MMO Weekly 30/06/09
30 Jun 2009 at 10:47:19 by
Jeff Hollis
In part one of this two part series, Jeff Hollis discusses how to bring the long, slow and painful death to an MMO. Using the most popular MMO available at the moment, Hollis draws comparisons to other, previously more successful, MMOs.
Hello there, my fellow gamebots, and welcome to the latest and greatest installment of MMO Weekly. In this week's article, we're going to talk about everyone's favorite MMO, World of Warcraft. Specifically, we're going to talk about how WoW is killing itself.
Yeah, that's right, you heard me. WoW is in the act of committing suicide, and Blizzard don't even know it. Now, before you get all huffy and angry with me (save that for later, you Blizzlovers, you), allow me to give you a bit of background. And when I say background, I mean way, waaaaay back, to the games that inspired WoW in the first place, and to where these games went wrong.
First up: EverQuest. EQ was a very, very good game. You created a character (and they gave you a LOT of options), you formed PUGs, you went on adventures, and you delved some dungeons. Of course, you got loot drops along the way, and your character ended up in some pretty sweet gear. You did this for months, and when you finally reached the endgame, you did this some more. This basic mechanic - get a group, clear a dungeon to reach a boss, kill that boss, and get some drops - was the thing that everyone found so utterly fun, so endlessly amazing, and they wanted to play EQ for years.
And that's when the development team behind EverQuest got together and said, "Hey, guys, you know what would be a great idea? What if we took this extremely successful, fun game, and then we changed the fundamental mechanic which makes it so much fun? What if we change all the rules once people get to the endgame? Wouldn't that be just brilliant?" And everyone on the team agreed that this would be a great idea. And Brad McQuaid, developer-king of EverQuest, genius that he is, introduced the worst concept to ever plague an MMO: the raid.
A raid is basically a super-sized group, meant to explore a super-hard, super-long dungeon. Instead of 5 or 6 people, a raid was comprised of forty people. The idea is that if a group is fun, a big group raiding a big dungeon will be even more fun. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The problem is logistical: it's hard to get 40 people to the same place at the same time, organise them into smaller groups, and then make sure there's enough healing, nuking, tanking, etc in each group. There also needs to be systems to handle loot drops, a waiting list when critical people drop out of the raid, and other considerations. In EverQuest, it was all pretty darned complicated, and most people didn't raid. Sure, maybe they tried it once or twice, but it wasn't fun. It was work, and it took hours to complete a single raid. Of course, a few guilds - really, very few - got into this concept, and they raided consistently.
There were several consequences to introducing raids to EQ. 1) Because of the epic gear that dropped in the raid dungeons, people in raid guilds became super-powered. 2) Raiders also achieved a kind of elevated status; if you needed a tank for your group, you'd naturally choose a tank in raid-quality gear over one in normal dungeon gear. That super tank would almost ensure the success of your group, no matter what bosses your group was trying to beat. 3) People no longer enjoyed their hard-won dungeon gear; it had become second rate the moment raid gear was introduced into the game. 4) As a result of point 3, running a dungeon suddenly became a lot less fun than it used to be. Essentially, you formed a group and cleared a dungeon and killed a boss, and your reward (when compared to raid loot) was some bland, mediocre gear. Whoopie.
Yeah, that's right, you heard me. WoW is in the act of committing suicide, and Blizzard don't even know it. Now, before you get all huffy and angry with me (save that for later, you Blizzlovers, you), allow me to give you a bit of background. And when I say background, I mean way, waaaaay back, to the games that inspired WoW in the first place, and to where these games went wrong.
