f13.net

Reddit Thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/zqm8d/world_of_warcraft_developer_ama/#noicon)

Summarized and organized by topic on Wowhead (http://www.wowhead.com/news=206352/ask-blizzard-anything-blizzards-reddit-q-a)

I kind of hate Reddit, so I'll read the Wowhead version.

Love this post.  I think CSRs are starting to find value in transparency.

This answer speaks volumes to me. Back in the "farming furbolg" days (AKA vanilla), leveling took far longer and the majority of the players never got to 60. Today leveling is considered utterly trivial, so who cares how someone manages to get to 85 or 90? It's not like soloing to the cap really teaches you much about your class anyway.

They said as much in a different part of the Q&A.  They cited the L90-only zone, pet battles, and increased raid participation as stuff to do at 90.

Not to derail, but has reddit always been like that? I only started paying attention when Anet was posting there. But damn if that interface isn't Netscape Mail Newsgroup UI circa 1997. Is there a better front end for it I could be using?

It looks like they attached a special css file to the Blizzard page.
Here's one that looks more typical. (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/yne9x/i_am_dan_harmon_creator_of_community_writer_of/)

I'm not a regular; I only follow links from more legible places. But if there was a better front end, would it still be Reddit?

Kind of underwhelming frankly.  Everything since RIFT has added something new to the mix.  They don't seem to be interested in copying any of it though.  For the first time ever they're completely behind on a lot of QoL features.  Their core content has been outdone on many levels yet it's business as usual. They appear to be letting the game wind down on purpose almost.

Titan will save them!

Did they say anything interesting from a game design perspective? Even the summary exceeds my interest in Blizzard / WoW at the moment.

Sort of impressive really how completely cataclysm ejected me from the ride. I'm almost sort of thankful.

I came back for the free 7 day thing, and it simply fails to grab me anymore.  I almost wonder if P1999 would grab me more than this, now.

GOD FORBID THE PLAYERS GET TOGETHER TO PLAY AND HAVE FUN!!!

Um, that's a rather limited view of mob tapping.  It helps a LOT more than it ever hurts.

That whole answer just doesn't parse for me.  Furbolg-raids were about sharing rep, not XP as Xp gains in raid groups suuuuuuuuuuck.  The Blizzdev answer makes no sense when he talks about leveling.

Nobody wants to return to overland-grind reps, either.

If player-interaction is down it's at the behest of players who wanted the opportunities for the "interactive" bits removed in the first place.

What interactive bits have been removed ?

A good example of removing mob tapping is that quest in the Hyjal area where you fight elites with all your NPC buddies. Anybody in that area can help out because the mobs are untapped. It makes the thing like a really fun spontaneous raid cross-faction.

And they can't help ?

No what he is saying is that when it makes sense blizzard can selectively remove mob taping. Like in that hyjal area.

Ah.  Righto.

For things of that nature though, it just makes sense.  It's almost like Public Quests, which I gather were implemented in other games and worked quite well.  The Hyjal shite I've never really got on with because frankly, it's a grind.

I'm still curious as to what interactive bits have been removed.

World bosses were pointless at the end of 4.x.  I actually watched a DK solo the one in Deepholm.  I'm not sure he removals we're referencing are hard and fast interactivity cuts.  Instead, I think it's most of the population growing out of the content (rep grinds, world bosses, world pvp, rare spawn hunting)

Complaints I've seen couched as WRT player interaction removal but disagree with.  Please note not all of these were in WOW but have been brought-up as being "problems" in WOW that limit / removed "player interactivity":

1) Removal of elite mobs that required grouping during leveling
2) Removal of the need for other people at all for leveling (EQ-grinding)
3) The LFG tool - Yes you interact but you don't have to KNOW people.
4) The LFR tool - See above but really masking the fact that butthurt assholes can't be the only conduit for raid access now so fewer people are putting up with their shitty feifdoms and running LFR on their own schedule instead.  (I love raiding but  I understand the attitude of those who have been burned by assholes.  I put more time in to finding a good guild than most do.)
5) Removal of grind-for-rep
6) Removal/ insignificance of world bosses
7) Gear resets that remove the required "player interaction" to advance.
8) "removal" of world PVP (ganking)
9) No new "significant" world PVP zones (Wintergrasp 2.0) where people 'must' go
10) Removal of the need for profession xyz to spam instead of dropping items on the AH (Most frequently enchanting)
11) Removal of rare crafting items that required 'player interaction' to acquire.  (only raids drop certain mats/ patterns so only raiders can build and sell them)

12) fuckstupid group-required attunement

It seems like that's what they are actually going for.  Rather than update WoW they plan to let it slide and bring in Titan.

