Category: World of Warcraft

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Time to Cap

Commenter Alucian states:

unlike other MMOs, Blizzard actually scales xp needed to level and gained from quests with the current number of levels to max. They ensure it takes the same amount of time to get from 1-endgame whatever the max level may be.

This is an interesting notion to me, one I have not considered because I have been through only one level cap increase (CoX does not count) in my ten MMO years (old old old). Every time you increase the level cap, you can change the rate of experience accumulation so that time to cap is unchanged.

Would you wait a few months after the new expansion to do so? On one hand, you don’t want existing players to feel like their “work” has been “cheapened.” On the other hand, the expansion will not be terribly helpful in recruiting new players if they see months between them and that shiny new expansion. There is also the scaling o, that. Many games seem to want the last ten levels to take as long as all the levels before them, or the expansion to take as long as the old “late levels.” You would need to halve the old late levels’ leveling time to make the new time-to-cap fit, with the new late levels taking as long as the old late levels did.

If you keep re-scaling experience, and your level cap keeps rising, you eventually will have players leveling by walking near the newbie zones. Alternately, your time to level through later expansions would be increasingly short, although that might not be an entirely bad thing. If you do not keep re-scaling experience, you start seeing a dizzying distance from level 1 to the cap, particularly if you obey that principle of how long the last 10 levels should take. You could keep that time constant, so 1-40 takes 120 hours, 40-50 takes 120 hours, 50-60 takes 120 hours, etc. I think it would quickly become insane with the “50-60 takes 240 hours, 60-70 takes 480 hours…” interpretation.

: Zubon

WoW will eat itself

With my time returning to World of Warcraft, I have come to the same conclusion, independently, that much of the blogosphere seems to already know: the thing that will kill World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft.  Their hubris will be their downfall.  This will be, unfortunately and as hopelessly optimistic as I was in starting this, my last degree of WoW.

My biggest worry when re-entering World of Warcraft after having not played it for three years was the feeling of playing catch up the entire time.  I am a very casual player.  I like to get in grind mode occasionally for loot or leveling, but I also like to explore both areas and quests.   I had plenty to explore in World of Warcraft.  However, I would be exploring mostly alone.  I saw people here and there on both my blood elf in the blood elf starting zone and death knight in the outlands, but it was almost awkward.  It was as if we did not really expect to see each other there, and secretly did not want to.  It felt kind of like meeting an old high school buddy at the mall.

On global chat and guild chat, I continually saw the nightly events for some raid (mostly max-level Ulduar), but I never saw anything for Outlands.  I tried to get a group for “ramps,” some early dungeon in the Outlands.  After 15 minutes on a Friday night, I managed to get one other death knight in my party.  I could not take this type of gameplay any longer.  It actually destroyed my will to play MMOs for a weekend.

This is how WoW will eat itself.  Players just starting or returning and 20 levels behind will hit a lonely cliff face.  At the top they will hear something of a party, but the climb is long.  This is not something a developer should want.  If anything a returning player should be surrounded with activity. Continue reading WoW will eat itself

Degrees of WoW – 100 Minutes

I played the blood elf for a couple more levels, and I finally ran into two people at the second quest hub.  It was interesting because at first the duo (one blood elf and one troll) just blew by me, but due to QuestHelper we were clearly following the same path of quests.  It felt like drafting.  We exchanged pleasantries and buffs, and they played through.  Then, Indy came down the MMO mountain like Pai Mei, and told me what I had seemingly overlooked.  I could play a death knight, and just start out with the second expansion’s material.

Numina became Excrucian, and my days serving the Lich King began.  With the death knight starting area, Blizzard had clearly found the inclusivity I felt was lacking in the other starting areas.  There was activity, things were dying, and I felt like I had a job to do.  Through my next degree of WoW, I only ran into two or three other people, but this time it did not matter.  The world felt alive.

And in this strange dichotomy of degrees, I learned something about myself.  I liked MMOs not just because it was multiplayer, but it was massively so.  The first word in the acronym took on new meaning.  Maybe it wasn’t a matter of objective degree, such as the number of players on a server.  It felt like it was more subjectively about the activities going on around me.  When I walk in to town with players chatting, using the auction house, fishing, crafting, and dancing that’s when it felt like dancing.  The death knight starting area and a few other MMO starting areas showed me that to some degree, the feeling of massive-ness could be faked with good use of NPC’s.  But, I digress…

Continue reading Degrees of WoW – 100 Minutes

Degrees of WoW – 10 Minutes

I did get a single add-on before heading out to the blood elf starting area: QuestHelper.  QuestHelper is a popular add-on that adds the location and direction of the fedex items or NPCs to kill for each quest (much like Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, or Lord of the Rings Online).  The added benefit is the add-on seeks to map out an efficient route for the player to complete the quests.  I liked it.  It made things faster.

