Tycho's WoW Post 04-22-04

Samus Aran · 03-24-2004, 06:36 AM

I'm sure most of you read penny arcade. If not here's a link and if you are like me and hate wasting time clicking on links, i've cut/pasted it below for you! I learned some new things reading this.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2004-03-22

Mon, March 22 2004 - 11:55 PM
by: Tycho

Part I

If this is World of Warcraft in its beta form, then we would do well to fear the hybrid super heroin they will ultimately unleash. My propensity for "crafting," if indeed that is an accurate term to describe clicking a button until some imaginary quantity is created, is well known - and this was before I was scanning the countryside in the style of Aragorn, selecting roots of a curative nature and making potions of various kinds while Gabriel was savagely mistreated by bears.

Poring through celestial charts to determine the portents, muttering darkly over an altar slick with blood you might be tempted to think that it is World of Warcraft's purpose on this Earth to sanctify the MMOG genre, scouring it of the abusive, evil games which currently occupy the space. The irony is that it is merely excellent, which may not alight on the high perch people have imagined for it.

The word which constantly comes to my mind when considering the game is "humane." I have quite a lot of patience for games of this type, I don't mind going to a town and asking every medieval jackhole I see where I can find the cathedral. Gabe's not going to do that. That sort of thing isn't fun for most people. Gabe's going to cancel his account when he finds out that it takes twice the experience to get from this level to this level, or the materials you worked so hard to get are destroyed because of some arbitrary roll. For you and me, hey, maybe we don't mind that kind of thing. Maybe we hate ourselves already and see the genre as a way to work off spiritual debt, like a karmic gym. Regular people, a definition I don't usually apply to Gabe, but whatever - regular people know that things like that are bullshit. So why do we consent to them? What's more, why do developers assail us with these notions? Part of it is, I think, a twisted sense of tradition - the games before did it. Part of it is that is keeps a person - a certain kind of person, at least - onboard for more suffering. Maybe there's some kind of grind in the upper levels I haven't reached yet. Maybe at level 30, you start losing experience when you die or some other antique convention of the genre. I doubt it.

In terms of raw polygonal power, the technology behind World of Warcraft does nothing to eradicate the state of the art - where the game excels is in the way it marshals those polygons toward realizing the world. I was never one of the lucky Alpha players, so the only time I see Orcish architecture is from the back of a gryphon - they're testing the Alliance races at this point, think Gnomes, Dwarves, Night Elves and Humans. Looking up from the road at the Dwarven city of Ironforge, you will be hard pressed to find fault in the view. You can also see the tasteful (but hardly overpowering) details that light brings out of the environments, bringing the the stone surfaces in the foothills there into relief. That area, called Dun Morogh, has details in the surface of the snow and stone roads that also take on this accent. Now I'm getting wistful. It is my opinion that they are specifically trying to do more with less, and with an art department is this strong they can make it work. Buildings have an exaggerated, broadly drawn shape that evokes the sense of the whole building. Also, with some chugging in huge towns or gryphon rides, you can play the game on a one gigahertz machine with a GeForce 2. I mean really play it, not watch a slideshow entitled My Visit To Azeroth.

Part II

Every event today conspired against my writing this, except the one thing I wanted to do, which is play World of Warcraft. My knowledge of the game world and its systems is not in any way encyclopedic - I was not in the Alpha, for example, so my character only has the experience and abilities I have been able to accrue since Friday's beta announcement. However, it stands to reason that I might know some things that would interest you.

For example, I know that the user interface is clean and sensible, everything in its place, nothing cluttered. Somebody asked me about the usability of said interface, and I reminded them that the game was from Blizzard. Don't be quick to discard that as some sort of fanboy bullet point. The layout is professional, the menus are precise and direct without being didactic. If you click on some item in your inventory, the slot it is supposed to go into lights up on your character sheet, that kind of thing. Crafting menus are a great example of interface clarity, very similar from discipline to discipline, and as I have tried to communicate this is a screen I see a lot of. Brother Farwall is a Paladin, that's true enough, but like Cadfael he can produce all manner of tinctures, unguents, and elixirs from common and uncommon herbs. Please bring up the crafting interface in another window, I'm going to refer to it but I don't want to put it in-line. We have enough trouble keeping things moving around here when I don't throw another fifty kilobytes into the page.

