MMO Subs are a dead model - John Smedley

[UnSub]

Every MMO is exactly one patch away from complete unrecognisability.

I don't see it being MMO development by focus group, I see it as MMO development by forum in-jokes. Players love the idea of "developers listening to the player base", but this is exactly what happens.

[MahrinSkel]

To me, it looks very much like they asked a market research group "How can we recover momentum in Asia?", and this is what got spit out.  Business-wise, they could give a shit less if this drops US subs by 50%, as long as it raises asian subs by a like proportion.  There a race of athropomorphic pandas wouldn't inspire the same "you have *got* to be kidding me" dismissal.  On the other hand, if they used Ninjas for their asian flavor, they'd get nothing but grief from mainland Asia.

--Dave

[Kageru]

All of the above. Definitely Ghostcrawler is no replacement for Enoyls and probably the same is true of the people working with him I'd assume.

Then again for a lot of people Arthas was was the final villain in the story.

Talking of SoE being a failed studio though, did anyone else think "The Heist" looked a lot like salvage from "The Agency"?

[DraconianOne]

I know this whole WoW Panderia topic is a digression but Wolfshead Online called this a couple of years ago. New hero class of Monk and likely new race of Pandaren. His reasoning seems quite sound too.

[Kageru]

Reminds me of how badly they failed with hero classes.

This was leaked a lot earlier in WoW history (a copy of the info here) with the progression up to level 100.

[Merusk]

Pander-ia, it kind of telegraphs it.  Blizzard has been reduced to design by marketing focus group.

What about if you were told they were originally going to include Pandarians in the first expansion, but had to change it at the last minute.  "...and there's a story there you may have heard rumors about."

Not that part of it is marketing, but after the absolute cock-up that is Cataclysm they've got to listen to the player base on this next one.  That base has made Pandarans and the Brewmaster the #1 most-requested item for the last 7 years.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, I know, they wanted the Pandarans a long time ago but the Chinese government blocked it.  Since they now *aren't*, I think the theory that it was a maneuver in their conflict with their Chinese licensee just got validated.

How does the theory that they are just recycling old ideas from years ago *improve* things?

--Dave

[Margalis]

A lot of these guys are no more game developers than guys tasked with developing new themes for slot machines.

Gamasutra headline today:

"Zynga VP Castle Leaves For Casino Product Company"

Am I good or what?

[Maledict]

Reminds me of how badly they failed with hero classes.

This was leaked a lot earlier in WoW history (a copy of the info here) with the progression up to level 100.

This was not a leak. It was a fake. It was made after the WotLK zones were known but  headed up with a statement saying it was found just after TBC. The author eventually admitted it was a fake and completely made up from the RPG zones a couple of years ago but it refuses to die!

[Outlawedprod]

re-focus on what customers actually want and go with it.

The train fell off the tracks.  I don't think they know what their customers want.
http://www.eldergame.com/2011/10/wow-removed-talent-trees/

[UnSub]

There probably are a group of customers who wanted that.

[Nebu]

There probably are a group of customers who wanted that.

The 12 year olds that migrated from Runescape? 

[Xanthippe]

Pandaria is the first WoW expansion I have absolutely zero interest in.  (Cata fascinated me before it lost me when I experienced what those bastids did to my beloved game).

[Merusk]

There probably are a group of customers who wanted that.

The 12 year olds that migrated from Runescape? 

Some of the people on this very forum have already been Championing the idea when it's picked-at.

[Rendakor]

I don't like the MoP changes, but after they gutted the trees in Cata I can't be arsed to care. Blizzard has essentially admitted that they're unable to balance complex, interesting talent trees. What I would love is something like EQ2's AA system instead of this "lol pick 6 skills" shit, but alas. At least I'm getting a pokemon MMO to make up for it.

[Fabricated]

I'm still boggled over how Blizzard openly kicked sand in the face of the more casual, less-skilled players with Cataclysm.

What was their fucking brainwave on that? I literally don't understand it.

[Kail]

I'm still boggled over how Blizzard openly kicked sand in the face of the more casual, less-skilled players with Cataclysm.

What was their fucking brainwave on that? I literally don't understand it.

I suspect it was accidental.  There's always been a bit of grumbling from raiders every expansion when the gear is reset, but around here it usually just merits a "sux2bu catass".  Cata is the first expansion where casual players were really impacted by it, because with the introduction of the LFD system and the ability to buy tier gear for points, it was the first time casuals really had access to high end gear at the end of an expansion.