Well, they could recode a shitton of the backed to create these unnamed QOL items, possibly irritating the remaining player base that is already bitching about 'catering to the casuals' and losing them.  or they could test things incrementally in wow and steal proven ideas for the new game that will have a fresh user base.  Makes sense to me.

I wouldn't call QoL stuff casual.  For instance overflow servers.  There's plenty of bullet point items that aren't really casual either.  Investigation missions, companions, jumping puzzles, dynamic events etc etc.  They're just flat out BEHIND now.  Plenty of it could be created with their current systems anyways.

Game is just old and probably a fucking nightmare to bring up to date at this point.

We're talking about a code base that at this point is literally a decade old.

Oh, are we talking about features from that game nobody's played and one month in was on life support?  Yeah, no wonder features aren't implemented from it.   :awesome_for_real:

Seriously though
*  fuck jumping puzzles.
* Evidently overflow servers went in along with the cross-server zones, Blizzard just doesn't have the pop in a single zone to show them.  We'll see how that works out in the panda starting zones.   (I'm expecting bad things...)
* Investigation missions don't look like anything special, sorry.  They're "find the hidden widget" but relabeled.  Those have been in many games for a few years.  
* Dynamic events I would guess aren't possible with their code.  Phasing causes enough hiccups as it is, piling something like that on top might just break shit. The closest they come here is the mobs marked with a "!" so multiple people can attack them and still get credit for completion.
* Companions - Um.. why?  I thought they would be a great idea pre-TOR.. but:
                  1) Devs balance classes around using them, turning everyone in to a pet class.  I  see that the folks who originally complained this is exactly what would happen were right.  Which sucks, because once you make them integral to class balance like that it really hacks some players off.  Not everyone wants to be a pet class.
                  2) The devs aren't willing to trivialize their 'group only' content enough to make them worthwhile in dungeons.  (Plus this would be another "player interaction" thing.. )  
                  3) It doesn't make sense for WOW in particular.  Another property, perhaps, but this far in you're just shoving things in to do it.  Yes, shockingly, LOLLORE or LOLSETTING can be a real reason NOT to do things sometimes.

The reality is millions of people have played these games and now consider some of this stuff a new base line.  Nerd raging that they like such things isn't going to change that.   They still won't go back to WoW.

While I admit some of those things sound cool, my initial draw in WoW was a cool world to explore that had interesting class gameplay.  I wanted to share the dungeon/raid experience with other people -- completing that first class set so my Priest was all blue (and subsequently trying to add white pieces to it).

This might be egocentric, but isn't the core issue "is it fun?" rather than "why not implement X mechanic?"  One seems to apply across the board and the other seems like it hits a niche.  I'm not saying these are mutually exclusive, though (but more on that in a bit).

All of what I've seen so far (in MoP beta videos and forum posts) points to devs focusing on an interesting world people want to share with their friends.  While people share that they liked TBC as the golden age of WoW, I think it really points to having something to do.  I think devs have acknowledged that:  if you weren't raiding in TBC, you might've been levelling an alt, which didn't take five days to max.  The challenge now is providing you something to do while simultaneously inviting you to level 90 in two weeks.

Maybe that is through some of the mechanics you mention.  For me, it's about the lustre of purples being purple again.  I miss the days when epics were epic, not just something you purchased from a vendor.  Truly building a character and whatnot.

The only thing I remotely nerd raged about were jumping puzzles.  Because seriously, fuck those.  I stopped playing platformers years ago for a reason and I'll avoid MMOs that implement them.

Sorry I insulted your personal Jesus of a game but the fact is it wasn't popular enough.   People still pine for mechanics innovations from other games that nobody's done since, too.  Talk about AC, DAoC, SWG, Conan, AO, CoX and the litany of other MMOs from the past and you can find something that was changed but never carried forward to other games. 

Since there's plenty of fodder across the past that hasn't been picked-up how can it be that because mechanics from a game that was released 2 months ago and failed haven't been picked-up suddenly others are dated?  The question is what features has the public - not an insignificant forum of gaming pundits - wanted implemented and what can be implemented reasonably in to older games.

It'd be a wild stretch to say EVE sucks because it doesn't give you a companion ship, investigation missions or put jumping puzzles on the stations. (It sucks for other reasons!  :grin: )

Most of the examples I gave come from GW2.  I only gave 1 example from TSW and I don't even like that game.  I've no personal investment in any of the points actually.  Overall these 4 games (RIFT,SWTOR,TSW,GW2) have simply made WoW boring to even contemplate.  Even an expansion targeted specifically at someone like me isn't appealing.  Looking around at the other WoW die-hards (which included me at one point) this isn't a unique outlook.

Not all of those things are thing that should go in every game, though. Investigation missions would just be weird and out of place in WoW as one example, you need a game that's built to accomodate them, which is necessarily going to be different from WoW in terms of its rewards structure etc.

