WoW at 80: Longer, not Harder

I finally hit 80 with my main last week. The last couple of levels went really quickly. I worked through a progression of quest hubs in Zul Drak and Ice Crown, got to see some cool phasing effects, and got set up for some of the main daily, rep grinds.

So, now what? The first thing I did was head over to the Argent Tournament area to do the Trial of the Champion instance. This is a really short instance, three bosses in 15 minutes. There is a small amount of trash before the first two, but its basically insignificant. When all is said and done, you get four purple drops from the three bosses. Lather, rinse, and repeat. As a whole, the group was pretty well geared, with me as the only "new" 80, but we had two random pugs with us and it was still trivially simple. After four runs, I ended up with four new items. Yay.

The rest of the game is all about the grind. You grind heriocs to get badges and gear for new 80s. You grind Wintergrasp to get honor for gems and shards for items. You grind your dailies to get rep to get gear. Of course, each faction has one piece of gear that you need, so you have to grind each one. Finally, you have to grind cooking and fishing quests to get the last of the recipes.

So far, none of these things has been difficult. I ran a couple of heroics with people that had decent gear, and they were trivially simple. I did a Wintergrasp battle, which was a lot of fun. However, this fight seemed pretty easy, which I assume is a combination of attacker usually winning and Horde usually winning. I've done a couple of the fishing and cooking dailies, which are cute the first time or two, but get old quickly. The cooking dailies allow you to get a new recipe every three days. With about 20 recipes available, you should have them all in two months.

I've been pretty underwhelmed. The graphics are great, the stories are reasonable, and some of the quests are kind of cool. I just have no desire to do the same thing over and over just to get better stuff to do the same thing over and over. I think I'm just so far behind the curve that its nearly impossible to find a group that makes anything challenging. And, to be honest, I think Blizzard wants it that way. They want everyone to feel like a bad ass. Wiping on bosses over and over to learn a fight is a thing of the past. Its much easier to put in that same amount of time killing boars, getting tokens, and then getting your gear. I guess more people would kill boars than wipe on a boss, even if means getting the same gear in about the same amount of time. Shrug.

I have a couple of low level alts that I play from time to time. I can play those toons and still get that sense of adventure that was there in the original game. You realize that it was a theme park back then, but that fact was pretty well hidden in what appeared to be a vast world. Now, the theme park thing is trumpeted as a feature, not a bug. Step right up, kill the "terrible" boss, and get an epic item as a souvenir. Shrug.

Off the Wagon

I suppose it had to happen. I finally fell back off of the wagon. The World of Warcraft wagon, to be precise. I never stopped listening to podcasts or reading blogs, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. I had been looking for an RPG "fix" all summer. The announcement of patch 3.2, and the relative dearth of other games, got me to sign up again. I figured I'd do it for a month and see if it "stuck". I was kind of teetering on the edge, but when Blizzard introduced the faction change service, I knew I was doomed. $55 and a day later, my main character (c. 1000 hours played, gulp) was now Undead and on a new server. Yeah, I'm hooked! Heh.

So what has changed? Well, a lot, really.

For one, the graphics are MUCH better than before. The landscapes were done really well. Most of the mobs had new animations that included a lot more detail. The view from hills looking to the coast was absolutely beautiful. And the entire time that I was questing in Howling Fjord, I could see Utgard Keep looming in the background. It was very visually impressive.

I also made my first trip to Dalaran over the week. Wow. It was really, really cool. It was crowded with people, which does a lot to add life to a location. (Go to Silvermoon or Darnassus to see what a dead city looks like.) It was filled with shops that all had interesting things to buy. That is one of my biggest disappointments with the other cities. They are filled with shops full of useless junk. The city seemed to be relatively well organized. I even though the sewer thing was pretty cool... You could check out the "seedy underbelly" of the city. Hah!

I'm also really enjoying questing on my mage. I do a lot of damage... that hasn't changed. What has changed is the amount I have to drink. For normal questing, I NEVER have to drink. Its fabulous. Between gems and the Evocation change, I can continue non-stop. I'm still mana limited in a single, all out fight, but that's okay. It was such a pain to kill a few mobs, stop to drink, kill a few more, drink more, etc. Ugh. Things have been much smoother, resulting in more fun time and much, much less down time. Two thumbs up!

What hasn't changed? The questing. When I last tried to work through Northrend, I was in a race to get to 80 to catch up with the rest of my guild. The quests are dead simple and very well organized. Go to a quest hub, collect the quests, complete them (and they are all located conveniently nearby), and collect your rewards. Repeat a couple of times until you finsh that area, then you'll receive a quest that sends you to the next area. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Well, that bit hasn't changed. Things are exactly the same as before. The quests are all pretty dull... kill X of this, collect Y of that. Yawn. But I did manage to find a couple of chains that were interesting. All three involved attacking an "enemy" base, killing guys, collecting drops, and eventually taking out the leader. Nothing really new, but the fights were kind of fun and they all involved a bit of exploring in addition to the fighting. The only downer was that the final boss fights were "roll your face on the keyboard" simple. That's okay... the chains were still fun. (Hmmm. Maybe I should be troubled that they are called "chains"...)

So far, I'm having a lot of fun. I'm a bit nervous about the end game, but I'm willing to give it a whirl. Apparently Blizzard switched the end game from a few, very involved things to do to a ton of very simple things to do. My guess is that the net time spent is about the same. There was a sense of accomplishment to completing stuff in the old game. I don't know if I'll still feel that way. I guess we'll see. On the bright side, I'm looking forward to it.