You can see at the top all the things I'm able to make - these are recipes that I purchased from an Alchemy trainer in one of the cities. I should say "mostly purchased," perhaps, because one of them - Minor Agility - is one I got from kicking this bear-man shaman motherfucker in his eldritch ass. As soon as I could learn the recipe, I did. Afterward, either because my skill increased or I'd learned something new, the gnarled Thornroot I collected began to also give me something called Swiftthistle. So, here's a potion that I'd never heard of before, that uses a reagent I wasn't familiar with, and once I improved as an herbalist I began to recognize that it grew with another herb. I'm made aware of these helpful plants by my Find Herbs skill - though such things exist there in the landscape for you to see with the naked eye, it can be helpful to have them highlighted within a certain radius.

You can also see what items I need to make the potions, and how many I currently have. I'm almost out of the herbs I need to make the really cool stuff, but if you have what it takes to make something you see a number right there that indicates how many potions you have the ingredients for. The color of each potion's name represents the difficulty of producing it, though I need to be clear - it is impossible to fail when crafting an item. You do not fail, ever. You might not succeed when gathering materials in the wild, but you're welcome to try again until you get it. Difficulty simply determines the chance of your skill improving in a certain discipline, which itself determines what recipes are available at the shop, or what herbs you can gather from the gameworld. Imagine if you were trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and in the process destroyed an entire loaf of bread and somehow the peanut butter got on your face. That is how crafting works in other games.

I push and process so much herb it's only a matter of time until the DEA brings the hammer down. You don't have to wonder whether or not the work of my hands is popular with the party - though I can invoke the power of the Light to raise them from the dead, I certainly prefer my potions to do the work of keeping them from that state to begin with. Paladins are decent healers, they'll do in a pinch, but the ability to crack out these one shot potions really expands my role in that regard. I get them in trade for things other people in the crew make - Pork is handy with a hammer and anvil, and virtually everything I wear is made from the ore he finds with his mineral detection ability. He's also able to make "sharpening stones" or "weightstones," single use items that impart a temporary damage bonus to any weapon. Gabe skins virtually every animal we put down, creating one-time use kits that improve any piece of armor permanently. Those same beasts also produce lean cuts of meat, which Kara is able to cook (using cooking) on a fire (which he made with her Survival skill). As an added bonus, sitting around the fire she made to cook things cuts down our downtime between fights, as it increases our Spirit which improves regeneration rates.

Food and drink plays an important role in minimizing downtime. There really isn't that much of it anyhow, but what there is can be shaved away by eating and drinking. Just by sitting down and having a snack, player's health and mana regeneration rates skyrocket. If you have a healer on top of that, I mean, there won't even be time to build the fire I was talking about. You're already fighting monsters and having fun again.

Often when you are fighting said monsters, you will also have some larger purpose as well. You might have heard that the game is Quest focused, which is true to an extent - there are often many quests in a given area that are easy to find, because a gigantic exclamation point appears over a person's head. Is the exclamation point silver? That means they will have a quest for you when you are at a higher level. Perhaps they have a question mark over their head - this means they're either the object of your quest, or you need to report back to them. In addition to any experience you get from killing the monsters on these sojourns, you will get a bundle of XP - sometimes, a very significant bundle - in addition to cash money money, and sometimes even your choice of item. When you start out, there are many quests right there that will start to introduce you first to the local area and then to the larger world, ultimately leading you to your capital city. Some of these quests feel valid and communicate things about the region and the people in it, expanding what we know about Warcraft. Some of these quests, eh, maybe not so fun. There is a series near the Night Elven city of Auberdine that deal with devices called "Buzzboxes" which are the worst sort of "kill these monsters, maybe they'll drop what you need, and then bring a whole bunch of these things somewhere else" drudgery. It's a crime the entire genre commits. At least in WoW you're rewarded with a ton of experience and a truly awesome bag.

This is part of what I meant by humane. Yeah, we made you do sort of a boring quest, but Merry Christmas, here is the Experience Santa with a level for you. You worked to get together all the stuff, you have enough skill to make it, so you can make it without failure. Here's lots of food and drinks everywhere so you can actually play the game and not sit there fucking off for ten minutes or more. Dying in these games sucks already, you have to run back to all the friends you just let down and explain why, in addition to the XP hit or whatever else. In World of Warcraft, you run back to your body as a ghost - invisible to monsters, and running at a greater speed. In addition, you don't bind to a particular point - whatever lifestone equivalent is closest, that's where you spawn in. If you don't want to run back to your corpse - or you haven't been raised by a party member or some polite stranger - then you need to pay some XP. After the kindness they've shown in other areas, that's something I can make my peace with.

