MMO Weekly: Easy Peasy WoW

12 Oct 2010 at 17:51:27 by Jeff Hollis

Aloha there, fellow travelers of virtual space, and welcome to this week's easy-peasy edition of MMO Weekly.  In this week's essay, we'll examine the nature of WoW's upcoming expansion, Cataclysm.  In particular, we'll focus on the “convenience factor” that the developers keep chatting about. 

What is this idea of convenience when it comes to playing WoW?  Well, the developers of WoW are deliberately designing the game to be a bit easier to play.  They are taking the drudgery out of the game, and in its place there is ease-of-use.  Their stated goal is to make all elements of the game more fun, and to remove the parts of the game that seem like work.

Remember, if you will, that it wasn't so long ago that WoW had followed in the footsteps of its spiritual forefathers, in particular EQ.  The game had become raid-centric, with the best loot being dropped by raid bosses.  For the few players that were able to get 25+ people together in a timely and manageable way, this was a good thing.  For everyone else, it simply sucked. 

The instances were also full of drudgery.  A given instance had multiple bosses, and clearing the way to each was more like work than fun.  Clearing an instance sometimes took hours.

Beyond this, the game had become very grind heavy.  Players did daily quests, or ran the same instances over and over and over again, all of which earned various kinds of tokens.  With these various tokens, players could purchase some epics.  Gaining tokens became like going to work.  Log in, do your dailies, run Instance X yet again, and collect your pay.  Whoopie, isn't this just so much fun? 

Blizzard then began to switch things up.  Raids became much smaller – 10 players.  This is a much more manageable figure.  Getting a raid together is actually quite easy, and it's a lot more fun than those overstuffed raids of yore.  Instances became shorter, and quicker to clear out.  Blizzard's stated goal in making these changes?  They didn't want everyone to feel that they had to log in for hours at a clip.  They wanted players to be able to log in, play for short periods of time, and be able to get out again. The game was becoming more casual.

And now, with Cataclysm, that trend is happening to an even greater degree.  The game is slated to become even more casual, more convenient, than ever before.  Blizzard really wants all parts of the game to be fun.  They want the entire experience to be a good, happy time.  They want to eliminate, wherever possible, the drudgery and work of the MMOs of yesteryear.  

How can this be done?  We have a couple of concrete examples.  First, quests are much more convenient than ever before.  When a player is given a quest, say “kill 10 kobolds”, he used to go and murder some innocent kobolds, then run back to the quest giver for his reward.  At this point, the quest giver would give him the second part of the quest, which generally involved killing some slightly tougher kobolds.  The player essentially repeated the first quest, this time killing kobold overseers (or whatever).  The player then ran back to the quest giver, and this whole process repeated itself.  Eventually, the player was given the last quest in the chain, which involved killing a kobold captain, and then he'd run"to the auest giltedtkillungta iver, and obtain his final reward. 

Blizzard realized that parts of these traditional quests were fun – the hunting, killing, and fighting -- but other parts were not.  The parts that weren't fun were the parts where the player ran back and forth to talk to the quest giver.  All those trips to town just weren't enjoyable, and actually slowed the player's progress down considerably.

Blizzard's new vision for questing is different.  The player goes into town, and collects all the available quests from the various quest givers.  Then he heads out to the goblin camp, where he dutifully kills all the goblin peasants like he was asked.  However, the instant this quest is fulfilled, the player gets his reward, and is given the next phase of the quest.  This happens in the field.  He never needs to go back to town to talk to the quest giver.  This continues for each step of the chain.  Thus town becomes truly a place of rest, and a place to do business.  Players can go back to town to sell off their loot or to buy supplies.  It's no longer a necessary pit stop along the way that they are forced to visit.  

Blizzard is taking a somewhat similar approach when it comes to the new instances.  Statements about this have been limited, but if I understand what the devs are trying to do, it sounds pretty positive.  Players will find that the instances have eliminated much of the unnecessary grinding.  In order to kill a given boss, players will have to clear out his minions, but these minions will be much more reasonable.  No longer will players have to kill hundreds of peons, peasants, and low level fighters.  They will simply fight a smaller number of (hopefully) higher quality, more entertaining battles before they get to the boss.

Further, there will be fewer bosses per instance.  This is a good thing.  In the old days, clearing an instance filled with half a dozen different bosses was, again, a lot of work.  Now dungeons don't have six wings to them, each with a different overlord. 

The net effect of these changes is that players can form a group, and run a dungeon, in well under an hour.  This is all because Blizzard is trying to make each instance into a much more reasonable experience.  Players will fight a fixed number of pitched battles, then fight the boss and collect the loot.  Pretty quickly, they're off to seek out the second boss, then the third.  All the grinding through wave after wave of easy enemies is over. 

Is this a good thing?  Of course, the old hardcore players don't think so.  They've been vocal about this for years.  But the truth of the matter is that most players really don't like the grind-y parts of any MMO.  They like the parts where you fight, get loot, complete quests, and kill bosses.  Blizzard appears to recognize this, and they are giving players what they want. 

Allow me to ask this question:  Do you, the MMO player, like this “more convenient” style of MMO, or the old school, EverQuest style where you earned every little thing?  Personally, the parts of EQ that bothered me the most were the super grind-y parts.  You know, where you had to kill countless orcs to improve your reputation with the local town.  If you improved it enough, the town guards wouldn't kill you on sight.  However, I do know players that love that kind of gameplay – it's a challenge, after all.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.  Are you the new kinder, gentler player, or do you find yourself more in league with old grandpa hardcore?

At that, fellow gamers, I have to wrap it up for this week.  If you enjoyed this write up, and want to keep abreast of the very latest and greatest happenings in geekdom, come visit us over at Coolorama.com,  where we cover this kind of tomfoolery each and every day.  For now, ciao!

Comment