Small steps forward, big turns back
Posted 06-09-2009 at 02:24 PM by Machus
I think that over the years Blizzard fixed a huge number of small issues about the game while making big conceptual mistakes about its direction.
In the classic game, leveling was fun, and the game looked big and interesting. The world had its own life and players were very free to enjoy it as they wished. The whole game appeared like it would last forever, and only get bigger. Raiding suited a wide range of abilities. Some things wrong with the classic game were as follows:
- At 60, the game changed suddenly from instancing to raiding.
- Respawns, lockouts, and DKP made raiding hardcore.
- Hybrids did not find adequate roles in raids.
- Too much time was lost to faulty details of class mechanics.
In BC Blizzard made attempt to fix these issues while creating others. They added grades to the transition between instancing and raiding but did not address it. Azeroth was suddenly devalued, and half way through BC tiers of raiding got devalued through nerfs. Instead of feeling like an eternal world, WoW started feeling like a TV series where one season is over and the network forces you to start watching the next. The experience of WoW became passive. At the end of BC the main issues were:
- Outland felt small and fake compared to Azeroth.
- Play became steered with daily quests and rep grinds. Everything was tedious.
- The path from instancing to raiding was complicated and rocky.
- Content was trivialized by nerfs, PvP gear, badges, and hybrid class changes.
In Wrath Blizzard did some good work but on the whole made those issues worse. Northrend looks great, but who cares since leveling is irrelevant and a chore. Content is so easy that progression is replaced by racing. Blizzard forces everyone into a very narrow band of content (this month, it's Ulduar) so that the game has become very small. rather than design to strengths and weaknesses, Blizzard started removing class restrictions and homogenizing. The current issues in WLK are:
- Leveling is pointless and a nuisance.
- There's nothing to do but raid Ulduar and Emalon.
- Content is trivialized by the 10/25-man choice and optional hard modes.
- Everyone is being steered to play a druid or a paladin.
Frankly I don't see how Blizzard is going to get WoW out of this mess. They turned an MMO with a long life span into a sort of TV series where each season has a life span of a couple of months. They've removed restrictions to the point where nothing is perceived as valuable.
WoW is still something to do in the evening, but I'm certainly looking for a replacement. Maybe the future unannounced MMO will be some good.
In the classic game, leveling was fun, and the game looked big and interesting. The world had its own life and players were very free to enjoy it as they wished. The whole game appeared like it would last forever, and only get bigger. Raiding suited a wide range of abilities. Some things wrong with the classic game were as follows:
- At 60, the game changed suddenly from instancing to raiding.
- Respawns, lockouts, and DKP made raiding hardcore.
- Hybrids did not find adequate roles in raids.
- Too much time was lost to faulty details of class mechanics.
In BC Blizzard made attempt to fix these issues while creating others. They added grades to the transition between instancing and raiding but did not address it. Azeroth was suddenly devalued, and half way through BC tiers of raiding got devalued through nerfs. Instead of feeling like an eternal world, WoW started feeling like a TV series where one season is over and the network forces you to start watching the next. The experience of WoW became passive. At the end of BC the main issues were:
- Outland felt small and fake compared to Azeroth.
- Play became steered with daily quests and rep grinds. Everything was tedious.
- The path from instancing to raiding was complicated and rocky.
- Content was trivialized by nerfs, PvP gear, badges, and hybrid class changes.
In Wrath Blizzard did some good work but on the whole made those issues worse. Northrend looks great, but who cares since leveling is irrelevant and a chore. Content is so easy that progression is replaced by racing. Blizzard forces everyone into a very narrow band of content (this month, it's Ulduar) so that the game has become very small. rather than design to strengths and weaknesses, Blizzard started removing class restrictions and homogenizing. The current issues in WLK are:
- Leveling is pointless and a nuisance.
- There's nothing to do but raid Ulduar and Emalon.
- Content is trivialized by the 10/25-man choice and optional hard modes.
- Everyone is being steered to play a druid or a paladin.
Frankly I don't see how Blizzard is going to get WoW out of this mess. They turned an MMO with a long life span into a sort of TV series where each season has a life span of a couple of months. They've removed restrictions to the point where nothing is perceived as valuable.
WoW is still something to do in the evening, but I'm certainly looking for a replacement. Maybe the future unannounced MMO will be some good.
Total Comments 5
Comments
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lol. Got a nice kick from this oneQuote:Everyone is being steered to play a druid or a paladin.
Nice post!Posted 06-09-2009 at 08:30 PM by tuffmuffin 
- I'd like to hear what you think they could have done differently, how would you release expansions that encourage people to actively not level or to actively redo previously released content? Surely it's a case of any heavy-endgame mmo (and look at the problems other mmo's have had that aren't endgame heavy) that previous "endgame" becomes obsolete and the raiders will be focused on a relatively small percentage of the content?
Posted 06-10-2009 at 01:27 AM by Shortypop - Creating hard mode versions of all past content would keep it all in usage, and maintain the 'large' feel of the classic game. Though with less valuable gear drops, obviously (probably just emblems, infact).
Of course, that would cause the issue of everything trying to farm the 'easy' instances for emblems, and finding a group for a less popular one next to impossible. But hey, nothing will ever be perfect.
And to me it feels like everyone is being steered to reroll Death Knights. But there we go.Posted 06-10-2009 at 04:12 AM by Durandro - I would try to make the endgame less narrow. Classic was a big game for leveling, and it had a fairly broad endgame since BWL, AQ, and Naxx overlapped in difficulty. The main problem was that leveling ended abruptly and the endgame was inaccessible for out-of-game reasons (you needed a reliable schedule).
BC had a smaller leveling game and a narrower endgame at first with only T4-T5, but the endgame was more accessible. Blizzard did a fairly good job of transitioning from leveling to endgame in a spread out way. If you were a fairly good player you did heroics. If you were better you raided. Then the T6+ instances arrived but T4-T5 were nerfed, so the endgame focus remained somewhat narrow, which was a surprise.
The main problem I see in Wrath is that the leveling game is pretty but small (I only needed four regions) and then there is a straightforward transition into endgame. It's not spread out by ability or anything, it's just steps you go through. You level, then do heroics, then Naxx, then Ulduar. The steps are very easy, so the endgame is compressed to just one tier - Ulduar. This makes the endgame very narrow and there are no other activities for engamers in this design (well, PvP maybe).
I'd just like the endgame to be much more spread, unchanging, overlapping between the tiers, and with progression being limited by the player's own ability rather than being a matter of time or a race.
For example, if the quality of rewards overlapped more in heroics, Naxx, and Ulduar, there would be some reason to do all the content rather than only Ulduar. I think BC and especially classic raids had that tuned better.
In a more radical design, why is Naxx level 80? Why not 73? If you could do Naxx at 71-73, Ulduar at 74-76, and so on until Icecrown at 80 that would mix the raiding and the leveling, it would mean less sudden devaluation of BC gear, and would generally pace the game. Rather than zooming past to 80, you would have to achieve certain quests in Naxx, or some 5-mans to unlock the levels.
Overall I'd have liked the game to be adding content rather than replacing it, and I'd like the endgame to be like an achievement board where you achieve and progress, or stay still - as opposed to be carried along. I'd be interested in what other games have this design and what problems they encountered, as I don't know them.Posted 06-10-2009 at 06:30 AM by Machus - Personally I think it is okay the way it is. How many of you have actually done all the hard modes? I know I haven't. And as far as raiding Naxx at 73... that makes no sense. Raids are for players who are 80... not 73...
Posted 06-10-2009 at 02:20 PM by Insom