I have to say, I really miss Final Fantasy XI's auction system. I also miss the chocobos, but that's neither here nor there. The ability to simply place an item up for sale at a given price and let the magic of that ethereal free market turn your garbage into money is even now giving an Econ major an erection. Star Wars Galaxies, despite anything else people might say about it, has a pretty hot auction system as well. Seeing people in World of Warcraft yapping in a public channel about their refuse seems archaic by comparison, because it is. It's like a sports car that uses bicycle pedals for locomotion. I heard there might be a more advanced system coming to bear in the future, and I guess I'd just like to put in a vote for that.

(CW)TB

Deathwing · 03-24-2004, 06:51 AM

WoW isn't for critics....

Anyway, I like the write up. I expected Tycho to like the tradeskills, and subsequently WoW. He's always like tradeskills in MMORPGS. What really endorses the game for me is that he is able to keep Gabe and Kara playing.

Cybsled · 03-24-2004, 06:58 AM

I do agree on the point of the auction system. The auction houses in FFXI were very nice and they were localized, so each town had its own kind of economy. I do hope they setup some type of similar system in WoW.

FoghornDeadhorn · 03-24-2004, 06:58 AM

PA is going to sell 100k subscribers alone if they continue to love it. I don't think I've ever seen a gaming site that carries as much weight with its readers -- I mean, I bought fucking Double-Dash just because of those guys. You know the last time I bought a MarioKart game? Never. And they were right, it does rock.

Too bad I refuse to own an Xbox or a lot of their other reccomendations would be on my shelf...

[Edit] What Cybsled said.

Tuco · 03-24-2004, 07:19 AM

I hope they implement a bazaar type trading system or something so that we don't see another EC tunnel occurance.

Then again, it doesn't much apply to me, I usually gave my extra loot away to guildmembers, and if they didn't want it, to newbies.

Immy · 03-24-2004, 07:38 AM

It would be nice if they had an automatic trading window, where if you bought an item it would automatically appear in your "trade" window...that way you dont have to go searching for the person to actually buy the item.

Of course I'd want this to only happen in an enclosed environment or "zone" if you will.

This would make trading so easy, just open the bazaar (auction) window when you're in the zone...buy or bid an item, and it appears on your character without having to go through the rigors of finding and/or setting up a meeting spot with that person.

Would also make selling items a ton easier and more convenient.

Samus Aran · 03-24-2004, 07:53 AM

Heh. I read that. He sounded punch drunk, exactly like you do sound after thirty hours of WoW.

Not... that I'd know...

Off topic, hey. Did I miss a month? 4-22? Is lent over?

Jait · 03-24-2004, 07:57 AM

Devs arent dumb, well most aren't anyway. FFXI showed beyond a doubt that a localized bazaar and a central bazaar (Jueno) *can* work.

Not only that but auction systems like FFXI break the language and cultural barriers. Some games (Vanguard) may not approve, feeling this detracts from immersiveness and inter-dependency.

But I'm putting words in their mouths. We'll see. Either way this is a module that devs are going to be finding themselves hard-pressed to up the ante.

As for tradeskills it's all well and good now but I'm so tired of reviews like this one. Tradeskills and economy cannot be fully tested through a closed test, and certainly not in a short period of time. So instead the reviewer always pulls this same stuff out of his ass. "Oh the UI is great" "The menus are great" "Oh you can stack things, wuwu~" But it does not tell us a damn thing.

It's an X-factor, because frankly everyone and their mother tradeskills during the first few months. Then less and less, and finally only a few. Every single game that has been in beta recently has praised to death the almighty "Trade-skill" system. Look no further than SWG, the same review site posted how this was the end-all be-all of tradeskills systems. A game that even allowed you to *produce* your own resources!

3 months in, and no one was making high end stims anymore. Or if they were it was for themselves, their group, their guild, definitely not for the bazaar.

WoW won't suffer from this problem, regardless of how good or bad the game is, they will have 500k players in their first 2 months. The problem it's going to run into is a dilluted economy early on as you can be damn sure there will be tons of powergamers hitting this game early and hard.