So, I grab my first quest.  Kill weak mana creatures that are standing a stone’s throw from the little blood elf enclave.  It seems that through the first few quests that the animals have gone ape-y due to the blood elves loss of control of magic.  It starts really simply, and even though this is a new zone, it feels much like my start so long ago killing wolves in the human starting area.  My first ten minutes are really basic, and I am kind of disappointed.  This was Blizzard’s chance to redo a starting area so that it is engaging.

The NPCs might as well have been sign posts, and the animals could have been boxes.  The area was pretty, but there was no sense of inclusivity.  It was clearly a tutorial in the most banal sense.  I guess I was a little spoiled by Lord of the Rings Online immediate foray into the epic story.  And, Warhammer Online was perfect in giving players the feeling that this was war and war was where they belonged.  NPC’s were fighting NPC’s.  Things were dying.  Cannons were destroying things.  Even when I was alone in the area it didn’t feel like it.  And, honestly that might have been the problem.  I was dead alone on a workday night in a game with nearly 12 million subscribers.  I hope I will run in to someone in the next degree of WoW.

–Ravious
sleepless long nights

Degrees of WoW – 1 Minute

After hours of downloading and updating, I am finally in.  The RPGNet crew beckons me to Kirin Tor, and I choose blood elf because I am told that the new starting areas are much better.  Plus, for a while I will actually have access to new content.  I choose a priest because it feels like comfortable, old slippers.  Click random, click random, hot enough.  Enter world.

I had not set foot in the game for three years.  I joined World of Warcraft about four months after launch.  I had a brand new laptop to play the game on, and a little time to play each day.  My character was a human priest on Feathermoon, the most populous RP server at the time.  With the time I played it took me quite a while to get up to level 46, and then I quit.  I just could not take the seeming no-man’s land between 40-59 anymore.  It felt like that last mile in a race, only everybody was finished and that mile was longer than all the other ones before it.  I guess it didn’t help that I liked to fish for those oilies so much.

Why am I playing again?

A few reasons spring to mind.  Blizzard does a good job at many things, and since they have come back from the elitist edge of The Burning Crusade into something much more casual, it grabbed my interest.  I want to try out the new expansion.  The phased storyline and Wintergrasp are two things I really want to experience.  I am kind of in a lull with the other MMOs I play.  Unlike some other new MMOs, this has uber-polish.  Hit and miss F2P games are not worth my time to try.

Things I am not excited about?

The subscription.  With the amount I play I kind of agree with the subscription seen as welfare for the hardcore.  Luckily, money is less of an issue at the moment.  The grind.  In the early stages things move rather quickly, but in World of Warcraft of past, I quickly hit a wall.  I’ve heard that Blizzard has graded the leveling curve to be a bit quicker now, and I can always transfer a level 55+ character to Kirn Tor and make a Death Knight.  That being said, I am playing how I want to play and casually.  I am praying that Blizzard has pumped up this type of gameplay in the “old” content.

We’ll see how this adventure goes.

Ravious
1, 2, 3, 4 tell me that you love me more

Fast Leveling in Older Games

Bug or feature?

Many games with expansion packs have started speeding their players to the end, so that they can be where all the other players are (and need to buy the expansion pack to advance). WoW does this most visibly, even before having you invite friends for triple xp and zebra love. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ made the early levels faster and started running nigh-continuous bonus xp weekends, weeks, and months.

City of Heroes may have done this with Mission Architect. Farming is more or less constant. You can pick the enemy best optimized for your character or make your own perfect foe. Grab friends, smash, repeat. A single run through a good farm will get you to level 20. This differs from normal powerleveling because Architect can be set up to auto-sidekick everyone to the same level range. You no longer need bridges, care in mission selection, or anything: pick your ideal enemy, fill a mission with copies of that one guy, and smash. If that is too hard, add pets that will increase your defenses.

City of Heroes, however, has no endgame. There are a few hard things to do at 50, but mostly you can just keep running missions. A variety of tools let you do pretty much anything at 50 that you could earlier, so it is always better to be higher level, but it is not as though you are raiding or something. Getting to 50 means being 50, maybe farming for those purples.

City of Heroes is, however again, very alt-friendly, complete with sales of extra character slots of more alts. Want to try a new character? Bam, level 20 in an hour, try a dozen new powers. Out of character slots? Bam, $20, 5 more. If people are racing to the level cap and re-rolling, that can only mean more money. Or they quit, but your most competent power-levelers are long-term players who came to peace with the lack of endgame years ago.

: Zubon

Right premise, wrong conclusion

WoW’s (former?) head dev Jeff Kaplan gave a nice little chat at the GDC. You can find it easily elsewhere in the world wide net. But I’d like to call attention to the following snippets, on quest texts and the medium:

Kaplan explained the age-old internet phrase, relating it to WoW quests that are simply too wordy.

“World of Warcraft quest designers are limited to 511 characters,” he said. “That’s all that will fit into the data entry. And all you programmers know why it’s not 512.”