I think the reason I'm done with WoW is it feels like I've beaten the game. In EQ it was kill all the gods. In WoW it was kill Arthas. After that you can tell they've run out of villains and themes anyone cares about. So you can have pointless expansions with villains you need to google for and still don't remember them, or an expansion based on a joke character.

Either way, sooner WoW dies sooner we can see titan and if they learnt something or fell prey to second system effect.

Funny how a character created for the final game in a trilogy became the be-all and end-all in so many players' eyes.

Features in other games not getting picked up by WoW doesn't mean those features deserve the dustbin of history. It just means they weren't important enough to prioritize, or exceed a worthwhile level of effort.

WoW doesn't need jump puzzles, investigation, story, or anything else that is along the non-combat vector. But SWTOR did to differentiate. TSW did to help justify their modern setting. GW2 did because they quickly nailed the hella-fun combat system but wanted to introduce a setting nobody but GW1 diehards were familiar with.

WoW is successful enough to not need to reinvent itself. It's got a long way to go before it becomes #2 to anything. And that really only happens if the genre sheds millions of players. Unless we think GW2 is hitting 8mm units sold...

And I'll say again, I'll believe Titan is coming when they saying something official.

Certainly you wouldn't have the out of game aspect.  Having puzzle quests with vague hints in WoW is perfectly feasible though.  I think that's actually a great way to add lore detail without it just being a wall of text.


What matters is the shareholder perception due to lost subs.  They've been doing heavy changes since the game came out anyways.  The new talent system is far more controversial than something like dynamic events.

Yeah but it was a more compelling and better-told story than the Orc vs. Human stuff of the first two games.  I didn't even know a ton of the lore from WC1 (despite owning the game) until I found the game manual again years later and read through it.   I still can't tell you the plot for WC2 despite playing through twice in 1996/7-ish.   WC3 did the storytelling well enough and was big enough that it really caught everyone's imagination, it would seem.

Arthas was a dramatic character in need of a beat down. It was motivating. The villain in cataclysm was "meh". Same for their armies.


Titan will come when WoW stops being dominant. Will make a nice foil to the competition... if they had any.

GW2 isn't competing with WoW, if you want to get the leet purples in PvE or PvP WoW is still the game to be playing. Though it might punch some holes in it and cause some of the more casual players to leak away.

OTOH, I bet that we see a bunch of stuff from GW2 added to WoW either in 5.2 onwards or in 6.0. Jumping puzzles and exploration points could be crowbarred into the achievement system pretty quickly and vistas are just "use object" triggered cutscenes. I mean, there's already 'Explorer" achievements based on map blocks so adding 'Traveller' ones based on points of interest isn't that much of a stretch. And, mechanically, I would not be at all surprised if Blizzard is working on a global AH already.

Heart system/public quests? Not so much.

(Deathwing was 'meh' because some people bitched about Arthas being a saturday morning cartoon villain who kept showing up throughout Northrend before running off with a "I'll get you next time, Gadget. NEXT TIME!", so they kept the big guy in the background and focused on his subordinates. So now people are complaining about DW not being visible enough. MMO playerbase doesn't know what the fuck it wants, example #23544525)

I prefer the way they did Arthas.  We went up to Northrend to defeat him, it was cool he appeared from time to time.  Whereas Deathwing, he deigned to incinerate me once when he passed overhead.  *casual player shakes tiny fist*

Oh and the new talent system sucks balls.  Of all the classes, only the Hunter, Pally and maybe Mage are still fun to play for me.  What they did to the Balance Druid...

I do like all the new dungeon notes, bosses and loot.  That's very nice.

If WoW was EQ without the suck, then GW2 is WoW without the suck.
While I don't think GW2 will dethrone WoW, I do think it's the only MMOG that has a chance of even getting in the ballpark.

If Blizzard adds jumping puzzles to WoW, I'll have the same stabby reaction as some folks have had to the notion of Pandas.

In MMOs, there are jumping puzzles, and there are jumping puzzles. GW2 has both kinds.
1) You are figuring out how to get to the objective. There's some easy jumping on the way.
2) You have to be good at jumping in an MMO.

1 is fun. 1 is most of the vista's I've found in GW2. 1 is Rift's cache's.

2 SUCKS and I have hated them since Asheron's Call. In fact, up until GW2, I hadn't seen a 2-style jumping puzzle since AC.
MMO devs have, for the most part, been smart enough not to put them in.
Even in GW2 they're optional content, so I can skip them.

There's a lot of "suck" being described and complained about in the GW2 forum...

Meh, just leave off.  They're all still in the honeymoon period. Give it another two weeks.

The f13 version of a honeymoon is a short and bitter event ahead of the break-up.