The real question is, how will *this* affect tradeskills and the economy. That review is all well and good now, but when the game goes live, you'll most likely just be Tradecrafter_028414 trying to underbid everyone else.

Blizzard and every other company that plans to have a player-based economy in any way, shape, or form had better plan on having a tradeskill team for long-term balancing and tuning.

One of the things that's turning me off to FFXI right now is that there are only a few high end crafters, and they control the entire upper-end market, and no one has the Gil to throw away building up their skills to the point where they can craft X, Y, or Z item, because no one is buying the low end items enmasse like the first few months of the game.

Another reason for long-term balancing. I don't doubt WoW success, but I wonder about their ability to cope with these type of problems.

Samus Aran · 03-24-2004, 08:09 AM

did he comment on the wow economy or the interaction of a player with the tradeskill system (as opposed to the economy system)?

FoghornDeadhorn · 03-24-2004, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Fattyfat
did he comment on the wow economy or the interaction of a player with the tradeskill system (as opposed to the economy system)?

Heh, no kidding. I doubt Tycho would even be so presumptuous as to comment on the economy other than the desire he expressed for a better trade system (saw this issue on the Beta boards -- a constructive thread!!) and I have to agree that a localized auction system would only keep in line with the rest of their philosophy with this game. Tycho, AFAIK, isn't much of an MMO player, although he has expressed his love for pen & pad aside from RPG video games, MMOs are a completely different beast and I'm sure he knows that. How much interest the average PA reader will have in the economy of WoW is somewhat mysterious.

Arcius · 03-24-2004, 08:44 AM

I agree 100% about the FFXI Auction Houses, would love to see that in WoW. It's great how easy it is to buy / sell items, and the regional economies are pretty cool too.

Blizzard has said that they are working on the tradiing system, hopefully they borrow the Auction House (maybe with a couple minor improvements) and just slap on a new name.

Matt the Gimp · 03-24-2004, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by FoghornDeadhorn
PA is going to sell 100k subscribers alone if they continue to love it. I don't think I've ever seen a gaming site that carries as much weight with its readers -- I mean, I bought fucking Double-Dash just because of those guys. You know the last time I bought a MarioKart game? Never. And they were right, it does rock.

It is said if this is true. Those two @ penny-arcade are pretty foolish trying to trick people. Go look @ their picture and see who they really are.

And if you had bought a previous version of Mario Kart you wouldn't need to buy Double dash, because it is the same damn game.

The guys @ penny arcade have as much integrity as a politician.

Samus Aran · 03-24-2004, 10:49 AM

I suppose I'm a liar because I don't look like this:

http://www.classicgaming.com/mdb/sm/smart_sam04.jpg

No. They don't look like their cartoon. I'm sorry you feel so abused. *yank*

It's their opinion. Kudos to you if you make your own and it doesn't mesh.

Samus Aran · 03-24-2004, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by matt the marauder
It is said if this is true. Those two @ penny-arcade are pretty foolish trying to trick people. Go look @ their picture and see who they really are.

And if you had bought a previous version of Mario Kart you wouldn't need to buy Double dash, because it is the same damn game.

The guys @ penny arcade have as much integrity as a politician.

hey chief, you are the one who can't put 'a' and 't' together in a sentence.

A Lizard · 03-24-2004, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by matt the marauder
It is said if this is true. Those two @ penny-arcade are pretty foolish trying to trick people. Go look @ their picture and see who they really are.

And if you had bought a previous version of Mario Kart you wouldn't need to buy Double dash, because it is the same damn game.

The guys @ penny arcade have as much integrity as a politician.

You make me very said.

