Blizzard starting work on 'Next-Gen MMO'?

[Simond]

The best part about saying it's 90% Blizzard is that no one can prove me wrong and every day that goes by proves me more right and everyone else more wrong.

How is life in Bizzaro-world, anyway?

[Slayerik]

If by it being 90% blizzard meaning they made it fun, playable, addictive, and polished I'll buy that :)

[schild]

The best part about saying it's 90% Blizzard is that no one can prove me wrong and every day that goes by proves me more right and everyone else more wrong.

How is life in Bizzaro-world, anyway?

It's realistic.

[Morat20]

How is life in Bizzaro-world, anyway?

It's realistic.

I'm sure that, any day now, they'll drift off to the better MMORPGs that don't have Blizzard's name on them. I mean, seriously, the name has to wear off, right? It's not like it's a magic name that saps all the will from it's players.

[sinij]

Probably. You know, now that I think about it -- the energy and rage mechanics on WoW were a bit different to me, but my MMORPG experience is highly spotty. Did Blizzard pick those off of someone, or did they do that themselves?

Ok rage mechanics. You managed to dig up something innovative in WoW in all these WoW-manual thumping and fanboism. As to rest of you 'points' - UI and quest exp are reaching for the straws. Seeing how you unable to even indentify few innvations WoW brought to mmorpgs, few and far in between, I will help you. WoW innovations are - warrior's rage tanking, rest bonus to exp, wide use of instancing and flightpath transportation. These innovations are TOO FEW and TOO INSIGNIFICANT to explain success of WoW or even to call it innovative title.

[sinij]

Which gen are we on now?  I forget.

Minus 1... UO/M59 were first gen, it all went downhill from there.

[Furiously]

Probably. You know, now that I think about it -- the energy and rage mechanics on WoW were a bit different to me, but my MMORPG experience is highly spotty. Did Blizzard pick those off of someone, or did they do that themselves?

Ok rage mechanics. You managed to dig up something innovative in WoW in all these WoW-manual thumping and fanboism. As to rest of you 'points' - UI and quest exp are reaching for the straws. Seeing how you unable to even indentify few innvations WoW brought to mmorpgs, few and far in between, I will help you. WoW innovations are - warrior's rage tanking, rest bonus to exp, wide use of instancing and flightpath transportation. These innovations are TOO FEW and TOO INSIGNIFICANT to explain success of WoW or even to call it innovative title.

I don't recall any games having visual indicators for quest givers previously.
Not having to bash rats to start.
And effective use of humor.

[Lantyssa]

The best part about saying it's 90% Blizzard is that no one can prove me wrong and every day that goes by proves me more right and everyone else more wrong.

If the name is that important, why aren't you playing WoW again? :-D

[Morat20]

Ok rage mechanics. You managed to dig up something innovative in WoW in all these WoW-manual thumping and fanboism. As to rest of you 'points' - UI and quest exp are reaching for the straws. Seeing how you unable to even indentify few innvations WoW brought to mmorpgs, few and far in between, I will help you. WoW innovations are - warrior's rage tanking, rest bonus to exp, wide use of instancing and flightpath transportation. These innovations are TOO FEW and TOO INSIGNIFICANT to explain success of WoW or even to call it innovative title.

Going to keep ignoring the other ones, huh? Quest-based XP, intuitive layout and GUI (lack of any need for slash commands), highly and supported GUI API (lua is fucking head and shoulders above the sort of things you could do before), low systems requirements (seriously, I can understand not touching this one. You had to bring up UO as a system that had lower requirements than WoW. Pretty humiliating for you), casual leveling, newbie friendly, smooth-running and good looking on a wide assortment of systems -- Don't blame you. It's all a bit damaging to your case. But you keep up that burning hate. Not sure why WoW upsets you so, but hey -- if it works for you, go for it!

Seriously, I'd bow out of this one. You're looking like a psycho twit at this point.

