NCSoft, Carbine and the exclusive raiding endgame.

For me it seems, the current try to resurrect Wildstar failed as well. Even if Carbine tried everything to save their world by offering a complete diverse continuum of content for every playstyle possible.

The hard truth is that raids are a vital part of any MMORPG nowadays, and that limiting raids to a small minority will always end in the question

“Why should i play Wildstar if other MMORPGs allow me to raid?”

Without doubt, Carbine went the wrong path with the #hardcore-tag, and while it seems they tried everything to jump on the casual-gamer bandwagon, they stopped at endgame and excluded raids to be still available only for the most engaged players.

Games like World of Warcraft, SWTOR and Final Fantasy XIV show that its actually possible to create raid content for a large audience, while World of Warcraft did not really implement any kind of raiding that actually would adress a large playerbase for longer than completing the story.

If Wildstar wants to adress any kind of player, they have to become aware that Raids are a integral part of any MMORPG nowadays for every kind of player, so Carbine needs to tear down the last “#hardcore”-brickwall and make raids accessible to anyone.

Blizzard and the lack of fresh Content

World of Warcraft has the biggest development team since years. But no matter how big the dev team is, the output of fresh content seems rather low in comparison to the first years of the game.

J. Allen Brack seemed very proud when he announced the WoW-team is bigger than ever before, and that they had a development team working both on content for the current expac and on the new expac simultanously.

While that sounds great in a PR setting, the truth is that blizzard still releases new content way too slow, and that their innovative power currently is limited to questionable new social features (twitter integration, the selfie cam) or redos of old content (mythic dungeons, timewalker).

The overall output rate of content seems lower than ever before. While this could also be an illusion, as blizzard focuses way more on a few components than they did before Mists of Pandaria.

Before Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard created new Daily quest hubs, new dungeons and new raids at least every 2nd big patch. With Mists of Pandaria they tried to streamline new content to new raids and new open world activities, which also means they focused on raids way more than they ever did before. The big part of the budget was being put into raids, and was not split onto dungeons, open world and raids equally anymore.

Nowadays, with WoD, raiding seems to consume the largest part of the development effort, while the classic raiding game only adresses a very few of blizzards large pool of different playstyles. LFR is missing replayability, as blizzard both added features to make queue times unbearable (as like role selection) and as they nerfed the extrinsic reward level to oblivion (based on organized raiders feedback), giving players no other reward than the narrative and a close to zero character progression.

LFR is a poor mans implementation of the raiding game. It is neither engaging nor very replayable, as the extrinsic rewards just dont offer incentive enough to play it more than once. Still, LFR has to be the great saturday night show for millions of players, which should offer more than lore thats only interesting once and rewards that actually help the player to progress.

In retrospective, it would probably be better to add a wide range of content, and not to focus on raids entirely, while the core raiding game itself focuses exclusively on organization and preparation, while it needs premade groups to work properly.

Deriving mass content from a component like raiding was the worst decision blizzard ever made. Instead of that, blizzard better should have accepted its niche existence and release content for it based on the real participation rate of very engaged players. Instead of LFR, blizzard should have added dedicated content which targeted the large audience and solo players, and not just reuse raiding content which was created for a few only.

Dont get me wrong, i dont want LFR to be removed. I just think raiding should not receive the focus it does today, and blizzard should offer diversified content and many options to play the game instead.

Raiding, no matter if there also is a version for the large audience, seems to be like a content-black hole that demands a high effort and a focus from the development team, which also means other content, innovations and new gameplay dont receive the love they actually should.

Blizzard and the sex-appeal of a skinner box.

Designing a MMORPG is a real problem if you just have a limited time span to create new content, and just a limited effort you could put into creating new content. So you have to add repetetive content to a MMORPG and to reward repetition by extrinsic rewards. A common method to actually endure content is operant conditioning, where you condition volition to continue to play a game by rewards only.

This method was discovered by Burrhus Frederic Skinner , he found out that its just about the reward to condition animals to repeat actions no matter if they are interesting or fun to get the reward at the end of the process. He also found out this Skinner Box worked for humans.

While adding skinner boxes surely is a legit way to endure content, it is not really creating engaging gameplay. Because the gameplay itself is not the most interesting part about the activity anymore, but the extrinsic reward.