Also surprised I'd totally forgotten cataclysm was about death-wing. Guess it's a good indication of how much I cared about puff the emo dragon.

I think I can recall exactly one "jumping puzzle" in WoW.  Which would have been the jump in wailing caverns required to get to the one boss area.  And that was eventually "fixed" so that you could basicly auto run off the ledge and still make the "jump".  Which goes a long way to show exactly what the WoW devs think of jumping puzzles.

I'm reminded of the group of F13ers trying to get an Omnicron in TOR one evening.  We spent about 45 minutes waiting for poor Slack, who eventually just had to give up because 1) his rig was giving him fits and 2) he couldn't time right to compensate for #1.

It all sounds like a good idea until you run into latency, spec and performance problems. These aren't console games and some people try to run them on toasters (slack was more of a microwave).

There was a jumping thing in Naxx when you ran off the platforms to get to the boss. Several people in my raid would screw it up weekly. Mostly people with shitty old computers.

Yeah, that was quite bad I think it was after Grobbulus and before Gluth, but I haven't raided Naxx since original Naxx, so my memory might be off.

Yes, that's where it was and I'd forgotten about that one.  We had a few regularly fall as well.  Eventually we resigned ourselves to knowing they were going to die, so we'd just plan to rez them on the pipe for the run down to Gluth.

Even the hardest jumps in GW2 are far easier than that Naxx jump on Thaddius amusingly.  It's probably a good idea for Blizzard to not do them in that respect.  They'd make them stupid hard.  The only reason I like them in GW2 is because they are easy.

I guess they both have classes, levels, and a fantasy theme. Beyond that? They're extremely dissimilar games. To the point where your statement strikes me as nonsense. It's WoW without raiding, without max level character progression, without questing - in other words all the things that make WoW WoW? All that tells us is you don't like WoW, it doesn't say anything meaningful about the difference or similarity between the games.

If game's didn't suck somehow, this subforum would be pretty dull.  :grin:

GW2 has a core concept of player cooperation, and WoW is pretty slow and clumsy to get on that bandwagon. (LFR)

If one of you was a 50 Sage/Sorcerer you could have pulled him past whatever he was having trouble with.  So at least TOR has that.

We were leveling and about L10 at the time.

Ah.  I never bothered with the crons until I hit 50.

WoW has a core concept of superiority through itemscore so they're pretty much incompatible. Co-operation might let people who don't deserve it get the rewards.

Eh, there are a spectrum of approaches to player interaction, from the purely cooperative (I guess GW2 probably falls in here, or close to it) to the purely competitive (Eve, at least on a macro level) and WoW falls in between. I think it is pretty hard to argue that any one of the places you can place your game on the spectrum is the "wrong" place, because different players want different things. WoW seems to have pretty well staked out their part of the spectrum, and it is hard to argue that they don't capture the way the majority want to play.

In other words player cooperation is not a goal that every game should seek to accommodate in every way possible.

Back to jump puzzles - while GW2/Rift have them, the 'mandatory' ones are a lot easier than in arcade games (though I'd disagree about the Thaddius jump; I never had any problem making that, while I DID have a problem with The Cost of Magic in TSW and at least one of the triciker vistas in GW2 like the one in the southwestern keep of the Eternal Battlegrounds). The optional ones with wind and shit are well... optional.

I disliked SWTOR's jump puzzles (again, the one with the insect people? eff that noise) -- and I imagine if I was on a pvp server with griefers whose only purpose was to stealth by critical points with a finger on the knockback or pull button, I'd dislike them more... I believe I'll have the same reaction to the optional GW2 jump puzzles once I get there. However, I can't imagine doing any of GW2's or TSW's jump puzzles with player interference; they're hard enough as they are.

(Actually I lied, GW2 does have a jumping puzzle in WVW, and I decided to avoid that like a plague - I prefer the veins in my temple to remain UNpopped, thankyouverymuch.)

The actual puzzles in GW2 are "harder" but the literal jumps themselves are all definitely easier than the Thaddius jump.  The timing on them is much much looser.  Mostly because the GW2 engine will count it as "close enough" if you get anywhere near the edge.

And yet, GW2 has no goddamn dungeon finder, why do you have no dungeon finder, GW2.

No roles to select!  :awesome_for_real:

How are you going to implement vistas or jumping puzzles when everyone can just fly to the end?

They can limit flying in certain zones/areas easily enough.


They've already done it for Wintergrasp.

Lol blood elves.

Something like have them start with a area-triggered quest popup that gives you a "No cheating!" debuff that prevents mounting, or similar.

Or maybe make them interesting to find via flying. Seemed like one of the more underutilized features in terms of game play. Did they ever add anything more than just having your own way to fly around? There was that one BC quest where you could dive-bomb things, but that was about it from what I recall.