would be ruined upon a dishonorable discharge. An army would probably be a faction allied to the town faction, or so.
These factions are probably what is, today, guilds.
There should be a limit on how frequently a location could be attacked (timer between initiation of battles). There are more issues around this, but I think it could work.
Furthermore, I think instances and fully repeatable (utterly static) content have filled the developer's view to the point where vision doesn't really apply anymore. You don't need to look if everything looks the same everywhere, and that's what they seem to think it does.
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
400 POSTS IN 3 DAYS
so what 50-100 of your claimed 1million players are post on this?
i hate to point this out but thats a very small minority of players who are just active on your forums and they do not repersent the majority of players at all
DONT JUMP TO CONCULSIONS
look into the matter and see if the current way things are being done are in fitting with the the planned game play look at the pros and cons and then look at the other side and the pros and cons of that and act in the best interest of your players and your ideas or plans for the game
Personally after reading some of the posts, it seems everyone keeps focusing on killing the leaders, or becomng someone that is better than everyone else.
but when i hear immersion, all i ever think about is events that shakens the world.
The WOW spokesperson caydiem stated that the world is not immersion because new and old players should both have fun. Its all true and everything. But what if...
Every so often, the arms of scarab would try to gather forces to invade, and their hints of their attack would be their scouts they send to the capital cities, or small towns. And during those time, the leaders of each nation would start walking around preparing for supplies to defend against the attack. then depending on how much inventory they received from the player base, they could defend before they reach the cities or defend the towns on the front lines. And the reasons they attack would be because of an item that each leader have in their cities.
And during those times, the leader's quests would be given by the secretary that stayed behind as everyone is prepared for war.
The invading forces could change, from scarab to ogres to goblins depending on what the leaders have. And everytime you help defend against the attack or something. You will be rewarded with a piece of puzzle that everyone can start trading between the three nations in each faction.
This way, its immersive and fun while if the cities was defeated, the faction that lost the battle will have all prices increased, some items is no longer sold. And since they are gonna have auctions all over the world. The city that lost will have auction closed. Until enough resources is returned to the city faction.
I write here because the thread is locked in wow forum. But i think this idea could work.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
No and don't know who that is i just linked to the new from the sites email and read what was going and really what i posted is just common sence for and agrugementive paper you have to wirte in college you have to list pros and cons for both sides and then figure out how to from that suport your side
well any ways you really should always look at the pros and cons for both side of thing before making any business changes and unfortunatly few gaming companies do this and jump the gun after afeedback on their forms, well i don't know if they actually think though changes for complaints on there forums or if they just say wow thats alot of complaint in just a short time let pull out the nerf bat and start swinging
but generally i don't think they look at thing as throughly as they should because the players posting on ther forums are just the vocal minority the majority of their player don't post on their forums and they should take that into consideration before changes and also the pros and cons of both sides
Agreed. MMORPG.com has the propensity to try to make news out of things that are not. Remember their "BIG" announcement concerning DnDO?
400 posts is nothing. There was a post about the desire for solo content that got a CM response and had over 1000 posts. Does that mean theres going to be an offline version coming soon? As for Caydiem responding, she is a community manager, IT IS HER JOB TO RESPOND. Its not like Metzen made an appearance on the forums. Heck I got a response from her when I asked why we wouldnt couldnt trade in blasting powder in the War Effort. So is that news worthy? Of course not.
I think the one thing that can be said about instancing is that it usually does not result in dynamic content, nor does it result in changing the storyline. But then again in the past 2 weeks I have come to love EVE online and how the players influence the storyline and the like. I do agree, companies sometimes jump the gun when a very vocal group speaks up out of nowhere, and they don't listen to exactly what they players are saying. They may be saying they want x, but x is a game breaking change, but if you find another way, like the way of y, then you can appease them. And you cannot just release y to early, you have to polish it out and make it a good change that will be welcomed by the rest of the population too.
Saying that creating dynamic content or interactable content takes time and money is a poor excuse, find a middle ground or something that can make things seem a bit more dynamic. And as far as the work for a dynamic storyline, well if they can write "create-your-own-story" books where every couple pages you have to choose a new page to turn to then obviously they can do it to a game. The only difference is you would have to have the story well planned out for probably a year for this dynamic storyline, basically every month a new chapter.