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What can we learn from the phenomenon of Classic WoW Hardcore?
Arya_Yeshe
Member
There's a WoW addon called Hardcore that requires players to delete their character if they die while playing WoW Classic. The addon broadcasts all player deaths to others who have it installed.
It is not a surprise to me that even experienced WoW players are dying repeatedly at low levels and in absurd ways, such as falling, pulling mobs incorrectly, being unaware of dungeon traps, and more. This demonstrates that veteran players who have played for years can still die due to their lack of basic knowledge, as they never had to learn these skills when they first started playing the game. They are dying in the most ludicrous ways like AoE farming, fall deaths, pulling mobs the wrong way, dying to mob trains, dying to obivous dungeon traps and dyring to blatant lack of awareness of their surroundings... this is because they were playing the game mindlessly without any care at all.
Here are two observations
I believe that game developers and the gaming community should understand that games with risks encourage players to play thoughtfully and slowly in the long run. This means that every little detail and experience gains value and makes the game more enjoyable. However, when there is no risk and only grinding involved, all those details and experiences lose their value, leading to players demanding more content. Unfortunately, this additional content also loses its value quite quickly due to this lack of meaningful gameplay.
A game with no risks loses it's substance that is being enjoyable.
It is not a surprise to me that even experienced WoW players are dying repeatedly at low levels and in absurd ways, such as falling, pulling mobs incorrectly, being unaware of dungeon traps, and more. This demonstrates that veteran players who have played for years can still die due to their lack of basic knowledge, as they never had to learn these skills when they first started playing the game. They are dying in the most ludicrous ways like AoE farming, fall deaths, pulling mobs the wrong way, dying to mob trains, dying to obivous dungeon traps and dyring to blatant lack of awareness of their surroundings... this is because they were playing the game mindlessly without any care at all.
Here are two observations
- They are enjoying the game much more as they get a thrill from entering a room or taking a risky jump. People are having a great time unlike anything they have experienced before.
- With the discovery of a hardcore flag in WoW's code, some players speculate that Blizzard is planning to release official hardcore servers where players will lose their characters if they die. However, this has sparked controversy among those who have been grinding the game without a purpose and are now demanding new content instead of hardcore servers. It's worth noting that if they weren't grinding the game to the point of mental exhaustion, they probably wouldn't be clamoring for new content in the first place..
I believe that game developers and the gaming community should understand that games with risks encourage players to play thoughtfully and slowly in the long run. This means that every little detail and experience gains value and makes the game more enjoyable. However, when there is no risk and only grinding involved, all those details and experiences lose their value, leading to players demanding more content. Unfortunately, this additional content also loses its value quite quickly due to this lack of meaningful gameplay.
A game with no risks loses it's substance that is being enjoyable.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
9
Comments
Agreed.
The observations and conclusions in the OP are either obvious or not actionable because gamers aren't a monolith.
I guess it's evidence that... some percentage of people are below average gamers.
By definition.
To me, it is evidence that if you take risk out of a game, the game itself is a tool for lowering player standards and lowering player's skill, it is like that by design even tough this design is involuntary. The game doesn't require you more than spamming a few buttons and learning basic things like positioning
AoC has a lot of risk, way more than average, I believe this will demand that players git gut or get dead
Sure, but lots of games are like that.
It's just that many of those games are dead because the percentage of players that can't 'git gud' stop having fun and quit them.
Risk and difficulty are easy to tune any way you like, especially if you just tell every player that can't hack it 'you just need to get good'.
People can be trained just like dogs can be trained, it is the devs conducting the training in nearly all games, so it's dev's fault people don't get good. Why would anyone get better if the design doesn't contemplate that?
There's no reason to spend energy in something that brings nothing in return, that's why people don't get better if the design doesn't contemplate such things
Sure sure you can just say that.
Just as I can say 'no you're wrong I've done this and studied it and found you to be entirely wrong in what you say'.
I don't know how much of it you've done, but there's a simple 'test'. If you've made a game that players can get good at and dealt with the community and succeeded in strengthening discouraged players, then just talk about the details of that.
You probably know from talking to me that I'm not going to say anything about your sample size or how your game isn't professional enough or anything to shut you down, so that's my 'counterargument'. You have opinions, I've never seen anything to back them up in terms of your design attempts, and I've made multiple design attempts myself and I call your opinions flawed.
EDIT: Oh hey the tweet worked, that's surprising AND accidental (I thought I had deleted it because it wouldn't work). It isn't really part of the point but I'll leave it because it's funny to a subset of people.
People are loving it and saying why it changed everything in their WoW experience, I mean, I already knew it for years, but this phenomenon was good to validade my views since now there's a bunch of people parroting me
Yeah ok, that makes sense given what I know of you.
Enjoy it I guess.
WoW Hardcore is a popular movement brought by the community with no strings attached, no economical interests, it is pure and free
Yes, it is the answer to all games, the answer is bringing back meaningful gameplay back to games
You should try to find the right questions instead, the right questions to be made:
Recommendations are massive and streams are lit
Right now WoW Hardcore has a whopping 443,340 downloads for such new and exquisite mod!
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+popular+is+the+wow+hardcore+mode&rlz=1C1FCXM_pt-PTBR991BR991&oq=how+popular+is+the+wow+hardcore+mode&aqs=chrome..69i57.9230j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
I keep to myself my impressions about other users
I can see gold where other people can only see pebbles, I don't think Intrepid is addressing this game's true value and potential right now... it may change in the future
Here's another google page. Only a fraction of the playerbase is interested in wow classic. Out of that fraction only a fraction is interested in hardcore (a real fucking small one by the looks of it). Out of that fraction only an even smaller fraction is interested enough to try it (that's the 440k, if repeated downloads are not counted). Out of that fraction only some part of those people will play long enough to have any meaningful experience with the mode, instead of leaving after only a few deaths.