[sinij]

Quest-based XP

Giving out exp/loot/reputation for quest is as old as actually having quest/levels. Only thing Blizzard did different with quest is added A LOT MORE of them than usual and made reward worthwhile for majority of them. You still have to bash monsters to finish clear majority of these quests. Its a marginal evolutionary step at best, but more a design choice, and not an innovation by any means. If WoW truly allowed to move away from monster bashing (like UO with crafting for example) and still advance then I'd grudgingly accept it as innovation even that we have earlier precedents.

GUI

WoW's GUI at release was nothing special, even today after lengthy polish process is at best adequate. You still memorize keys and press them in specific order and have few to none automation options. WoW's GUI still has unintuitive character/camera movements, dysfunctional point-and-click and lousy macro implementation. For example SB's interface is A LOT more customizable and does not require two hands to pilot your character in combat. I will give you that overabundance of GUI modders and Blizzard actually embracing it for a change is unique... but that mostly due to popularity of WoW. So your GUI argument appears to be circular in nature - it all boils down to WoWs popularity.

minimal specs

I don't buy it. Minimal specs as innovation? Like nobody before had game that could be played on average machine?

  Seriously, I'd bow out of this one. You're looking like a psycho twit at this point.

Seriously, bow out of your fanboism. WoW is *NOT* innovative title and trying to argue that its breakthrough innovations that were key to WoW success is well... make you look " like a psycho twit at this point".

[schild]

The best part about saying it's 90% Blizzard is that no one can prove me wrong and every day that goes by proves me more right and everyone else more wrong.

If the name is that important, why aren't you playing WoW again? :-D

Because I wasn't turned into a sheep by the guy playing a mage next door.

[Morat20]

Giving out exp/loot/reputation for quest is as old as actually having quest/levels. Only thing Blizzard did different with quest is added A LOT MORE of them than usual and made reward worthwhile for majority of them. You still have to bash monsters to finish clear majority of these quests. Its a marginal evolutionary step at best, but more a design choice, and not an innovation by any means. If WoW truly allowed to move away from monster bashing (like UO with crafting for example) and still advance then I'd grudgingly accept it as innovation even that we have earlier precedents.

What game allowed you to go from start to level cap purely on quest XP? Before WoW? Oh wait, I think the answer you're searching for is "none". This shouldn't come as a stunning announcement to you, since, you know, about three people have mentioned it.

However, we're talking "DIKU innovation" here and not "Shit Sinjj would consider DIKU innovation", mostly because "Shit Sinjj Would Consider DIKI Innovation" is more accurately called "Not being DIKU".

WoW's GUI at release was nothing special, even today after lengthy polish process is at best adequate. You still memorize keys and press them in specific order and have few to none automation options. WoW's GUI still has unintuitive character/camera movements, dysfunctional point-and-click and lousy macro implementation. For example SB's interface is A LOT more customizable and does not require two hands to pilot your character in combat. I will give you that overabundance of GUI modders and Blizzard actually embracing it for a change is unique... but that mostly due to popularity of WoW. So your GUI argument appears to be circular in nature - it all boils down to WoWs popularity.

Keep ignoring Lua and the huge access Blizzard explicitly granted modders by using it. People will keep reminding you.

I don't buy it. Minimal specs as innovation? Like nobody before had game that could be played on average machine?

Not an MMORPG. Nobody was fucking aiming at the average machine. But you know that too, or you wouldn't have quoted games like UO as a 'counter-example' back at me.

Seriously, bow out of your fanboism. WoW is *NOT* innovative title and trying to argue that its breakthrough innovations that were key to WoW success is well... make you look " like a psycho twit at this point".

Don't even have a sub at the moment. Damn, you're not getting anything right today, are you? Nor did I ever claim "innovation" was the key to WoW's success -- I merely corrected you when you claimed WoW had made no innovations and listed a number of them. It's hardly my fault that you seem to consider "innovation" in the DIKU world to be "Making it not a DIKU". With that definition, you're quite correct. Nothing WoW did broke the Diku mold. It expanded it, added a lot of nice new things that will undoubtably become standard feature for new DIKU games -- but it's still DIKU.

Your response to this was to bullshit, change the subject, ignore responses, and then finally -- here -- to invent a strawman. Hell, you're practically a Creationist.