Some quest designers ask for more space, Kaplan said, saying, “Why are there only 511 characters? We gotta have more, let’s blow that out.”
But Kaplan would prefer to see WoW quests go in the other direction.

“I actually wish that the number was smaller. I think it’s great to limit people in how much pure text they can force on the player. Because honestly… if you ever want a case study, just watch kids play it, and they’re just mashing the button. They don’t want to read anything.”

And this other little choice gem:

Kaplan prepared the crowd for a rant at this point.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone else. We’re so fortunate and privileged to work in a medium that is not only an art, but a revolutionary interactive form of entertainment. It’s unfortunate to see so many games try to be what they’re not, including our game at times. Of course we should embrace the concept of story… art, literature, film, song, they’ve all embraced story as well. But they all tell it in their own unique way.

I feel like we need to deliver our story in a way that is uniquely video game. We need to engage our audience by letting them be the hero or the villain or the victim. [Art, film, literature], they’re tools. But we need to engage our players in sort of an inspiring experience, and the sooner we accept that we are not Shakespeare, Scorsese, Tolstoy or the Beatles, the better off we are.

“If it makes us feel better, Shakespeare couldn’t 3D model his way out of a paper bag,” concluded Kaplan.

“Basically, and I’m speaking to the Blizzard guys in the back: we need to stop writing a fucking book in our game, because nobody wants to read it.”

Dear Mr. Jeff Kaplan (Jeff K.? lawls, etc.), if you’re reading this, my humble comment: It’s not about 511 characters or more, and it’s not that people don’t want to read your quest texts because they’re too long. People skip your texts because the quality of the texts stinks. A good writer can work wonders with 511 characters. What I would suggest to you, sir, is not to lower the limit, or raise it. The solution is pretty obvious: Hire better writers. There are tons of good writers out there that produce excellent stuff and are dying to get some work. When you outsource the writing to a programmer, marketing guy, cousin or whatever you’re only doing a disservice to the game.

What’s in a name?

I’m in a quandary.

I am to server transfers what Madonna is to adopting children from Malawi and I find myself in a situation where I’m thinking of going back to the server where a lot of my friends are returning to after having spent the last few weeks and months cajoling them into resubbing. Although we have decided to start from scratch again, I’m not really willing to leave my undead Warlock where he is after finally getting him to 80 and spending a little while making money and getting gear together. I don’t particularly like the server I’m on and I don’t click with the guild I’m currently in but as I’m only a social member, my departure will probably go unnoticed.

The problem I face is this: since I left the server I’m thinking of returning to, someone has taken my character’s name. Not just a someone but a smelly, pointy eared Night Elf Death Knight.

It’s my own fault. I didn’t leave a placeholder character with that name just in case I ever decided to return to that server but, then again, I didn’t think I ever would. I’m sure I’ll probably be able to live with a new name as well because, well, to paraphrase a famous level 80 Bard, “That which we call a warlock by any other name would still devour the souls of his enemeie – unless thou art a gnome in which case thine foes will laugh themselves unto death.” So while I may not be entirely pleased at the thought of having to change his name, I’m more concerned about coming up with a suitable alternative.

This troubles me more than being able to find a PUG competent enough to run Heroic Nexus without wiping.

6

I’ve been tagged by Ysharros over at Stylish Corpse to post my sixth screen shot so I looked into my storage drive to see what was there. Asheron’s Call 2? Dungeons & Dragons Online? EVE Online? Nah.

I decided to go with my World of Warcraft folder because the 6th image in there comes right out of the end of beta event and includes three Magmadars in a place where they just don’t belong. Without any further rambling, here it is.

This is a tag-free post so relax. You may pretend I tagged you if you want to play along.

– Ethic

A Twinking Story

Our buddy Syp links to a GameSpy column on how irrelevant and easy the original 60 levels of WoW have become. Beyond quicker leveling, and even quicker leveling with refer-a-friend zebras, old-fashioned twinking has been re-introduced:

…after putting the Greater Inscription of the Gladiator on it, my little level six Rogue had an extra 30 stamina and 15 resilience. An extra 30 stamina is a sizable boost at level 80; at level six it’s just overpowered. The real reason to pick these up, though? The passive 10% boost to experience gained from killing monsters. That, my friends, is leveling made easy.

/faceroll

At level six my character had more than triple the health of a normal rogue of his level, and dealt more than four times the damage, not counting when the fiery enchant on his sword would go off. Just for fun, I dueled some level 11 and 12 characters who were going at it in Brill, and it wasn’t even close. I was killing characters twice my level in seconds, while barely getting scratched. No need to stealth. Just walk up to them and Sinister Strike until they’re dead.

Any challenge that I may have encountered while leveling this Rogue through the starting areas was completely taken out of the equation. I don’t even bother with stealth anymore, instead focusing on the delicious ham sandwich I’m eating as I cruise through the levels.

: Zubon