So none of this is an indicator that the majority of players are interested in a super risk/reward hard gameplay in their mmos. Which is pretty much what others have said in this thread.
WoW streamers creaming their pants over this mode (again, I'm assuming only a select few out of thousands) is just an indicator of the usual WoW content being so damn stale that anything new and more exciting would obviously be great for their stream, so of course they'd enjoy it. Deathless runs are always fun to watch, but are very very rarely fun to play, because you gotta be stressed out of your damn mind over every single piece of content in the game (especially if the game is even remotely difficult). And if you don't stress and just "enjoy the ride", then your whole argument's premise is false.
I'll just add for anyone paying attention that I've also found indications that this mode disables trading and the Auction House, so it isn't even 'clean data'.
'Wait for the next train'.
I actually agree with you for once, and why I'm not trying to comment cause id say that lol. Sometimes you have to accept a thread isn't for you and let people do whatever.
You should try to pay attention to the fact that I am telling that there are ways of bringing back value to the smallest things in games, bringing back meaning
Send me a screenshot from where I said that the majority of players are interested in a super risky gameplay yata yata... well, there won't be such screenshot since I never said that
This part is true, since people know that grinds are boring and sometimes people admit it
I never said difficult, it is about bringing back meaning and value.
You are bringing this old bad way of seeing games from the worst devs around, they think that risk is adding difficulty and punishment
Dying 50 times to the same mob in Dark Souls doesn't bring value or meaning
Then that's why you got the type of engagement you got, you see.
Your 'point' is so nebulous that people have to assume what it is you're actually trying to say (I think I tried to not do that but maybe failed too).
So the answer to the question of what we can learn from this specific thing is 'nothing'.
It wouldn't even be the sort of thing you'd use as a case study for a game design course. There's no 'information' here. A thing happened, that's it. Any number of people could use it to try to support their beliefs.
Would you like to discuss how Dark Souls/Elden Ring boss design actually does bring value and meaning?
Ashes is already doing this. They've already said they want the game to be fun from the very start. And they want pve to be non-trivial too.
You're arguing for a self-imposed rule of "if I die I fail completely". It can be applied to any game at any time and it'll add difficulty and stress to that game, because you'd have to pay way more attention at all times instead of just having fun and enjoying the game for what it is. And if Azherae's research is true and there's more limitations on you, then the game is even harder than I thought, which would decrease its appeal even further.
Also, this is literally nothing new. No death runs have been in gaming for decades afaik and no trading thing has been a mode in OSRS for a long time as well, so even that is nothing new. So yet again it just comes down to WoW being a god damn trash game that was just super popular for a number of reasons and managed to ride its own coattail ever since, and now when anything remotely new happens to the game people jump on the hypetrain and scream how fun the game is.
Nor does repetition of wow hardcore. You wouldn't die to the mob if you were insanely careful and attentive, just as, I'm sure, people are trying to be in wow hardcore. Self-imposed rules do not add meaning or value to the inherent design of any game. Or, well, they don't do that to all the players of said game. Obviously it's gonna be meaningful and valuable to you, because you yourself made it so.
Answer: I always say it is
Question: Ashes is already doing this
Answer: I know, this is why I think discussing this is important, because hardcore mods are just a community quest for bringing back meaningful gameplay to games.
But in AoC has meaningful gameplay by design. Some people didn't think that Path of Exile would have succeed and some people were sure about it's future success. The perma death is not the goal, the goal is bringing meaningful gameplay
Do you see my point now? Wow HC is a quest brought by the community looking for bringing back meaningful gameplay, even the smallest things have value
You will see this, I am sure of it
Ok sure.
It's a quest for meaningful gameplay for about 3-10% of the WoW Playerbase.
That's about what I'd expect. Somewhere between 3 and 10% of gamers desire meaning and challenge in their games, and 10% of those (or about 0.3-1% total) actually enjoy it when they get it at the average/standard level.
Does this HC Quest have more meaning because 1% of people 'complete it'?
If anything it just shows that WoW might've been a bit more difficult than people thought. But I do not see how this is in any way related to AoC or their plans. And as Azherae said, what you're describing only relates to the smallest portion of the overall playerbase. The same will be true with Ashes, even though AoC will already be harder and "more meaningful" than WoW.
So you are pretty much agreeing with me and just pretending to disagree just to annoy me? Or are you just disagreeing by mistake, you think you disagree?
I am literally saying that the community wanted this option for a better experience in the game, Blizzard even added a hardcore flag in the game but still didn't launch a hardcore server for now
You don't see how this relates to AoC because you want to oppose me, thats why
This is 100% relatable to AoC because AoC is advertised as player's interaction with the world as bring meaningful gameplay, this is why even the PvP should be "meaningful PvP"
This is very important because Steven repeats himself enough about the game not being for everybody, but the thing is that the game may be for even more people than we think, since there's desire from such things growing among other communities
The game will be for those who like it. It won't be super casuals and it won't be super PKers, because both of those extremes don't fit with what Ashes is going for. And those are mostly the "not everybody" that Steven keeps mentioning. There's obviously more groups that won't jell well with Ashes, but we'll know about those only when we learn more about the game.
But people will always be able to make the game harder for themselves by just playing it in their own way, though that still has nothing to do with Intrepid's plans really.