[Nebu]

What game allowed you to go from start to level cap purely on quest XP? Before WoW? Oh wait, I think the answer you're searching for is "none". This shouldn't come as a stunning announcement to you, since, you know, about three people have mentioned it.

If you consider "missions" as "quests" then technically CoH allowed you to go from level 1 - 50 doing only missions. I realize that this is a stretch.  Questing in this manner was also possible in EQ2 which released at nearly the same time as WoW.  There were several MUDs that allowed you to quest xp as well, but calling them "quests" is a stretch.  Many were more like tasks.  The thing that WoW brought to the table was that quests were worth enough xp to make them a viable option even to those players wishing to get to the endgame in the most efficient manner.  I appreciate that Blizzard brought this to the genre.  I'm not sure how innovative this was as much as an evolution of the genre.

[Morat20]

What game allowed you to go from start to level cap purely on quest XP? Before WoW? Oh wait, I think the answer you're searching for is "none". This shouldn't come as a stunning announcement to you, since, you know, about three people have mentioned it.

If you consider "missions" as "quests" then technically CoH allowed you to go from level 1 - 50 doing only missions. I realize that this is a stretch.  Questing in this manner was also possible in EQ2 which released at nearly the same time as WoW.  There were several MUDs that allowed you to quest xp as well, but calling them "quests" is a stretch.  Many were more like tasks.  The thing that WoW brought to the table was that quests were worth enough xp to make them a viable option even to those players wishing to get to the endgame in the most efficient manner.  I appreciate that Blizzard brought this to the genre.  I'm not sure how innovative this was as much as an evolution of the genre.

I always viewed CoH missions as better implementations of SWG's mission terminals. MUCH better implementations. Effectively, it just spawned a group of mobs for you and your party to go kill, rather than having to go look for them.

I thought EQ2's questing was patched in, although admittedly I was thinking more of WoW's quest XP being so damn useful. Felt more like a regular RPG in that sense, and I suspect added a lot to newbie enjoyment, in that just by questing they were leveling up approiately.

[Nebu]

Now that you mention the terminal thing, I guess AO had a pseudo quest system as well.  Pick your mission, pick your reward.  Other than the craptastic release, AO did bring some interesting ideas to the table.  Almost gives me some hope for AoC.

[Endie]

I'm not aware of using Rage in a similar fashion, although I'm personally not too big on it.  I prefer CoV's Brute mechanic for building up power over the course of a fight.

Rage is really, really like White Wolf's Werewolf game mechanic for letting you do "specials" when you get hurt in fights.  Close enough that I'd be confident that that's where they got it from, if I didn't know that someone would be bound to say "we discussed it on MudDev back in eighty-whatever".

[Triforcer]

Again, WE ARE AT BLAIR-LEVEL MENTAL HEALTH.  BLAIR.  THE ONLY RESPONSE IS "NICE CHECKMATE".   

[Daeven]

The best part about saying it's 90% Blizzard is that no one can prove me wrong and every day that goes by proves me more right and everyone else more wrong.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

This concludes our daily 5 minute Hate. Please go about your business citizens.

[Murgos]

Actually, I think AC2 had something similar to the rage mechanic.  You built up points until you used your special and the longer you waited the stronger it got, I don't recall if it was for being hit that you accrued points though.  Also, I recall that they had visual indicators for people you should talk to.

Mechanics, obviously, aren't the only component that make a game popular.

[Jayce]

Everyone else: What is with this UI nonsense? It's a fucking GUI. While bad GUIs are just that, they're bad. I would never base the quality of a game on a GUI though. I mean, who gives a shit? No matter what the GUI looks like it's still just a game of hotkey memorization and response.

Pretty late to this party, but I disagree with this as someone who studies and implements GUIs for a living.  Sure, you can work around a crappy gui.  But if it has annoying aspects and it's hard to do certain things, especially in a high-stress context (like combat or on-phone customer service) it adds up to a lot of psychic pain.  At work it's to be expected, but in a game, it very much narrows the audience for your product down to those who love it enough to put up with it, or can figure a way to improve on it.