[Hawkbit]

My dad plays fairly casual and has maybe pugged a raid five times in his life.  He bitches every expansion about losing his 5-man and PvP gear, so that wasn't new to most players.  Everyone was seeing new gear inflation.

My opinion was that they simply lost touch with who their playerbase was.  I think they saw 'casuals' and new players that were playing the old zones that everyone felt were broken, so they fixed those and considered that would suffice as casual content for the xpac.  Then they simply refocused the 80+ game to be tougher, thinking that the hardcores will like the challenge and the casuals will just reroll if they find it too tough. 

A couple of lessons should have been learned, but were not.  First, a team should be in place, constantly re-working zones.  Every single major patch there should be a zone layout and story change.  There is no reason with the money that WoW rakes in, that the game cannot have evolving content. 

Second, not that this should even need to be said, but Normal dungeons/raids should be a relatively simple, fun, training zone with marginal upgrades.  Heroics should be really fricking tough.  You shouldn't be able to pug them and be successful.  That's where the casual/hardcore line should have been drawn before WotLK; instead, everyone now expects to be able to run heroics.  Which they shouldn't.  That's supposed to be the challenge that sets those players apart that want to be special.

For the record, the eldergames opinion piece above is pretty spot-on.  This ultimately makes the game easier for returning players, but for those that stick around 12mo/yr, that system looks really dumbed down.

[Evildrider]

The problem is kind of a double edged sword for the casual crowd.  People want content faster, but with the next big patch Blizzard ups the gear level and everything starts all over again.  It's like "Yay, I finally got all the stuff I wanted but in a week with the next patch I have to start all over again", that's fucking annoying.  I don't know if it's because of the way the itemization is in WoW, but they can't seem to find ways to make more desirable items within a tier.

[Kageru]

What I would love is something like EQ2's AA system instead of this "lol pick 6 skills" shit, but alas.

AA is a retarded concept because it encourages endless levelling, means the reward is disconnected from the action (so you just find a place and grind AA's) and magnifies power inflation while freezing out new players. Unlike gear you can't obsolete powers that have been "baked in" to the character.

There's no really great solution to giving players carrots they want enough to grind for that don't unbalance the game. The Blizzard team has the problem that players are now so good at their analysis the check-lists with "best in slot" are out as soon as the new content is data-mined and the rest is effectively junk. They've responded to this by increasing the rate at which sets are obsoleted. Which isn't a bad mechanic in itself, since you can balance challenge against gear in a way you can't with AA's, but if the pace is too fast then a lot of people just become frustrated with the system and have no attachment to the gear they've "earnt".

At a guess, outside of the wow developers actually not being nearly as clever as they thought they were, the problem is they weren't willing to accept that gaps in content are inevitable. The super hard-core players are going to beat your content and whine about nothing to do but that's fine and inevitable. Tuning the content such that it keeps them busy to match Blizzards speed of content generation will inevitably freeze out very large sections of your player-base.

[Rendakor]

Well I don't necessarily mean the endless grinding of an AA system, just that EQ2's system had a TON of customization and depth. Rift's soul system had a good amount of depth too it as well. The early Cata beta talents were pretty cool, particularly when we were going to be able to max out one spec and get a decent ability out of a subspec (51/21/4 I think they were) and then they just scrapped it all for the Cata system.

[Numtini]

I'm completely mystified by WoW removing talent trees. Everyone that I know loves the Rift system. Of course it's not balanced and people create cookie cutters and some of them are overpowered (X-icars for example).  But that's part of the fun and crafting these builds is part of the game--gives people something to do at work when they can't play.

Normal dungeons/raids should be a relatively simple, fun, training zone with marginal upgrades.  Heroics should be really fricking tough.  You shouldn't be able to pug them and be successful

Isn't that what they did though? Except it crashed and burned when they shoved them into the LFD system which encourages repeated runs with random PUGs. Which to me was the problem.

EQ2, once upon a time, had a very nice shallow item inflation curve that meant you were often doing dungeons and several raids at once because they all had at least some nice gear or at least enough plat to make it worth doing. They scrapped that in favor of a WoW token grind though.