A raid is basically a super-sized group, meant to explore a super-hard, super-long dungeon. Instead of 5 or 6 people, a raid was comprised of forty people. The idea is that if a group is fun, a big group raiding a big dungeon will be even more fun. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The problem is logistical: it's hard to get 40 people to the same place at the same time, organise them into smaller groups, and then make sure there's enough healing, nuking, tanking, etc in each group. There also needs to be systems to handle loot drops, a waiting list when critical people drop out of the raid, and other considerations. In EverQuest, it was all pretty darned complicated, and most people didn't raid. Sure, maybe they tried it once or twice, but it wasn't fun. It was work, and it took hours to complete a single raid. Of course, a few guilds - really, very few - got into this concept, and they raided consistently.
User comments
Blizzard has introduced 10 man versions of new raids for the exact purpose of allowing more 'regular' players access to these, previously hardcore-only, events. I would say that Blizzard saw what was going wrong with end game and is actively working to prevent end game from being elite only. I've raided more since WotLK and its 10 man raids came out that I ever did in all my 4 years playing the game.
I'll be interested to see what part 2 of this article will contain :)
In FFXI you can do something like raiding but you join parties together. Unfortunatly it's not easy to advertise your group for wanting to join these events but it would've been nice to put up a "flag" for your already together party of 6, to be ready for raiding and for another party to join up etc until you have the 3 party limit ready to do it.
One other point that I'm sure Jeff is going to make is 10 man dungeons do not cure the problem. You soon realize that there's no point to running 10 man dungeons since the loot is sub-par.
Second, not everyone cares of their gear is subpar. You don't have to be a hardcore raider/pvper to have fun.
Third, BG's have never been better.
Fourth, D&D didn't start with "Pwn this dungeon, get phat loot," and saying so condemns you as the elitist you are. If you believe that's all a good game should have in it, you shouldn't be the one writing this article.
/nerdrage off
While that point is partially true you need to remember that is what hard modes were for. Blizzard even goes further with this in 3.2 with both the normal 10 and 25 man giving the same iLvL loot and the heroic 10 and 25 man giving the same iLvL loot.
This entire article just seems to be using examples of things in past games that do not even apply to WoW any longer.
There is a major problem with this - it's keenly obvious you haven't played the predecessors and know very little about the background of those games and more importantly, how those games were actually played back in the day.
EverQuest with 40 raid members? Killing through a dungeon to get to the final boss during times to "level up"? After reading this, I'm not even sure you know what the PNP is (hint: Play Nice Policy).
While I can appreciate your interest in wanting to help out WoW by offering background information and pointing out its flaws, unfortunately it falls flat with the misinformation provided. Other major things to consider - AA points? What about games called Sojourn and Duris?
At this time, calling the decline of a major title based on one facet of its multi-faceted offerings seems a bit short sighted. Casual gamers in WoW have more content to play with than at launch, from PvP to grouping to small raids that they can join small guilds to complete.
While I agree that WoW is declining (in fact, I no longer play), what I don't agree with is the "why" in the argument you're presenting - and unfortunately, I don't think you have enough background knowledge and experience. Good luck to you though!
Already the thread has focussed in on the details of things like raid mechanics when the whole game concept is pointless. Yes I said pointless.
In all these MMOs what do you achieve? What as a player are you aiming toward? As it stands it seems little more than, make my avatars attributes numerically higher so he can go onto do quest/missions/raids against NPCs with numerically higher attributes, in an upward spiral of "bigger-numbers-but-nothing-else-has-really-changed" until you hit the completely artificial barriers and limits of cap limit and/or no more content!
And then when you look back at the environment you are in, did you change it in anyway? no, the princess still needs rescuing, the dragon still needs slaying, not by you maybe but the other players coming up their own numbers spiral. And when you look at your avatar, is he special in any way? unique at all? no, just the same as all the other players avatars at that level of development, YOU are not THE hero. And the MMO aspect, how many of the 11+ million players did you interact with? hardly any, you went around with your mates/guildmates most of the time, in an instance to isolate you group from the rest of the populace, and you complain about Lagrimmar/Lagforge.
So many good points. I've always hated the "everyone is THE hero" aspect of MMOs. TBH I've only ever used an MMO as a chat-room with a mini-game.