[Lantyssa]

Rage is really, really like White Wolf's Werewolf game mechanic for letting you do "specials" when you get hurt in fights.  Close enough that I'd be confident that that's where they got it from, if I didn't know that someone would be bound to say "we discussed it on MudDev back in eighty-whatever".

Good observation.  I prefered Werewolf's version though in that you start with a pool which gives you many options at the start of a fight.  I never could get into a Warrior in WoW because by the time I had the Rage to do anything, I needed to rest.  (I'm sure it's better at high levels, but I couldn't make it that far.)

[Morat20]

Everyone else: What is with this UI nonsense? It's a fucking GUI. While bad GUIs are just that, they're bad. I would never base the quality of a game on a GUI though. I mean, who gives a shit? No matter what the GUI looks like it's still just a game of hotkey memorization and response.

Pretty late to this party, but I disagree with this as someone who studies and implements GUIs for a living.  Sure, you can work around a crappy gui.  But if it has annoying aspects and it's hard to do certain things, especially in a high-stress context (like combat or on-phone customer service) it adds up to a lot of psychic pain.  At work it's to be expected, but in a game, it very much narrows the audience for your product down to those who love it enough to put up with it, or can figure a way to improve on it.

No shit. Bad GUIs you fight to get to the content. Good GUIs -- you don't even notice it's there. Really good GUIs do all that PLUS have a quick learning curve, and are friendly to novices. WoW's GUI is useable "out of the box", intuitive to novices, and while modders have MADE better GUIs and made lots of cool addons that make it even better, the out-of-the-box GUI was functional, very easy to use, and meant you didn't have to learn a single goddamn slash command to do anything.

I could drop my mother, who never met a computer program she couldn't misunderstand, into WoW and she'd be able to play without having to get out the manual. Part of that is the tutorial/newb areas but most if it simple a GUI laid out for people who aren't "old MMORPG hands".

Blizzard approached WoW -- like it does all it's games -- with the initial question "How do we make accessing functionality easy and transparent to the user?". Which means fucking "!" signs over quest givers, a GUI that anyone who can surf the web can use, and a highly accessible game. You don't fucking need cutting edge computers, MMORPG experience, or to read the fucking manual to play -- even if you're so damn computer illiterate you have to have your kids turn on the PC for you.

And that is a fucking good GUI design, and something really lacking in a lot of other games.

The "innovative" part I'd say is Lua -- for the simple reason (as noted elsewhere) that it was designed and built to offer functionality, power, and access to the game systems far beyond what anyone else had ever dared to let the users have. Blizzard wanted to co-op the best UI modders ideas, so it gave them the tools to mod the UI easily.

[Akkori]

I don't think "innovative" is the right word to use, really. To me it means something that stands out clearly as new and better. Cool factor. Other than being able to customize the gui, which is certainly cool, I haven't seen anything else described by those who have played it. That shouldn't detract too much from Blizzard's rep though. There is nothing wrong with them taking existing idea's or systems, tweaking them, and making them work.
If we're lucky, Blizzard will implement more tools to allow players to contribute to the structure of them game. Maybe in their next game even. Maybe they can figure out how to double or even triple the current cap of the number of players in close proximity at one time. That would be cool. How about a single server allowing 50k concurrent login's? A game ground world that dwarfs the current champ Dark & Light (they *are* still the biggest, right?) Those kind of things would be cool. More XP for whack-a-mole, more complicted delivery missions, and so on, are nice, but not "cool".

[Ironwood]

This thread needs a Schild and Sinij exorcism and then it may approach reality.

 

[Ryuno]

FFXI has a "rage type" mechanic, and came out way before WoW.

Your TP goes up as your fight, and you can use it to use abilities. It goes down slowly when you stop fighting for a while.

The only difference is, TP is alot slower to accumulate than the rage in wow, but the system is the same :)

Rage is definetly not an innovate feature in WoW :)

[Azazel]

The best part about saying it's 90% Blizzard is that no one can prove me wrong and every day that goes by proves me more right and everyone else more wrong.

Back to the "you can't prove me wrong so I am rite!" argument of yours?

