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Two Biggest Lessons to Learn From World of Warcraft
VmanGman
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I am a huge Ashes of Creation fan and an old World of Warcraft fan (that game lost its way many many years ago).
I believe that there are two big lessons that Ashes of Creation (and other MMORPGs) can learn from World of Warcraft.
1. In its early days World of Warcraft was a great MMORPG. It had some flaws such as horrible class balance, PvP progression, and more. However, one of its greatest successes was the fact that it was an adventure.
What I mean by this is that on any given day, you could log in and progress your character in a variety of ways and you did not feel restricted or required to progress in any specific way (aside from raid progression). You could farm mats for that piece you've been wanting to have crafted, you could farm dungeons, gold, etc. I am not a fan of early WoW's progression since its systems were rudimentary and too focused on PvE and instanced content, but it felt nice to log into the game and go on your adventure for the day.
In modern World of Warcraft there is a clear progression path defined by systems and daily/weekly activities that the players NEED to engage in so that they can effectively progress their character. This system is horrible and it's a big reason for me quitting WoW. Every day I would feel like I HAVE to log in and do things that I DO NOT want to do for the sake of my character's progression. It came to a point where I dreaded playing and then I just stopped playing because it felt like chores.
Please try to keep Ashes of Creation an adventure where players can log in and go about their day in whatever way they seem fit or fun. I can tell that this seems to already be your goal. However, I am bringing it up because I truly believe that the day to day gameplay will be so so much better if you get this right.
Key point: adventure vs. chore like game.
2. Expansions in World of Warcraft make all previous content obsolete. When you play WoW and you take a step back and sit there to think for a moment, you realize that all your progress will be reset with the next patch and then later become completely obsolete when the next expansion drops.
What's almost worse is that not only does the player progress become obsolete, but also the world around them. Expansions should not make the world smaller by implementing a single area of importance and thus making the rest of the world obsolete... that is the opposite of expanding the game... it's effectively removing content because everyone flocks to the newest thing and aside from transmog and achievement hunters the old world becomes forgotten.
Once again, I am happy that Ashes of Creation seems to already be aware of this issue through their zone design (many level ranges) and overall player progression as players of all levels and proficiencies can contribute to their node.
Key point: Expansions need to add content without making old content obsolete.
Like I said before, I am glad to see that Intrepid seems to be aware of these two aspects of game design, but I wanted to bring them up again as a reminder that they are incredibly important when it comes to building a MMORPG that desires to be more of a world to adventure in than a game to complete/beat.
I believe that there are two big lessons that Ashes of Creation (and other MMORPGs) can learn from World of Warcraft.
1. In its early days World of Warcraft was a great MMORPG. It had some flaws such as horrible class balance, PvP progression, and more. However, one of its greatest successes was the fact that it was an adventure.
What I mean by this is that on any given day, you could log in and progress your character in a variety of ways and you did not feel restricted or required to progress in any specific way (aside from raid progression). You could farm mats for that piece you've been wanting to have crafted, you could farm dungeons, gold, etc. I am not a fan of early WoW's progression since its systems were rudimentary and too focused on PvE and instanced content, but it felt nice to log into the game and go on your adventure for the day.
In modern World of Warcraft there is a clear progression path defined by systems and daily/weekly activities that the players NEED to engage in so that they can effectively progress their character. This system is horrible and it's a big reason for me quitting WoW. Every day I would feel like I HAVE to log in and do things that I DO NOT want to do for the sake of my character's progression. It came to a point where I dreaded playing and then I just stopped playing because it felt like chores.
Please try to keep Ashes of Creation an adventure where players can log in and go about their day in whatever way they seem fit or fun. I can tell that this seems to already be your goal. However, I am bringing it up because I truly believe that the day to day gameplay will be so so much better if you get this right.
Key point: adventure vs. chore like game.
2. Expansions in World of Warcraft make all previous content obsolete. When you play WoW and you take a step back and sit there to think for a moment, you realize that all your progress will be reset with the next patch and then later become completely obsolete when the next expansion drops.