The Big Step

Well, I finally did it. I cancelled my subscription to World of Warcraft. I'm sure its not a big deal to most people, but I've played it more than any other game. My guess is somewhere around 1000 hours. Yikes!

While the game was still fun, it had that "been there, done that" feel to it. You can only "kill 1o orcs" or "bring me 10 wolf parts" so many times before it gets boring. I'm a bit sad that I didn't finish the xpac, but I couldn't get past the sameness of it all. All that said, I'm looking forward to Blizzard's net gen super secret MMO. :-)

On the bright side, I should have a lot more time to play other things. I have a TON of minis that need to be painted. I have a TON of boardgames that are collecting dust waiting to be played. I have a TON of books that I really want to read. I'm really excited about making progress on these things once again.

Introducing World of Fogecraft

I've had long conversations with friends about designing an MMO that would address all of our concerns. In this post, I'm going to describe "World of Fogecraft", a hypothetical MMO that we can use as a backdrop for more discussions. While we will focus on issues concerning MMOs, it will also apply to all types of RPGs (pen & paper and computer).

To provide a base level for the discussion, World of Fogecraft, abbreviated WoF, will implement a fantasy setting similar to old school D&D. Its perfectly valid to assume that standard archetypes will be present: fighters, magic users, priests, and rogues. Mobs will run the gamut from normal animals (wolves, bears, etc.) to humanoids (orcs and kobolds) to undead (skeletons and zombies) to all sorts of fantastic creatures, up to and including dragons.

The world will consist of three different zones: Capital City, Dinglewood, and The Borderlands. Capital City is an area much like Stormwind in WoW (or Waterdeep or Greyhawk City in AD&D). It is a large city that provides a base area where characters go to train, buy supplies, etc. Dinglewood is an introductory area that is mostly civilized (think Elwynn Forest or the Dalelands). It has several farms, mines, woods, and a small village. Most of the quests will revolve around securing areas from predators (like wolves) or stopping incursions of bandits/kobolds. The Borderlands is located on the edge of civilization. The only settlement is a Keep, with monsters patrolling beyond its walls.

I plan to expand the discussion to include all aspects of the world, including questing, classes, rewards, and so on. Please feel free to comment on or question any of the assumptions. And if there is a particular aspect of the game that hasn't been mentioned here, I can always add a post to kick off that discussion.

What I Want to See in an MMO

I have been playing World of Warcraft for a couple of years. I am in a casual raiding guild on a PVP server. IMO, it is one of the three best games that I've ever played (along with Magic and Advanced Squad Leader). Still, there are a number of things that would make a better game. Here are my top three items.

1. Allow players actions to "change the world".

As a player, I want to feel that my actions make a difference. I want to feel that killing bandits makes the town safer, or that I'm helping to uncover some long, lost artifact. Its disappointing when you kill the bandit leader, only to see him respawn in 30 seconds.

I'm not sure what the correct answer really is. You want everyone to have a chance to experience everything in the game, but is it really necessary for everyone to experience identical content? For example, a quest chain might have four different final encounters, but identical rewards. That solution would require some coordination between players, since it might be weird if two players are on the same step of the chain but have different objectives. If done right, it could give the players the illusion that their actions have changed the world.

2. You are what you wear, i.e., character roles.

A lot of systems have very well defined character roles in accordance with the MMO trinity: tank, heal, DPS. A lot of classes end up shoe horned into a particular role. In addition, the set of gear and skill requirements for PVP and PVE can be quite different. I think it would be more interesting if classes had the ability to adapt to different roles in different situations. Perhaps it could be a mix of gear and/or skills that allow them to easily switch between two different roles. I think its perfectly acceptable that a character geared/skilled for a particular role should be superior to a character that is set up to be a hybrid. That's the "cost" of flexibility. The key is to have the value of flexibility offset its cost.

How would I like to see this implemented? First, I would make it very easy for players to switch roles. Perhaps a change of gear would work in a pinch, but you should be able to easily re-spec for a particular adventure. Second, I would give classes interesting abilities that can be used in different ways. For example, a magic using class might have a spell that transforms them into a fighter (similar to Mordenkainen's Transformation for old school AD&D types). They would be limited in what magic they could use, if any, but they would have "magical" armor to compensate, turning them into a poor man's tank. They probably won't be able to tank a high end raid boss, but they should be able to handle a lower level instance with some play adjustments. The system should reward the players for adapting to situations.

Thinking about it a bit more, it might be possible to get rid of the trinity altogether. I played D&D for years before I knew what the trinity even was. You might be able to design a system that rewards a balanced party as opposed to the formulaic one. Who knows...

3. Remove the "Hamster Wheel".

This is my biggest pet peeve of all. I can't stand the fact that you have to run the same dungeons over and over again to get everyone all of the items that they need. World of Warcraft has taken this to a new level, so pretty much everything requires some form of hamster wheel. In addition to the gear grind, it has money and reputation grinds. As a business model, its fantastic, since it keeps that subscription money coming. For players, however, it can be very tiring.

I do understand the desire for progression, where you have to complete dungeon A before you have a chance to complete dungeon B, and so on. Players also want to feel that their characters are continuously improving. I think the key is to provide enough end game content to a) keep people busy and b) feel like they are accomplishing something. Perhaps some variation of world building, or maybe politics, or some sort of epic adventures would provide for an interesting end game.

Anyways, these are three areas that I think can be improved in MMOs. They are not easy problems, but I do think that you can create a successful game if you can solve them.