Expansions and the Level Cap.

[Phred]

Now the real question is: Is blizzard is going to zero out everyone's rest meter, or is every level 60 going to get kickstarted with 150% rest experience come expansion?

They've already removed rest experience when they removed the exp bar at 60 from what I understand.

[Venkman]

This thread is funny. In a 1999 sorta way. Blizzard will raise the cap again and again, like EQ. They'll add more Talents or create an AAXP system. They'll go back and redesign zones and newbie content so it's worth doing again. They'll add, on Test only, playable monsters and then remove it. They'll go through three staff turnovers and four graphics engine upgrades and 15 expansions and just keep going.

We're living history repeating itself. Not only is the core game the same, the core thinking is.

And as much as I'm enjoying PvP, it's an add-on.

[Typhon]

Lies! Lies! Blasphemer! Heritic!

That's NOT what will happen!  They will deliver on the promise!

The Battlegrounds PvP system will develop into something that has impact on world events! Each battle will play out something like a Warcraft battle, with decently intelligent NPCs augementing PCs!

There will be world-based PvP zones that allow for building/taking/razing of structures and land-conquest battles.  All, via Blizzard-magic (I believe!), these zones will have some form of side-balancing for balanced combat based upon fairplay and player skillz!  Winners will be contained with dimishing returns, while the losing side will be given a leg up so that they will have a fighting chance!

Sunshine! Magic! And, dare I say it?, glorious MMO Revolution!  I believe! I believe!

[Calantus]

The internet won't be around long enough for WoW to hit 15 expansions.

[Xanthippe]

I don't care how long it takes me to go from 60 to 70, as long as I have fun doing it.  Going quest to quest would count as fun for me.

I also don't care if people hoard their bg ribbons to get a bunch of xp, or how fast other people get to 70.  I'm not planning on racing or worrying about what other people do.  For me, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

I do care if they put in mroe recipes - I really hope they do.

[Venkman]

Hehe, never even thought of hoarding my BG ribbons. Never realized they gave XP. Not that I care anyway. When 70 comes out I doubt I'll be PvPing much again before I hit it.

[stray]

There isn't enough bank space or patience (even for the insane) to get 2.5 million experience off of something like BG ribbons.

...

The journey sucks. I don't expect anything like that to be a fun experience until Bioware comes along.

The journey is "OK" with a guild however. Sometimes. But that isn't because of the quests themselves.

[Azazel]

BG Ribbons are also marked "Unique (20)" which I presume that you can only hold 20 of each type at most, as a stack of 20 of them becomes a unique item?

Not sure, I've never held more than 17 of any kind at a time.

[caladein]

BG Ribbons are also marked "Unique (20)" which I presume that you can only hold 20 of each type at most, as a stack of 20 of them becomes a unique item?

Not sure, I've never held more than 17 of any kind at a time.

They get sent to you in the mail if you're over the cap.

[Ironwood]

There are more recipes.  Tons of them.

[Simond]

The journey sucks. I don't expect anything like that to be a fun experience until Bioware comes along.

And what would Bioware do differently to Blizzard in a Diku?

Oh, you meant that the Bioware wouldn't be a Diku? Then I ask again - why are you playing WoW, as you are quite clearly not enjoying it?

[stray]

The journey sucks. I don't expect anything like that to be a fun experience until Bioware comes along.

And what would Bioware do differently to Blizzard in a Diku?

Oh, you meant that the Bioware wouldn't be a Diku? Then I ask again - why are you playing WoW, as you are quite clearly not enjoying it?

What the hell are you talking about? I never said anything about diku based games. I was talking about storytelling. All kinds of mmos and muds suck at it.

Your entire premise on which to entrap me is bullshit and nothing I ever said.

I already told Ironwood why I was playing WoW (a recent stint after a year of not playing at that). If you didn't waste your time trying to be clever with me, then you would have seen that.

[Simond]

WoW is, pretty much, as good as diku-MMOGs are going to get for storytelling/RP in its quests...and yet you claim that part of the game sucks.

