Two Biggest Lessons to Learn From World of Warcraft

majoroson

It's the best game I ever played. This might be a biased opinion because it's also the first game I ever played on my PC. It was more than ten years ago, and I have loved it since the start. I remember how much I struggled, but it was a part of the process, and it was fun.
Now it's much easier. Players boost their profiles on websites like https://wowcarry.com/wow, and they do it much faster. I have nothing against this, but new players shouldn't do it. They should learn how to play the game first and reach a certain level. I used that website to get some items I wanted, and it's cool that we can do that.

Tragnar

I guess you haven't played a lot of games then

Fairtale

The reason why wow exploration was fun, was because we were noobs. You have to remember that at the time of wow, youtube had just been launched, there were no "guides on how to get 100% results" and no streamers showing how to get optimal results. We just ran around the forest killing mobs and looking for chests.
We didn't know that dungeons gave better rewards
But once we learned that, we stopped playing outside and started focussing on dungeons.
And then on raids.

To get that feeling back, the outside world has to be as rewarding as dungeons, and the developers have to make an active effort for that.

So for example: players rush through the lvling, since they know that after they still have to go through the grindy process to get the pre-raid BiS items for raiding.

If AoC can reward players who adopt "the casual playstyle" with receiving the resources to build pre-raid BiS items BECAUSE of that exploration, then no guild leader will stay "get the fuck out of Stranglethorn Valley and come to the dungeon to lvl up, you fkn noob".

That is a very cheap example, and hasn't been thought through. The point is to show you how these things can be done differently if the desired gameplay is rewarded. If one player rushes through the lvling, and then has to go out and spend days grinding resources, while the other player tells him "oh I already have all that because I played the game the way it was meant to be played", that could go a long way in getting back that feeling of going on an adventure with friends with no clear goal in sight.

The problem with wow is that it rewards ignoring the outside world (of warcraft).

Does that make sense?

Ramirez

For me Themeparks always had one problem, while grinding raids and dungeons i asked my self why i want this gear? What utility will have? I will just sit waiting for next expansion to be irrelevant... Yes in classic wow made sense because you had more relevant open world content and was harder to survive, a lot of faction pvp and rivalry , but after lich king that goes downhill ...

Sandbox or PVX mmorpgs like for example archeage, lineage 2 , albion , eve , always make more sense for me, because we really are working in something that will be used, for example for conquest territory , guild wars, survive open world pk/gankers, gathering in dangerous zones , survive trade roads and many other objectives....

Aerlana

GW2 is themepark, and adopted the horizontal stuffing system and it works really fine on it.
so themepark are not forced to be on a basic cycle of life with patch/Xpac.

Enigmatic Sage

Considering most of your playtime will be associated with the community at your current node, vassels and politics with alliances via guilds and friends, there wont be a need to turn it into a theme park where you queue up for dungeons and raids while you do some pointless grind or meaningless stuff in town.

The game gives you options to partake in a plethora of things from different crafting roles, pve, pvp etc.

Now theme parks in relation to cash shop cosmetics, I hope they do not break immersion by putting in relatively dumb stuff like gingerbread house skins for your trebuchet.

and if they did any of that tacky stuff, I hope it's only for limited and I mean limited time in-game. I'm not personally a fan of the current trebuchet design, especially since you're driving around on a bunch of wood tacked together.. it just doesn't make any sense.

Wow used to be awesome with immersion, then it went too far onto the theme park spectrum both aesthetically and mechanically. It's a lonely game to play for many players.

SirChancelot

I have to ask
What game does a good job with expansions, that doesn't make old content irrelevant? Because I feel like most MMOs have that problem, when you reach max level, or new stuff comes out... You don't really go back to lower level areas very often.

Now I feel like ashes has a bit of an advantage here with its node system. Nodes closer to starting areas will grow faster, therefore probably end up being larger, keeping people on the area.
But if the mobs and gathering resources in an area get outscaled, people won't go to that area as often anymore...

VmanGman

The best expansions I have seen are in Albion Online.They have continuously added content and now 4 years after launch every single thing they have added is still relevant. There are 4 years worth of expansions and updates in the game and you can play through any of it and it is all relevant.

Edit: @SirChancelot11

HumblePuffin

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

I have to ask
What game does a good job with expansions, that doesn't make old content irrelevant? Because I feel like most MMOs have that problem, when you reach max level, or new stuff comes out... You don't really go back to lower level areas very often.

Now I feel like ashes has a bit of an advantage here with its node system. Nodes closer to starting areas will grow faster, therefore probably end up being larger, keeping people on the area.
But if the mobs and gathering resources in an area get outscaled, people won't go to that area as often anymore...

You kind of answered this for yourself. One of the biggest ways to keep old content relevant is to make old stuff in that content relevant. Don’t release a new expansion with entirely new mats that never need the old mats outside of leveling to get to the new stuff. As long as you don’t make old mats entirely irrelevant the second you add something else, people will go to the older areas to get those things inserting people back into that part of the world.

Not really thought out, but still an idea on something you could do to keep lower level dungeons/world bosses relevant: quest line at a high level has found a crystal that temporarily boosts power. We want to test that power to see if we can harness it. Quest NPC tells you to go try it out in this lower level dungeon to see if it works. You go in, the aura the crystal has enraged the mobs and they actually put up a fight. You get to the boss and it goes crazy, has some new mechanics, and is harder. Quest npc deems it too unstable after you finish so it requires more testing so it doesn’t become some kind of baked in level scaling for everything.

Like I said not completely thought out, but there are definitely ways the devs can choose to integrate new content into the existing world instead of just separating it from everything creating content islands.

Dygz

There's no reason for you to think it out because the devs have already done that for you.
It's the whole point of having a dynamic world instead of a static one and for having all of the systems tied to the rise and fall of Nodes.

Ramirez

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

I have to ask
What game does a good job with expansions, that doesn't make old content irrelevant? Because I feel like most MMOs have that problem, when you reach max level, or new stuff comes out... You don't really go back to lower level areas very often.

Now I feel like ashes has a bit of an advantage here with its node system. Nodes closer to starting areas will grow faster, therefore probably end up being larger, keeping people on the area.
But if the mobs and gathering resources in an area get outscaled, people won't go to that area as often anymore...

Albiom online, eve

Tragnar

It all comes down to the approach of the development - wow has had from its first expansion a devastating attitude towards old content - which is to throw everything into the garbage bin

TeamVASH

100% agree, that is a huge reason why WoW just fell off in a big way. They screwed up real bad. They bascially made the game a job, but made tons of busy work.

Expansions: 100% agree and I answered almost all of those things in my video "The Most Important Video I'll Ever Make" at 19:00