Blizzard used Skinner Boxes a lot in WoD. They reused the same dungeons and just added new rewards, and labeled them “mythic” dungeons, because the hype about “mythic”-anything was label enough to show that blizzard cares about challenges in the game. While the challenge was limited to low level equipped chars, and not to those players which already run challenging content.

Same goes to blizzards timewalking dungeons. While diversity is a good idea at endgame, they just reuse old dungeons with new rewards, once again, without adding any new content to the game itself.

Based on that, it seems to me Blizzard is going to reuse even more content from old expansions or leveling for endgame as well. I wonder why they actually have to massively reuse old content, if the team is bigger than ever before, and if they actually should be able to output content way more frequently.

The Skinner Box is the most cheap method to endure content. And it seems, Blizzard will reuse content with new rewards even more coming Legion.

Blizzard and the PVP Balance.

Recently i asked Greg Street about the concept in balancing PVP in World of Warcraft. He said that it was literally Rock-Paper-Scissors(-Lizard-Spock), when he worked at Blizzard..

While i wonder what it is today. Is it some interesting mix out of “Perfect Imbalance” and Rock-Paper-Scissors(-Lizzard-Spock)? Because if it was Perfect Imbalance only, Blizzard would have to rotate op classes way more frequently.

And if it was Rock-Paper-Scissors(-Lizzard-Spock), why are some classes way more powerful than others? And sometimes do not have any counters?

I wonder whats Blizzards Design-goal nowadays. And why they create FOTM setups if they do not create a new FOTM setup every month. It seems to me a RPG always should be Rock-Paper-Scissors(etcetera, etcetera), because thats what a RPG should be: The light melee kills the clothie. The clothie kills the heavy melee. The heavy meele kills the light melee. Etcetera. Etcetera.

That concept fits way better to a MMORPG than the Perfect imbalance of a MOBA, no matter if that concept is more engaging for longer pvp seasons.

World of Warcraft: A Nightmare on Elf Street

Hypersexualization and Blizzard Entertainment are terms i usually use in conjunction. Or lets say, i used it in conjunction. That, and their idea people like Samwise Didier or Rob Pardo could be the prototypes of typical gamers and that homophobia of Tauren is somewhat fun in a modern world.

I am one of those old gamers that suriveved Hypersexualization. And it seems, blizzard wants to get away from it as well. At least, i have the impression if i look onto what blizzard created in WoD what they still call “nightelfs”.

While i have no problem in removing hypersexualization, i think they should not need to turn nightelfs into monsters as like they did with WoD. Really, what once was a beautiful creature turned into something that easily could become the main villain of a Friday the 13th movie.

Let me show you some examples:

I imagined Nightelfs to become the main villain in “A Frightnight on Elf Street”:

I even imagined Nightelfs to become the endboss of a R-Type like game:

And then i imagined how female nightelfs with a beard would look like:

 

Blizzard and Fanatic Game Design

The Devs working at Blizzard Entertainment for World of Warcraft seem to be fanatics. Or what is the reason they are not able to balance game design properly for a medium but always chose between “Yes” or “No” while there is a complete continuum between them?

Lets take flying as example, once again. The idea to remove flying was really rare on the forums. It was always about the idea how to make ground traveling more interesting, or how to add more fun to traveling..

The idea to completely remove it was one of those decisions the fanatic devs chose to decide if they cant think about alternatives or if the alternatives would mean way more effort to realize it. While a balanced decision would have been making traveling on ground more fun (as like mounted combat, or events while traveling on ground)..

Let me add some other examples:

At the end of cataclysm, people felt they had not enough options of gameplay. As there only was raiding and dungeons as endgame.

Blizzard answered to that by adding a ton of mandatory daily quests to the start of MoP, which surely was a lot of content, but also mandatory, where noone asked for. People wanted options, and no brick walls.

People asked to tone down the number of dailies as the number of dailies in MoP just was too high.

Blizzard answered to that by removing dailies nearly completely out of the game replacing them with brainless grinds.. which are even more easy to design than something like a narrative in a quest chain.

What would have been the correct way to handle it? Obviously they just would have to tone down the number of dailies. They just should have removed dailies to feel mandatory. Instead of removing those dailies completely and instead of making daily content completely useless for character progression.

I even see the reactions of the devs as cynical answers to requests. It seems to me they willingly abused feedback to get their agenda going, in special if we take a look on the effort reduction from narrative driven quest chains to dumb grinds in the open world. I am sure it saved a lot of development effort.

While i am not sure a lot of players think that grinds are more fun than story driven quests.