If the game isn't going to change to what you want (which it won't with the possibly exception of the gladiatorial combat...if Blizzard pulls that off, of course), and if you think most of the content sucks then - again - why are you playing it?

I'm genuinely confused here.

[WindupAtheist]

I thought WoW was crappy too.  Which is why I don't play it anymore.  Add me to the "wtf?" crowd.

[SurfD]

If some sort of quick XP is found, you can bet it will be fixed in a matter of hours. For example, when they added that easily stealth-farmable boss lich to stratholme which dropped a staff that sold for 8g and 2 corruptors scourgestones. It was fixed by the very next day (they moved the lich to make him nigh impossible to stealth run), but not before some friends of mine got 30 or 40 stones which bumped their argent dawn faction way, way up.

My personal favourite was the exploit with Jandice Barov.  I know a few people who litterally did starting friendly -> Exalted in a couple of hours.  Some enterprising soul found out that if you did physical damage to the duplicates she spawned, they each awarded 5 AD rep when they "died" (they despawn on their own after about 10 seconds).   Just get a warrior with a shield + thorium shield spike and improved shield block, have him spam Shield Block, and stand around for a few hours raking in the AD rep.  You could litterally last for ever (your shield would quite often break before you even made a noticable dent in Jandice's hitpoints from the shield spike damage).  They fixed that one right quick.

[Zane0]

I went in with a group and it was hotfixed before our eyes. :/

Got exalted now though; thanks Naxx.

[stray]

WoW is, pretty much, as good as diku-MMOGs are going to get for storytelling/RP in its quests...and yet you claim that part of the game sucks.

Diku is combat/class/grouping mechanics. Not storytelling mechanics. There is nothing inherent in Diku that dictates quests must be of a specific Click Stationary NPC --> Read Spewed Text --> FedEx/Whack Foozle nature. Just like there is nothing inherent in RTS or FPS mechanics that dictates how exactly a story must be told.
 
And what is WoW doing so different from other games anyways? Ninety-Five percent of the time, the quests are like the ones above. These are the very same storytelling mechanics most MMO's have had (diku or not). Very few quests in WoW stand out from anything else (though to be fair, I can think of a handful...).

and if you think most of the content sucks then - again - why are you playing it?

Again - I told you already. Asshole.

I'm really being too nice by repeating this, but here:

PvP. I'm no different than most pvp oriented players who grit their teeth through "content" so they can get to the part they want. It's the boring, drawn out ritual before the blood and sacrifice, if you will. As long as the blood flows enough in the end, and outweighs the ritual, then I'm going to enjoy it. This kind of thing has been going on for so long in mmo's that it's almost a time honored tradition. Yet, you're treating me like I'm some unique case. Trying to interrogate me and shit.

Simple answer is: I play and enjoy what I want. Stop asking me stupid questions. And stop assuming my statement about the "journey" was a specific criticism of your beloved game.

[Threash]

BG Ribbons are also marked "Unique (20)" which I presume that you can only hold 20 of each type at most, as a stack of 20 of them becomes a unique item?

Not sure, I've never held more than 17 of any kind at a time.

They get sent to you in the mail if you're over the cap.

The mail they get sent with lasts 24 hours.  Theres going to be tons of ribbon farming the last day before the expansion but not enough to make a dent into more than one level.  Each turn in is 3k exp.

[Xanthippe]

The mail they get sent with lasts 24 hours.  Theres going to be tons of ribbon farming the last day before the expansion but not enough to make a dent into more than one level.  Each turn in is 3k exp.

What a silly way to play though. 

[lamaros]

WoW is, pretty much, as good as diku-MMOGs are going to get for storytelling/RP in its quests...and yet you claim that part of the game sucks.

WoW has AWFUL writing.

Maybe not as awful as many other games. But god. It's not good.

They do humor pretty well, but everything else is a haphasard mix of fantasy cliches.

[Venkman]

There's some moments of inspiration in quest series, but it's more in the story itself than quality of narrative.