03-24-2004, 06:36 AM	#1 (permalink)
Samus Aran Sons of the Storm Heal Bitch Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 771 +1 Internets	Tycho's WoW Post 03-22-04 I'm sure most of you read penny arcade. If not here's a link and if you are like me and hate wasting time clicking on links, i've cut/pasted it below for you! I learned some new things reading this. http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2004-03-22 Mon, March 22 2004 - 11:55 PM by: Tycho Part I If this is World of Warcraft in its beta form, then we would do well to fear the hybrid super heroin they will ultimately unleash. My propensity for "crafting," if indeed that is an accurate term to describe clicking a button until some imaginary quantity is created, is well known - and this was before I was scanning the countryside in the style of Aragorn, selecting roots of a curative nature and making potions of various kinds while Gabriel was savagely mistreated by bears. Poring through celestial charts to determine the portents, muttering darkly over an altar slick with blood you might be tempted to think that it is World of Warcraft's purpose on this Earth to sanctify the MMOG genre, scouring it of the abusive, evil games which currently occupy the space. The irony is that it is merely excellent, which may not alight on the high perch people have imagined for it. The word which constantly comes to my mind when considering the game is "humane." I have quite a lot of patience for games of this type, I don't mind going to a town and asking every medieval jackhole I see where I can find the cathedral. Gabe's not going to do that. That sort of thing isn't fun for most people. Gabe's going to cancel his account when he finds out that it takes twice the experience to get from this level to this level, or the materials you worked so hard to get are destroyed because of some arbitrary roll. For you and me, hey, maybe we don't mind that kind of thing. Maybe we hate ourselves already and see the genre as a way to work off spiritual debt, like a karmic gym. Regular people, a definition I don't usually apply to Gabe, but whatever - regular people know that things like that are bullshit. So why do we consent to them? What's more, why do developers assail us with these notions? Part of it is, I think, a twisted sense of tradition - the games before did it. Part of it is that is keeps a person - a certain kind of person, at least - onboard for more suffering. Maybe there's some kind of grind in the upper levels I haven't reached yet. Maybe at level 30, you start losing experience when you die or some other antique convention of the genre. I doubt it. In terms of raw polygonal power, the technology behind World of Warcraft does nothing to eradicate the state of the art - where the game excels is in the way it marshals those polygons toward realizing the world. I was never one of the lucky Alpha players, so the only time I see Orcish architecture is from the back of a gryphon - they're testing the Alliance races at this point, think Gnomes, Dwarves, Night Elves and Humans. Looking up from the road at the Dwarven city of Ironforge, you will be hard pressed to find fault in the view. You can also see the tasteful (but hardly overpowering) details that light brings out of the environments, bringing the the stone surfaces in the foothills there into relief. That area, called Dun Morogh, has details in the surface of the snow and stone roads that also take on this accent. Now I'm getting wistful. It is my opinion that they are specifically trying to do more with less, and with an art department is this strong they can make it work. Buildings have an exaggerated, broadly drawn shape that evokes the sense of the whole building. Also, with some chugging in huge towns or gryphon rides, you can play the game on a one gigahertz machine with a GeForce 2. I mean really play it, not watch a slideshow entitled My Visit To Azeroth. Part II Every event today conspired against my writing this, except the one thing I wanted to do, which is play World of Warcraft. My knowledge of the game world and its systems is not in any way encyclopedic - I was not in the Alpha, for example, so my character only has the experience and abilities I have been able to accrue since Friday's beta announcement. However, it stands to reason that I might know some things that would interest you. For example, I know that the user interface is clean and sensible, everything in its place, nothing cluttered. Somebody asked me about the usability of said interface, and I reminded them that the game was from Blizzard. Don't be quick to discard that as some sort of fanboy bullet point. The layout is professional, the menus are precise and direct without being didactic. If you click on some item in your inventory, the slot it is supposed to go into lights up on your character sheet, that kind of thing. Crafting menus are a great example of interface clarity, very similar from discipline to discipline, and as I have tried to communicate this is a screen I see a lot of. Brother Farwall is a Paladin, that's true enough, but like Cadfael he can produce all manner of tinctures, unguents, and elixirs from common and uncommon herbs. Please bring up the crafting interface in another window, I'm going to refer to it but I don't want to put it in-line. We have enough trouble keeping things moving around here when I don't throw another fifty kilobytes into the page. You can see at the top all the things I'm able to make - these are recipes that I purchased from an Alchemy trainer in one of the cities. I should say "mostly purchased," perhaps, because one of them - Minor Agility - is one I got from kicking this bear-man shaman motherfucker in his eldritch ass. As soon as I could learn the recipe, I did. Afterward, either because my skill increased or I'd learned something new, the gnarled Thornroot I collected began to also give me something called Swiftthistle. So, here's a potion that I'd never heard of before, that uses a reagent I wasn't familiar with, and once I improved as an herbalist I began to recognize that it grew with another herb. I'm made aware