What's almost worse is that not only does the player progress become obsolete, but also the world around them. Expansions should not make the world smaller by implementing a single area of importance and thus making the rest of the world obsolete... that is the opposite of expanding the game... it's effectively removing content because everyone flocks to the newest thing and aside from transmog and achievement hunters the old world becomes forgotten.
Once again, I am happy that Ashes of Creation seems to already be aware of this issue through their zone design (many level ranges) and overall player progression as players of all levels and proficiencies can contribute to their node.
Key point: Expansions need to add content without making old content obsolete.
Like I said before, I am glad to see that Intrepid seems to be aware of these two aspects of game design, but I wanted to bring them up again as a reminder that they are incredibly important when it comes to building a MMORPG that desires to be more of a world to adventure in than a game to complete/beat.
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Comments
If you offer 10 progression path to a player upon a log-in. Then a large percentage of players will simply go for the one thats most efficient at any given time. That feeling of adventure is very hard to get back. People who want it have to make the concious decision to go for that casual playstyle.
I agree with you that people's mentality nowadays doesn't fully allow for that adventure to occur. However, the developers can design the game in a way that leans more towards adventure than daily/weekly progression systems (chores).
Classic WoW and Retail WoW are great examples of these two game design philosophies.
On top of that I'd add that at times WoW felt like it pigeonholes you into one or two options of progression.
In the early days, after reaching 60 and having done various dungeons, it became clear that the only way to progress your gear is by joining a raiding guild and going into molten core. Add in the ridiculous loot system (40 men raid, but only 2 item drops per boss per week, then add an RNG on top of that. Sometimes you had to raid for MONTHs just to get a certain piece), ohhhhh all the loot drama & "working for gear" fun......
And then there were times when progression's been gated behind "reputation grinds" with various factions - you had to complete their daily quests over and over and over again for weeks (or months?) to reach "exalted" status, then you unlock some quests / npc purchases which let you progress. Ohhhhh the chore fun......
Wasn't till Activision's board of directors insisted on making the game more "accessible" in late WOTLK and the rise of Ghostcrawler in Cata that things went down hill.
Now the games a mindless treadmill.
Sandpark. Not Sandbox.
Was fine for the time.
I started in Burning Crusade. Loved early-mid TLK.
Tried some vanilla wow, but it was past it's time. Too gigantic, empty and slow for my taste.
― Plato
Sandboxes can also suffer from the two aspects I mentioned in the post. Not only that, but AoC will not be a true Sandbox. It’s more of a Sandpark.
To my opinion this is much closer towards themepark than a sandbox, because they count on overwhelming the players with viable content options rather than to throw simplistic toys without any rules on how those should be used
otherwise you wouldn't have rules like "only in prime time you can declare sieges" etc.
― Plato
I can relate to both points and both were reasons why I left 2 games...
1) I left ESO because of of this. I would log on, do my daily crafting quests, rogues tasks and then an open world boss rotation that would give the best exp for horizontal prog (can't remember the name of it anymore)....ANYWAY...by the time I had done all of that it was time to go to bed. So I literally only did something new on the weekends, if I had time.......one day I just said, I can't do this anymore and stopped.
2) Played vanilla WoW from day 1 to shortly before the Burning Crusade. I really loved it but when they announced raising the level cap I knew I was done because of the EXACT things you mentioned. I am not a fan of endless gear progression every time a new expansion comes out. I looked at some videos recently of WoW play and the numbers are just ridiculous; outrageous stats with even crazier damage numbers. Just stupid out of control progression. No wonder why people flocked to the retro servers.
So if AoC chooses to follow the WoW model of continual lateral progression I will not be playing (at least until the first expansion). Unfortunately, we don't know at this moment what IS plans are after release so I guess I will play AoC and hope they choose a horizontal progression path. Many other MMOs have proven horizontal progression works great so with any luck AoC will follow suit.