[Hawkbit]

Again, just my opinion here, but I feel that the change was too dramatic.  WoW had conditioned people in WotLK to think that everyone can do heroics.  Heck, my dad had heroics on farm throughout that expansion.  And he just doesn't have the time/skill to compete like that in early Cat.  So now everyone doing all the content is what the majority expect. 

I remember in BC, doing heroics back when I was a catass, running the lvl 70 Hellfire zone heroic.  I can't remember the name, but that thing was brutal.  That final boss had a 360 degree cleave, bounced around the arena area.  We figured it out over a few runs, but that was tough.  The way a heroic should be.

[Fabricated]

Again, just my opinion here, but I feel that the change was too dramatic.  WoW had conditioned people in WotLK to think that everyone can do heroics.  Heck, my dad had heroics on farm throughout that expansion.  And he just doesn't have the time/skill to compete like that in early Cat.  So now everyone doing all the content is what the majority expect. 

I remember in BC, doing heroics back when I was a catass, running the lvl 70 Hellfire zone heroic.  I can't remember the name, but that thing was brutal.  That final boss had a 360 degree cleave, bounced around the arena area.  We figured it out over a few runs, but that was tough.  The way a heroic should be.

Asscleaves were retarded and it's good that they're gone. This is coming from a warrior tank who loved to run Shattered Halls.

Anyway, re-railing back to the topic at hand: This is still talking WoW, but I kinda think the whole "Buy an annual sub and get D3/swag" deal is both 1) A pretty hilariously desperate ploy to keep subs from slipping by literally offering players a game to play when they decide WoW sucks, and 2) maybe a bit of a white flag on their sub model in general?

If people are punching out because of boredom/frustration/ennui, and they don't seem to be into actually fixing the game you either "bribe" the customers to stay subbed, or switch models?

[Sky]

How are people not bored by a 7-yr old game that dribbles out content?

[Numtini]

How are people not bored by a 7-yr old game that dribbles out content?

I play two or three months then leave for a year. It's worked out so far.

[Rendakor]

How are people not bored by a 7-yr old game that dribbles out content?

I play with a lot of friends who have thus far been unwilling to stick with (or all try together even) any other MMO.

[Sky]

All my old friends still go to the same old local bars and get drunk.

I hang out with different people now.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm completely mystified by WoW removing talent trees.

I believe the Wow "reinvention cycle" is completely intentional, and contributes directly to its successes.

[Nebu]

I believe the Wow "reinvention cycle" is completely intentional, and contributes directly to its successes.

I remember wondering if Mythic changed class balance each month knowing that the hardcore 8v8 people would reroll new toons to exploit the balance changes.  It was a way to keep people in the game by allowing them a new mechanism to optimize their group build.

[Hawkbit]

The talent changes do play into that idea.  One of the big issues I have coming back to play after being gone for six months is talent spec.  I can head to the forums and hit the stickies, but I don't play at the level where I want to start parsing stuff before I play.  At this point, I'm not even sure why they didn't just roll talents into a reworked glyph system, as they appear to do the same thing in 5.0.

With only six choices, it sure makes coming back to the game a lot easier right out of the gate. 

(To derail, yes, asscleaves sucked and were a broken mechanic... but I was alluding to the challenge faced, not so much the mechanics.)

/rerail

[Shatter]

How are people not bored by a 7-yr old game that dribbles out content?

This.  I quit over 4 years ago and all I remember was what I did the same the last X number of months I played.  Dailies, maybe a heroic of some dungeon I had done 55 times already.  PvP in the same Battlegrounds I had done about 1000 times each.  Farm some mats(herbs, etc) to make a few bucks, Logoff.  How is it any different?  I gave up on raiding 6 months prior to quitting when they decided that encounters should be so finite that one person screws up the raid wipes. 

[Fordel]

I'm still boggled over how Blizzard openly kicked sand in the face of the more casual, less-skilled players with Cataclysm.

What was their fucking brainwave on that? I literally don't understand it.

They made the mistake of thinking that raid group cohesion stayed intact across expansions. "Everyone has been in the same raid guild since Vanilla, rite?" 

[Ingmar]

"OK, we successfully trained all the casual players how to raid in Wrath, now we can move the difficulty up a notch now that they've all gotten better!"

[Fordel]

That's exactly what they thought. They made the same mistake at the release of TBC, it's just most of us didn't notice because we didn't raid at all outside of Kara.