As I said last time you used it (were we talking about the Wii? Or WoW? I can't recall). It just makes you look like an idiot and diminishes your opinions when you're saying something intelligent.

[eldaec]

What game allowed you to go from start to level cap purely on quest XP? Before WoW? Oh wait, I think the answer you're searching for is "none". This shouldn't come as a stunning announcement to you, since, you know, about three people have mentioned it.

If you consider "missions" as "quests" then technically CoH allowed you to go from level 1 - 50 doing only missions. I realize that this is a stretch. 

Why do you see it as a stretch?

Most CoH missions are just 'kill mobs in region X', some are scripted rather better.

Most other-MMOG quests are just 'kill mobs in region X', some are scripted rather better.

Most CoH missions these days are part of storyline. Most are non-repeatable. Most contribute to storyline rewards.



On the innovation thing, I haven't seen anything new WoW brought to the genre aside from polish.

I don't think other MMOGs after WoW are copying any systems or mechanics that were first seen in WoW. Because there weren't any.

But I don't much care either. Not every game has to be innovative. I don't see it as a bad thing that someone decided they were going to take the typical MMOG circa 2003 and make a better and shinier version than anyone else. Blizzard had a strategy. Blizzard executed the strategy well.

And give up on the rage thing. Plenty of games used the rage concept before WoW.

And customizing the GUI has been with us in MMOG land since at least EQ, was copied in DAoC, and again in WoW.

[Simond]

This thread needs a Schild and Sinij exorcism and then it may approach reality.

 

I'm still waiting for an explanation from those two as to why, if brand name > *, The Sims Online doesn't have half a billion subs.

[Ironwood]

And if you're waiting for it to be coherent or make any sense, or even be in the same plane of reality that you inhabit, you'll be waiting a long, long time.

I suspect the answer forthcoming will be 'Uh, Because, Doofus.  Don't you know ANYTHING ?'

Sigh.


Star Wars Galaxies.  Star Wars Fucking Galaxies.

[sinij]

I was surprised to see SimsOL fail so miserably... even considering that game was epiphany of unfinished, choke-full-of-broken-promises product it failed rather spectacular. My guess is that it failed due to failing to understand needs of targeted demographics - typical SIMs player is super-casual computer user that wants nothing to do with mmorpgs or monthly payments.

Back to WoW discussion – its really unusual that I fully agree with schild… but here, please, calling G-fucking-UI, minimal specs and more-exp for quest an INNOVATION? When did you all went so bat-shit-fanboi insane?

WE CAN'T STOP HERE ITS FANBOI COUNTRY.

Main Entry: in•no•va•tion 
Pronunciation: \ˌi-nə-ˈvā-shən\
Function: noun
1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty

[Jayce]

Why are you guys so fixated on innovation?  I for one do not think WoW is innovative, unless (and sadly you can) you count the game actually working most of the time as innovative.

WoW does have a few innovations, as Morat was pointing out, but not enough to qualify it as innovative overall.

And you're right, it's fanboi country. I live there. I much prefer it to the angsty cafe I mentioned in that other thread.

[MrHat]

The Patent Office awards patents on the application of old ideas in new ways.

[sinij]

Why are you guys so fixated on innovation?

Originally we were trying to figure out what are key elements to WoW's success. Blizzard brand name and Warcraft franchise seem like key reason. This could mean that whatever they release next will be as successful as WoW, regardless of which franchise Blizzard uses - Starcraft, Lost Vikings, Warcraft or Diablo. Hence whole discussion in 'Neg-Gen MMO' thread.

[sinij]

The Patent Office awards patents on the application of old ideas in new ways.

Like whole bunch of patent-troll-galore patents for whatever-over-Internet... because we all know they are real INNOVATIONS and patent system works as intended.

[Nija]

FFXI has a "rage type" mechanic, and came out way before WoW.

Your TP goes up as your fight, and you can use it to use abilities. It goes down slowly when you stop fighting for a while.

The only difference is, TP is alot slower to accumulate than the rage in wow, but the system is the same :)

Rage is definetly not an innovate feature in WoW :)

It is when you base an entire class around it.