Not all that WoW’d
by covert.c. on Dec.09, 2005, under games design, mmorpg, WoW
After a long and undeniable fade, I finally uninstalled WoW and cancelled my account. Many months have gone by where I have not touched the game, for a variety of reasons. The strongest of these, hurridly scrawled below :
Despite my contention that its a complete design, a perfectly overflowing package with busy little treats for everyone, the game is essentially dead for me. Getting to 60, the current maximum level, was “mostly harmless” fun. Despite fits of sheer boredom, peppered with many instances of reading magazines during combat, I finally did it and by mid-summer dinged 60. Surprising yes, but a promise was made, and I always try to do what I say I will do. I was glad to have my compatriots with me while I did that : Iolo, Dorgrim, Thorgar, Davina, Iara, Gropp, Kali… the many nights of fun we had is undeniable.
Everything in the game is there because Blizzard chose it to be. If you look closely, you see the design and technical decision points all over. For the good and bad, it is what it is. I won’t fault Blizzard for the “why’s” of what they did, but I will fault them for the “because” – that is, the result of their decisions :
The end-game for WoW
As meticulous a design it is, did not appeal to me. I strongly feel that they really did a fantastic job with the game as a whole, and the effects of what they have wrought shall be felt throughout gamedom for a very long time. Yet there is so much missing from what could have been a “funner” game. The prerequisite for large group instances included a party of absolutely correct composition, but this manifested a direct barrier to actually playing and enjoying the game! If you couldn’t find the right healer or tank, you did not play. Why pay for a game that you cannot play?
The objective is fighting, yet combat is dull
The prevailing mode of point-and-click combat is hopelessly deterministic, thus removing the visceral pleasure one should have when vanquishing an opponent. A joyless exercise to be sure. And complete ignorance of the five-second rule.
The story? What story!
This is a huge world, filled with peoples and places and legends and history. Yet I challenge anyone to tell me five story threads from the top of their head. The God Hakkar did what, exactly? What did Overmaster Pyron do to deserve repeated assasination? ETC.
The warped and cartoon-like visual design
It fills the world from each end with a lovely, contiguous language making each corner different yet predictable. The work of a consistent hand. A god. But the lack of photorealism and the cutesy elements lead me astray from immersion. If they were to drop an entire new continent into the game (and they will), it would actually appear far too similar to what appeared before it, and no matter what they were attempting to render for us. One may argue, but the visuals actually get tedious.
The characters
By the characteres I mean the design. Not compelling and far too similar. Yes, they create ownership and uniqueness as a game reward (ie. time spent in procuring new “looks” in the form of weapons and armour), but too often I would meet another night-elf rogue that looked identical to me. My opinion (and you may disagree) is that this should not happen. And looking at my character’s face, right from the start, caused me to curl my lip in slight disgust.
Inertness
If you drop a sword in the forest, does it make a sound? Not in WoW. The world is a backdrop to a player’s interactions with a database. You cannot interact with the world in any way, nor can you drop items, move objects, build things, destroy them, or do anyhting to change or disturb this lovingly crafted universe in any way shape or form. This breaks immersion (at least for me). It makes the world less interesting to spend time in.
And thats it. I recall grinding my way through Azeroth’s Silithus region for a rare item, doing it for several hours, and decided to listen in on my guild Ventrilo server for the whole voyage, partaking in the conversation. Three hours of nothing but discussion of particular pieces of armour and weapons. “Those gloves are nice.” “Yeah if I combine them with this and this, that will complete the set I’ll need to do that and that.” “Fantastic”. I am not joking, this was a three hour non-stop discussion for two enthusiastic players. I will not fault them at all – its the game that they are playing, and they enjoy it as they have every right to. In my humble opinion, three-hour discussions about gloves and boots do not a game make.
For what it is, the game is great. But at this point, time-based games just aren’t for me.
3 Comments for this entry
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now playing
Quake Live (CTF) by iD Software
December 10th, 2005 on 3:42 pm
You covered all the main reasons that I stopped. To put a different perspective on it, I ask myself what was needed to keep me playing.
A steadier economy
Gropp was a miner/smith. Most of the professions have some gatherer/crafter combination, and that was necessary because economically, it wasn't possible for a crafter to buy his materials and sell the resulting item for enough to make a profit. The economic system was ancillary to the timesinks: I want an uber-axe, I have to quest endlessly for the unbelievable rare components to make it, the point being to keep me questing, not to limit the number of uber-axes. Arcanite bars sell for 20g, but the axe that takes 12 of them only sells for 100g. Even for common ingredients, the economics didn't work. It should be possible for a high level character who's got the unbelievably rare recipes to sit in Ironforge and become a merchant of elite gear, but it isn't, because that would remove half the impulse to hit the high level instances.
This would basically be accomplished by having a much larger economy, where bots or Blizzard employees with a certain amount of gold are buying and selling stuff to maintain the economic balance. Especially on low-pop servers, the economy was way too small; the gap should've been taken up by automation.
Less tied-up content
Paralllel to the first item, most of the material for the high-level recipes are found only in instances requiring large groups. Again, everything is pushing you back to large-group raiding; if you're not into it, the alternatives that should be available for solo-play aren't. It's not worth it for a level 60 miner to spend time gathering mithril.
A wider style of architecture
I'm not totally in agreement that the unified, cartoony style made everything monotonous--it was the unified cartoony style combined with only four basic styles of buildings/towers/monsters/armor. They could have gotten a lot more aesthetic mileage with greater variety in the objects you saw all over. One thing they got right was giving each zone its own color combinations and entities--they should have pushed this further, which would have kept explorers like me more interested.
Group content depending less on everyone being there at the same time
The big drawback to group play is that you need to co-ordinate everyone. They missed an opportunity for group content where the participants are aggregated over time, such as a collection quest where five accept, obtaining and turning in their pieces individually. This would take the pressure off those who don't mind playing with others but have trouble organizing it tightly.
December 13th, 2005 on 4:04 am
As insightful as ever, Justin.
I have muttered endlessly here that every axis in WoW is based on delta t. Yet it never surprises me to witness another vector, and you've demonstrated it aptly. You cannot craft without the time to procure the materials. In fact, you should be able to replace delta t with X dollars. But knowing that the cost of the materials are greater than the goods they produce shows us the consequence. WoW's economy is fundamentally broken. Even the service economy is thin and time-based : you cannot participate unless you are physically in the game.
Further, I'll not argue on the points of architecture other than to say that an explorer like yourself would probably become less impressed with the visual styles as the game continues and expansions and new areas are introduced. To me, they would be more of the same style. Nothing wrong with that, but if I can close eyes and envision exactly how its going to look, then its not "different" enough. Thats the best way I have of explaining it (and admittedly not great).
I liked your idea about group content. Having a quest delivery mechanism that allowed asynchronicity would be very interesting. Add to that explicit "sign up" for the various party members. Wow had a similar aspect, albeit far simpler and merely as an implicit component of a given activity (eg. obtaining a crafted sword from another player). But expanding this idea beyond merely collection quests, and I think you have something. Like, having to obtain/quest for a piece of information for the next person's piece of the chain, hmmmm....
January 12th, 2006 on 1:12 pm
Why I quit and Why I went back. I quit largely because at the ripe level of 52 it does not take a psychic to realize there is nothing beyond 60. In the end it was my friends that compelled me to re-activate. Not the gameplay. The opportunity to interact with my amigoes in a semi persistant world. Any mmo game could do that for me. WoW just happens to be the flavour.