As Stray notes, diku is separate from quality of writing, and there's not as much attention given to the quality of writing as, say, game balance, world objects, textures and so on.

From a business standpoint, it's hard to justify. Are players any less inclined to do a quest if the writing sucks? But it's also a question of quantity. Each quest/series is a completely new story, and games generally have thousands of them. Hard to maintain quality across that number.

What I've long wanted is a narrative-based engine, something where every story in a game is connected to every other one, making the story more relevant than the micro-achievements from individual quests. But I'm still waiting, and likely will be for some time.

[Simond]

WoW is, pretty much, as good as diku-MMOGs are going to get for storytelling/RP in its quests...and yet you claim that part of the game sucks.

WoW has AWFUL writing.

Maybe not as awful as many other games.

And that was my point.

[Typhon]

Random thoughts to irritate those that want better writing in games:

Why would Blizzard pay for Shakespear when a large part of the gaming audience doesn't want Shakespear (phat lewt!!!!), and more importantly, that gaming audience isn't in their seats and doesn't want to be in their seats?

How do you write high-drama in 150-words-or-less snippets that can be read non-sequentially with (potentially) months between the reading of each snippet?

Bitching about the writing in games is like bitching about the science on episodic T.V.  Sure, I bitch about the science on T.V., but I realize that I'm in the vast minority that actually gives a damn.

I'd rather not wait another six months for an update/expansion because some anal literary genius couldn't get the voice of some minor NPC (that I'm likely to never run across) "just right".

[Venkman]

Why would Blizzard pay for Shakespear when a large part of the gaming audience doesn't want Shakespear (phat lewt!!!!), and more importantly, that gaming audience isn't in their seats and doesn't want to be in their seats?

Exactly why I said: "From a business standpoint, it's hard to justify. Are players any less inclined to do a quest if the writing sucks?"

I'd rather not wait another six months for an update/expansion because some anal literary genius couldn't get the voice of some minor NPC (that I'm likely to never run across) "just right".

At the same time, development is not a strictly linear activity. If you have a standard quest system like WoW, the mechanics of play (objective, difficulty, reward) are independent of the writing. So you can develop the quest itself, balance it, and then in parallel have it written better.

For me though, the quality of narrative is intrinsically tied to the quality of game play. A Kill X Get Y quest is still a Kill X Get Y quest. The story of that quest is irrelevent to 90% of the players because they're there mostly for the objective, difficulty and reward. To make writing and story relevant is to make people care about it, and that requires their actions actually have some impact on that story. So far, there isn't any real impact, as each new game gets less dynamic than prior ones. Heck, even faction from EQ is gone. There's no mechanic-derived accountability system beyond the linear ladders of Rep, XP and so on.

[Phred]

I think one of the most popular, requested addons early on was the one the sped up quest text scrolling. Face it, 90% of the customer base doesn't even read the quest text, so I'm impressed with the effort they have put in for us  10% that actually read stuff.

[Venkman]

Which is endemic of the type of people attracted to these sorts of games. This is one of the very reasons why having a successful diku doesn't necessarily mean you've made a game for everyone. In other words, there's still lots of room to grow in this and corrollary spaces.

[Lt.Dan]

Which is endemic of the type of people attracted to these sorts of games. This is one of the very reasons why having a successful diku doesn't necessarily mean you've made a game for everyone. In other words, there's still lots of room to grow in this and corrollary spaces.

I think it's actually endemic of the quests available.  When I first started playing WoW I read all those quest descriptions.  It was fun and interesting....for about an hour until you've seen pretty much all quest variation - yeah, yeah, blah, blah, you want me to kill x to get y bits, or you want me to click on x things to get x things.  The few interesting quests get lost in randomized content.

[Velorath]

Random thoughts to irritate those that want better writing in games:

Why would Blizzard pay for Shakespear when a large part of the gaming audience doesn't want Shakespear (phat lewt!!!!), and more importantly, that gaming audience isn't in their seats and doesn't want to be in their seats?

How do you write high-drama in 150-words-or-less snippets that can be read non-sequentially with (potentially) months between the reading of each snippet?