Ya, I misused the term. Lol. Brain fart or auto correct, and look at all the commotion I started. Lol
I just really hope it'll be much less than WoW, or similar games, and that player progression will be more horizontal than vertical overall.
See ya.....Rift made the same mistake as well...being forced to do something to get to another option of gameplay or the only way to be competitive is to do this forced content is horrible. I'm not talking about a single thing, I mean hours of play.
- however I do not know where you have that you need to do mythics - you don't need to them at all (at least before prepatch hits anytime now) - all you had to do is get ilvl high enough from doing nazjatar to open up questline for "legendary"
but yeah it is unreasonable to want to gear up for pvp by doing pvp
such a thrash game WoW is
― Plato
It's absolutely hilarious that you point to wildstar as an example. An absolute 100% direct WoW carbon copy. That's your beloved new age game design in action.
Wildstar tried to emulate WoW and advertised themselves as a hardcore raiding game.
If we listen to people like you, it absolutely WILL be wildstar all over again.
1. Log in to your character (usually in the main city where everyone stays most of the time)
2. Collect your daily quests
3. Fly out/teleport to your daily quest location (or queue up for a dungeon using the dungeon finder tool)
4. Complete daily quests as fast as possible
5. teleport back to the main city
6. log out until the next day
At no point in this process do you actually engage with the world or interact with other players in a meaningful way. Even doing group dungeons there's barely any interaction. You'll get the occasional "Hi" when you join the group, but that's it, because everyone knows what to do in the dungeon and you're all only doing it for the rewards. Get it done asap and get out.
Convenience is also a big thing here. When I was levelling up in ESO I chose not to pay the monthly subscription, meaning I didn't have the unlimited crafting storage and my inventory was extremely limited. This meant I had to keep careful track of what I was picking up and had to make sure I sorted my bags out regularly before I left town. It also meant that most of my gold went to purchasing storage upgrades, and this was the main form of progression for me during the levelling. It was a big deal for me to have saved up enough gold for the next upgrade and suddenly have 10 extra storage slots to use in either my inventory or my bank.
Once I hit max level, I decided to buy the subscription and from then on I haven't needed to care at all about bag space because they give you so much of it. I haven't come even close to filling up either my inventory or my bank storage since then. The result is that I've actually stopped searching through every crate and box in the world simply because I have so much of everything that I barely use it.
The same thing applies to GW2. So much storage space means I hardly needed to worry about my inventory at all. And even if I did somehow fill up my bags it didn't matter because I could teleport back to town instantly whenever I wanted.
This is the point where convenience actually detracts from the gameplay experience and ruins the sense of adventure.
Wildstar wanted to serve only the head of the pyramid hierarchy - which is bad
However not giving anything to the head is equally as bad - just look at wow blizz have been adding and adding discomfort and gigantic grind systems to the top-end so the mythic scene is consistently dying out
Fortunately it does not seem (yet) that Ashes wants to follow suit, because you are able to use master looter and set your own rules on loot distribution in the guild and at the same time there will not be infinite progression systems as well.
― Plato
What I mean by that is that WoW started out as an immersive fantasy adventure but evolved into action oriented button masher over the course of the years. With every new update, older content irreversibly becomes irrelevant. The world becomes empty and lifeless as more and more people become concentrated into smaller area as the updates become more laser focused on power, progression and newer features.
If you weren't around during a content's respective era of relevancy then that magic is impossible to recapture for better or worse. And as older zones got left behind, the story became inconsistent as well with each new piece seemingly being referential to older story arcs and characters recycled again and again. Even whole plots have been recycled.
I think the game lost its sense of wonder and mystery when the content and updates became less about the world, story and exploration and more about player power: creating well defined and narrow paths of progression so no one got left behind while stopping to smell the roses.
I think the greatest lesson WoW can teach other MMORPGs entering the stage is that let the world be part of the adventure; don't let the world become an over glorified hub that serves just as a waiting room for other gameplay.
Absolutelly agree, you probably got the best aspect and the worst one of wow in general
I'm also warried about this, more for the daily and time limited quests...
