Monday 8 January, 2007

World of Warcraft PVP Gamelog

Section 1: (3:00-4:00)

Game 1: Arathi Basin. (win)
Game 2: Arathi Basin (Lose)
Game 3: Arathi Basin (Lose)
Interlude: World PVP

Perhaps one of the more fun games I've played in quite some time, We managed a win. For those of you just tuning in, I play an alliance Mage. The Alliance, as a whole, tends to lose badly in these sort of games, though no one is exactly sure why. It could be that we're disorganized, or that there is an internal hatred against the alliance. Who knows.
Regardless of the reasons, PVP in WoW is one of the two major things that players can do upon reaching Level 60. This PVP, however, is done only in extremely controlled situations, namely 'Battlegrounds'. The Battleground of the week is Arathi Basin, which at least functions under a somewhat interesting mechanic of being the first team to 2000 resource. Resources are gathered by taking and holding any or all of the five nodes on the map.
While this idea is novel, it is not particularly deep. Infact, it is probably some of the least deep PVP I've ever encountered in an RPG, and feels like it would be significantly more at home in a Shooter game. While that's not a bad thing, per se, it means that the game gets very boring very quickly.


Interlude: World PVP

Occasionally, PVP in the 'wide' world of WoW does happen. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon some today. A group of horde had shown up in Iron-forge, and were messing around. This was pretty fun, and lead to me having a very dramatic fight with another mage on the Deeprun Tram. However, it ended pretty quickly.


Second Section: (4:15-5:15)

Game 1: Arathi Basin (Loss)
Game 2: Arathi Basin (Loss)
Game 3: Arathi Basin (Loss)


Okay. While the first hour or so of WoW was very fun, and pretty rewarding... The second was significantly less so. By the second half, the games had slipped into rather repetitive monotony. While it's possible that this simply stems from the fact that there are a total of three battlegrounds, of which I only played one, I've come to believe that the issue is deeper than that.
You see, it's not just that there are only three battlegrounds. It's more that, outside of a few changes to Alterac Valley, the battlegrounds are exactly the same as they were on the day they were first added. There is no feeling of accomplishment after most battles; It is simply another round.
This issue goes to the core of WoW, however. You see; No matter what you do in the game, none of it remains long term. If you kill the opposing factions leader, that NPC will return in full health but a few minutes later. Quests are no different. I have thwarted the same plans of the same monsters time and time again. Plans which, Outside of the first half of a single plotline, not advanced at all. There are no world events. There are no lasting marks. There is nothing that we as players can do to affect the world around us in any meaningful way.
An MMO should, in theory, present a dynamic and realistic world. Sure, some things aren't at all realistic, like death, but some of it has to be. The world cannot be perpetually locked in summer, with the trees and grass green year round, despite snowstorms that darken the sky. The World must change; It must live; It must breath.
Instead, WoW offers a world that is pretty. But beneath that prettiness there is very little. There are a few quests, but most are the same. There are a few types of PVP, but two of the three feel like school yard games (Gnomes and CTF) and the final feels like a poorly implemented version of a very old game for Warcraft Three (Defense of the Ancients).

And yet, despite all this, WoW is a run away success. It has well over 7 million players world wide. Obviously they must be doing something right.

Section Three.

The question the becomes, (for me at least), what I can I learn from Blizzard to make my own eventual MMO successful. As of now, I'm not certain what I would implement the same way as blizzard. Instead; I am painfully aware of what I would change. The List is as follows.

-Death
-PvE Game
-PvP
-Scope
-Character progression and Development

In other-words... Almost everything. However, Blizzard did manage to make one aspect of World of Warcraft work very well. Despite how complex many aspects are (They're not deep, mind you, just complex) WoW is still a very easy game to simply pick up and play. That is, perhaps, the lesson I have learned most from WoW. A successful game needs to be simple enough that anyone can pick up and play it with relative ease, while being complex enough to keep interest up long term. WoW has done a great job with the first part of this; The months and years to come will show how well it can do the second.

Excellent. You've taken a model game you see as difinitive as a staple of the genre you wish to design, and you've specified elements of it you wish to change, as well as selected the thing in WoW you view as it's strongest point.

I totally agree with you that the easy learning curve is WoW, and in general Blizzard's main selling point. I tend to thing the other things Blizzard tends to nail is game stability (relatively speaking, Blizzard games tend not to crash) and elegance of the user interface.

So, you listed five things you weren't a fan of. Death, PvE Game, PvP, Scope and Character progression.

Which of those are you the most opposed to WoW's job on? How would you do it differently? What sort of effect do you think your changes would have on server load, learning curve and player interaction dynamics? What would you add and take away, bearing in mind each feature will likely make an MMO lag just that much more.

I would probably say either PVE or PVP progression are things that need to be tuned up most. As far as PVE goes, I do understand why blizzard has very few in game events and the like; They simply dont have enough GM's to run them. However, as the demon invasion event will attest, they do have the ability to make preprogramed world events. All they need to do is make the events better. Yes, some people wont have fun if they're being over run by a horde of demons, but... Most people will. For instance, if I were to redesign the Demon event, I would have drastically upped the number of demons, increased the spawn locations to two per continent (Felwood and Azshara for Kalimdor, Dark Portal and EPL/WPL for Eastern Kingdoms) and have the demons actually march on the towns. Instead of spawning randomly, I'd have given them a set number to spawn, and had various bosses and the like. I'd also have added afew NPC's on the route which, upon dying, would spawn more demons. That gives it the feeling of an actual event.

The Dark Portal event in The Caverns of Time show's that blizzard is capable of doing this sort of thing. For some reason, however, they don't seem to want to. Oh well, hopefully they will be more willing to try this at the next event.


As for PVP; I would say the most important change that Blizzard could have made would simply be to implent more combat oriented Battlegrounds. Most of the battlegrounds we have now are rather... childish. Such as Capture The Flag (WSG) or Resource Horde (Ala Arathi Basin) or the new combination of the two (Eye of the Storm). Beyond that, even the more complex battlegrounds like Alterac Valley have been drastically simplified over the past year.