Blizzard and Feedback

If Blizzard talks about Feedback, they dont want anyone to be critical about their design decisions, but just want ideas on how to improve their own design decisions. Blizzard is not really able to completely get rid of a concept they created behind closed doors just only because of player feedback.

And if i talk about closed doors i mean the closed doors of very high ivory towers, where the devs obviously like to sit in. While looking down onto the masses that dwell at their feet.

Lets just think about the idea to remove flying from the game. I really wonder who actually had that idea, which removes the most convenient and fun way to travel from the game, while only a few ever asked for changes on traveling to allow more alternatives?

No matter how much feedback blizzard got about this topic, they continued on their agenda to remove it with just a slight change to allow it on deprecated content as a skinner box reward at the very end of an expac.

No matter how silly the idea is from a viewpoint of a player, blizzard tried everything possible to act as if this was a change based on player feedback, while the truth was that blizzard just wanted to endure content as they did not really add a lot of content to WoD endgame except grinds and, as usual, raids.

This is just one of many examples of how blizzard reacts to feedback. They dont want you to question their decisions, they just want you to add ideas to make their decisions better.

If you actually are very critical, and give feedback to blizzard you could only expect this reaction:

Blizzards Hat Collection 2015

If Blizzard ever should discover they are not really good at designing MMORPGs, they probably should think about creating hats for everyone.

As the new hats we found in the Blizzcon goodie bag are nearly as great designed as the balance in PVP.

Blizzard, the sickos and the war veterans

Blizzards PR is lousy. Really. One of their favorite postings on the official forums is about <insert Blizzard game here> saving the live of a war veteran or a sick person that survived only because of Blizzard giving the game to them. If you ever want  a blue reponse, act as if you were a war veteran that recovered by playing raids all day.

If i would be the guys responsible for PR at blizzard, i would feel ashamed. Azeroth choppers? Failed extremely hard due to the fact they gave a goodie to half of their players.. only because more players played that faction (Metzen and For the Horde). Which they tried to recover by giving the other chopper to the other faction as well.

Or lets talk about “fast food content” in World of Wacraft, which was a valid critic voice during MoP and WoD based on the fact blizzard added mainly grinds outside of raids as their “something to do”.

The fast food debate was very funny, as netease in china started to work together with the main global player of fastfood, McDonalds. It was very common you saw McDonalds restaurants that looked like this:

So if we talk about “fast food content”, there is at least some level of truth about this. Well, and another failed PR campaign from blizzard entertainment.

Blizzards Meritocracy full of Challenges and Competitions

Nowadays games often adress as many players as possible. One of Blizzards mission statement is “Gameplay first”, where they expicitly state that they want to “make our games as fun as possible for as many people as we can reach.”

While Blizzard obviously does not want to invest the most effort for the largest target audience. Without any question, mythic raiders and gladiator pvp players arent what i would call “the blood of World of Warcraft”, still blizzard invests the biggest part into designing challenging content for those people.

And the majority of people get LFR. A heavily watered down bad copy of the Raiding game, without any love and special dedication from the devs.

Blizzards design focus is not on content for many, but on “as much effort thats needed for many” and on “as much effort we could give” for any kind of challenge and competition.

Blizzard, run by a CEO thats a vivid competition gamer, acts as if a typical MMORPG like World of Warcraft was best to be played “with friends” and as a genre which mainly lives from stories told and class diversification actually could be really useful as a competetive game for eSport-Events.. which infact asks for a level of balance a typical RPG never could offer .. as long it wants to stay to be a RPG.

Blizzard crippled their MMORPG, their class diversity and the typical RPG gameplay by trying to force World of Wacraft into a eSport-scheme. They mainly design their game for a minority thats up to challenges which live in a meritocracy instead in a immersive game world.

Who are the people that play World of Warcraft? Are they the mythic raiders? The world-championship players? Or is it players and their families? And ther friends? And a lot of players who play solo without friends?

It is all of them, yes. World of Warcraft is a broad audience game. But with a very few that play for competition and challenges only, and a very large playerbase that wants to play the RPG part of the game, and even solo. That wants to play the part of the game, which is not about being the best.. but about being a hero in a magical world.. no matter if someone else is a bigger hero.

World of Warcraft is the worst choice to be an eSport, or to be for those who want to play for challenges. The game should adress them too, yes, but the focus should be on those who dont give anything about competition and challenges.