Anyway i didn't understood too much how they will work in ashes. Every month there will be an assault to the node ... that's probably some time limited event that will force the player a bit.
The quest system isn't that bad, and they said the dailys are going to be a minor and not restrictive thing .. anyway you have good point sure.
1. The goal post always gets shifted when comparing old WoW to new. In the old days, there seems to be no expectation to do anything meaningful, and people praise the freedom. Sure, you can do anything, but that's only because there's nothing to do and no reason to do it. The bis gear was an insane pvp grind or raiding. Hard stop. You could farm to craft gear back then but it was pre-bis at best, you could farm gold, but you can do both of those in BfA. The only difference is BfA points an arrow at content. Why do you feel the urge to farm bis in BfA when you can go farm mog, or do casual BGs, or do pet battles, or do the large scale mysteries, or farm achievements, or farm mounts, etc. There's so much to do in retail that has nothing to do with gear progression, that involves the old world, and always gets conveniently ignored.
If you measure retail by caring about bis, evaluate classic the same. When you do, you'll have nothing good to say about classic either.
2. Expansions don't invalidate content, leveling does. How often do you visit Thousand Needles in Classic after you quest it out? Durotar beyond Org? Silverpine Forest? Unless you're there to speed run alts or friends through content, there's no reason to go most places because you already experienced them.
This is just a fact of mmos. Unless you scale characters to a zone like GW2 then either content is going to obliterate low levels or be trivial and probably useless for high levels. The only real way to get high level players back into low level areas is to give them high level reasons to be there, which AoC might accomplish fairly successfully.
The world of an MMO is always as small as what is relevant to the player. The rest of the world might as well not exist to the player, but that doesn't mean it isn't relevant to OTHER players who are still leveling, or grinding horizontal progression.
Either way, the magic of an adventure is akin to falling in love. The dopamine from exploration and discovery can't last forever, and they shouldn't try. The key is to transition adventure into a longer lasting love of the game, but it's so much baked into our culture to hunt for the dopamine shot that developers start behind the 8 ball.
The magic of adventure WILL fade. The challenge isn't to keep trying to pump adventure in, but to get players to love the world they finished exploring.
This community needs to learn from the mistakes of other communities and stop using an obsolete cash-cow (now POS) game as a baseline for studio expectations.
Most of us spent over half our time in vanilla leveling. It was a more dynamic, open, and world spanning experience than the plug and chug, follow quest arrows for 10hours that expansions are now. Also, while I don't think grind will magically make a mmo better, I do think the social experience in early WoW's bg's and raids were replaced by "skillz". Whatever that was supposed to mean in a game serious competitive gamers never seemed interested in crossing over to.
You could go back to 1000 needles to farm stuff. Darkmoon feathers I think? Probably some elemental stuff as well. Anything level 30+ could still kill you with enough numbers until you got deeper into raiding. More importantly, on a pvp server other players could kill you, especially, if they want those resources.
On the other hand, expansions are near totally resets. Very rarely do items last beyond the first raid instance. I'm not sure what the answer is, maybe a more developed server will have cheaper crafted gear, making catch up for new players easier than going through the whole game? I don't believe the wash rinse repeat cycle of expansion driven mmo's is working though.
Another thing that would help with "the same old thing problem" is differences between servers geography, more dynamic events in the world, and .... the stuff a more sandbox game might have.
Relax dude. Cleaning totem is clearly a troll to save us all from toxic behavior.
They're going to literally drop their cleansing totem and Purge LOL.
Just look at the game now, people are going out of their way to gather world buffs so they can race how fast can they can clear the raids. I am currently rolling there a new toon on horde as a prep for tbc and I constantly watch world buffs going out just so I can grab them to steamroll through the world oneshoting mobs that I encounter.
Ashes should learn from WoW that once the honeymoon of novelty ends then the game will be judged on its actual longterm progression systems. Without those systems people will slowly leave, because they will have nothing to aspire to
― Plato