of these helpful plants by my Find Herbs skill - though such things exist there in the landscape for you to see with the naked eye, it can be helpful to have them highlighted within a certain radius. You can also see what items I need to make the potions, and how many I currently have. I'm almost out of the herbs I need to make the really cool stuff, but if you have what it takes to make something you see a number right there that indicates how many potions you have the ingredients for. The color of each potion's name represents the difficulty of producing it, though I need to be clear - it is impossible to fail when crafting an item. You do not fail, ever. You might not succeed when gathering materials in the wild, but you're welcome to try again until you get it. Difficulty simply determines the chance of your skill improving in a certain discipline, which itself determines what recipes are available at the shop, or what herbs you can gather from the gameworld. Imagine if you were trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and in the process destroyed an entire loaf of bread and somehow the peanut butter got on your face. That is how crafting works in other games. I push and process so much herb it's only a matter of time until the DEA brings the hammer down. You don't have to wonder whether or not the work of my hands is popular with the party - though I can invoke the power of the Light to raise them from the dead, I certainly prefer my potions to do the work of keeping them from that state to begin with. Paladins are decent healers, they'll do in a pinch, but the ability to crack out these one shot potions really expands my role in that regard. I get them in trade for things other people in the crew make - Pork is handy with a hammer and anvil, and virtually everything I wear is made from the ore he finds with his mineral detection ability. He's also able to make "sharpening stones" or "weightstones," single use items that impart a temporary damage bonus to any weapon. Gabe skins virtually every animal we put down, creating one-time use kits that improve any piece of armor permanently. Those same beasts also produce lean cuts of meat, which Kara is able to cook (using cooking) on a fire (which he made with her Survival skill). As an added bonus, sitting around the fire she made to cook things cuts down our downtime between fights, as it increases our Spirit which improves regeneration rates. Food and drink plays an important role in minimizing downtime. There really isn't that much of it anyhow, but what there is can be shaved away by eating and drinking. Just by sitting down and having a snack, player's health and mana regeneration rates skyrocket. If you have a healer on top of that, I mean, there won't even be time to build the fire I was talking about. You're already fighting monsters and having fun again. Often when you are fighting said monsters, you will also have some larger purpose as well. You might have heard that the game is Quest focused, which is true to an extent - there are often many quests in a given area that are easy to find, because a gigantic exclamation point appears over a person's head. Is the exclamation point silver? That means they will have a quest for you when you are at a higher level. Perhaps they have a question mark over their head - this means they're either the object of your quest, or you need to report back to them. In addition to any experience you get from killing the monsters on these sojourns, you will get a bundle of XP - sometimes, a very significant bundle - in addition to cash money money, and sometimes even your choice of item. When you start out, there are many quests right there that will start to introduce you first to the local area and then to the larger world, ultimately leading you to your capital city. Some of these quests feel valid and communicate things about the region and the people in it, expanding what we know about Warcraft. Some of these quests, eh, maybe not so fun. There is a series near the Night Elven city of Auberdine that deal with devices called "Buzzboxes" which are the worst sort of "kill these monsters, maybe they'll drop what you need, and then bring a whole bunch of these things somewhere else" drudgery. It's a crime the entire genre commits. At least in WoW you're rewarded with a ton of experience and a truly awesome bag. This is part of what I meant by humane. Yeah, we made you do sort of a boring quest, but Merry Christmas, here is the Experience Santa with a level for you. You worked to get together all the stuff, you have enough skill to make it, so you can make it without failure. Here's lots of food and drinks everywhere so you can actually play the game and not sit there fucking off for ten minutes or more. Dying in these games sucks already, you have to run back to all the friends you just let down and explain why, in addition to the XP hit or whatever else. In World of Warcraft, you run back to your body as a ghost - invisible to monsters, and running at a greater speed. In addition, you don't bind to a particular point - whatever lifestone equivalent is closest, that's where you spawn in. If you don't want to run back to your corpse - or you haven't been raised by a party member or some polite stranger - then you need to pay some XP. After the kindness they've shown in other areas, that's something I can make my peace with. I have to say, I really miss Final Fantasy XI's auction system. I also miss the chocobos, but that's neither here nor there. The ability to simply place an item up for sale at a given price and let the magic of that ethereal free market turn your garbage into money is even now giving an Econ major an erection. Star Wars Galaxies, despite anything else people might say about it, has a pretty hot auction system as well. Seeing people in World of Warcraft yapping in a public channel about their refuse seems archaic by comparison, because it is. It's like a sports car that uses bicycle pedals for locomotion. I heard there might be a more advanced system coming to bear in the future, and I guess I'd just like to put in a vote for that. (CW)TB