Bitching about the writing in games is like bitching about the science on episodic T.V.  Sure, I bitch about the science on T.V., but I realize that I'm in the vast minority that actually gives a damn.

I'd rather not wait another six months for an update/expansion because some anal literary genius couldn't get the voice of some minor NPC (that I'm likely to never run across) "just right".

I don't know, to me one of the things FFXI did that was interesting was put in missions that formed an overall storyarc for the game (with cutscenes and all).  Not every little quest needs to be Shakespeare, but it's nice to have a larger story going on throughout your character's leveling.

[Phred]

I don't know, to me one of the things FFXI did that was interesting was put in missions that formed an overall storyarc for the game (with cutscenes and all).  Not every little quest needs to be Shakespeare, but it's nice to have a larger story going on throughout your character's leveling.

And there are a ton of story arc quests in WoW too, at least on the Alliance side.

[Typhon]

In case it seems otherwise, I used to read a lot and enjoy reading (so much so that I'm compulsive about it, and having a stressful job doesn't mix with reading till 3am).

That said, I don't enjoy reading in an instance with 4 other people waiting for me to finish.  I'd like it even less if I was reading Shakespear while 4 other people were waiting for me to finish.

Quest text will go the way of the dinosaur once decent text-to-speech software exists (or it becomes significantly cheaper to do voice recording/storing) - no I don't think this will happen anytime soon.  Until that point, it seems to me that quest text writers have a very small palette to work on, so cut them some slack.  Another analogy - no one expects icon artists to produce a Mona Lisa, why would you expect that a quest text writer produce a MacBeth?

[tkinnun0]

You won't like hearing the NPC's speech with 4 other people waiting for it to finish, either.

The problem is other people. One solution would be to separate story advancement from group encounters, or at least minimize it. So, if your group has killed The Big Baddie, you get Proof of Accomplishment. To turn that Proof of Accomplishment into Epic Lewtz, you have to complete a series of solo quests which only advance the story. If you can do those quests at your convenience before the next week's raid then there's no external pressure to speed through them.

[Ironwood]

You won't like hearing the NPC's speech with 4 other people waiting for it to finish, either.

*blink*

That's not an issue.

[Venkman]

Quests are a single-player experience. Even if 40 people have the same quest, the rewards are all individualistic. As such,

I think it's actually endemic of the quests available.

That's my point. This is not chicken-and-egg type stuff here. Blizzard identified a specific type of game player (the people already in the genre, the ones who loved diku, itself a formula successful enough to draw in new fans of diku, if the game is "done right"), studied them and said "they don't care about quest text nor story so it's a waste of money to refine them too much". It's all causal.

You don't look at the last eight years of the genre and not see in what direction the vast majority of the cash has flown. Blizzard, with their money and talent, could have iterated, instead, say, Underlight. But they didn't get that money and talent by reinventing the wheel. They did it through iteration and heavy refinement.

And iterating diku-inspired experiences basically means the quest text and stories are often just in the way of raw achievement. Some people like them, so it's worth putting some effort into it. But most people are not going to quit for a spelling error or a bad story.

[tkinnun0]

The last time I played Everquest, their story started with "here's a letter, go talk to yourself and feel stupid in the same room as your guildmaster, then level 8 levels while killing Crushridge orcs to gather some items you need for your level 2 armor".

Then, in AC2 levels 1-22 were almost like a single-player game.

Then WoW did the same but for levels 1-60.

So from my point of view the evolution of Dikus has gone towards advancement thru story-telling and away from whack-a-foozle. Which makes sense because anyone can make whack-a-foozle; you just need players, foozles and advancement curves.

[Furiously]

You won't like hearing the NPC's speech with 4 other people waiting for it to finish, either.

*blink*

That's not an issue.

Have you played Guildwars? watching the cutscenes the first time is fine, the 2nd time is ok, the 3rd time, you think, "I' could care less if I see this again." After that, it gets a bit painful. One party member not hitting skip makes the entire party view it.