03-24-2004, 06:51 AM	#2 (permalink)
Deathwing Sisko is the new Picard Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 1,606 +0 Internets	Re: Tycho's WoW Post 04-22-04 WoW isn't for critics.... Anyway, I like the write up. I expected Tycho to like the tradeskills, and subsequently WoW. He's always like tradeskills in MMORPGS. What really endorses the game for me is that he is able to keep Gabe and Kara playing.

03-24-2004, 06:58 AM	#3 (permalink)
Cybsled Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 9,269 +15 Internets	I do agree on the point of the auction system. The auction houses in FFXI were very nice and they were localized, so each town had its own kind of economy. I do hope they setup some type of similar system in WoW. __________________ Training the citizens of Norrath from 1999-2003!

03-24-2004, 06:58 AM	#4 (permalink)
FoghornDeadhorn Avarice Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun Posts: 3,687 +14 Internets	PA is going to sell 100k subscribers alone if they continue to love it. I don't think I've ever seen a gaming site that carries as much weight with its readers -- I mean, I bought fucking Double-Dash just because of those guys. You know the last time I bought a MarioKart game? Never. And they were right, it does rock. Too bad I refuse to own an Xbox or a lot of their other reccomendations would be on my shelf... [Edit] What Cybsled said. __________________

03-24-2004, 07:38 AM	#6 (permalink)
Immy Right there above you. Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 700 +0 Internets	Trading It would be nice if they had an automatic trading window, where if you bought an item it would automatically appear in your "trade" window...that way you dont have to go searching for the person to actually buy the item. Of course I'd want this to only happen in an enclosed environment or "zone" if you will. This would make trading so easy, just open the bazaar (auction) window when you're in the zone...buy or bid an item, and it appears on your character without having to go through the rigors of finding and/or setting up a meeting spot with that person. Would also make selling items a ton easier and more convenient.

03-24-2004, 07:19 AM	#5 (permalink)
Tuco Forum Janitor Join Date: May 2002 Location: Detroit Posts: 8,283 +17 Internets	I hope they implement a bazaar type trading system or something so that we don't see another EC tunnel occurance. Then again, it doesn't much apply to me, I usually gave my extra loot away to guildmembers, and if they didn't want it, to newbies.

03-24-2004, 07:53 AM	#7 (permalink)
Samus Aran Sons of the Storm Heal Bitch Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 771 +1 Internets	Heh. I read that. He sounded punch drunk, exactly like you do sound after thirty hours of WoW. Not... that I'd know... Off topic, hey. Did I miss a month? 4-22? Is lent over?

03-24-2004, 07:57 AM	#8 (permalink)
Jait Irritable Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: :noitacoL Posts: 3,481	Devs arent dumb, well most aren't anyway. FFXI showed beyond a doubt that a localized bazaar and a central bazaar (Jueno) can work. Not only that but auction systems like FFXI break the language and cultural barriers. Some games (Vanguard) may not approve, feeling this detracts from immersiveness and inter-dependency. But I'm putting words in their mouths. We'll see. Either way this is a module that devs are going to be finding themselves hard-pressed to up the ante. As for tradeskills it's all well and good now but I'm so tired of reviews like this one. Tradeskills and economy cannot be fully tested through a closed test, and certainly not in a short period of time. So instead the reviewer always pulls this same stuff out of his ass. "Oh the UI is great" "The menus are great" "Oh you can stack things, wuwu~" But it does not tell us a damn thing. It's an X-factor, because frankly everyone and their mother tradeskills during the first few months. Then less and less, and finally only a few. Every single game that has been in beta recently has praised to death the almighty "Trade-skill" system. Look no further than SWG, the same review site posted how this was the end-all be-all of tradeskills systems. A game that even allowed you to produce your own resources! 3 months in, and no one was making high end stims anymore. Or if they were it was for themselves, their group, their guild, definitely not for the bazaar. WoW won't suffer from this problem, regardless of how good or bad the game is, they will have 500k players in their first 2 months. The problem it's going to run into is a dilluted economy early on as you can be damn sure there will be tons of powergamers hitting this game early and hard. The real question is, how will this affect tradeskills and the economy. That review is all well and good now, but when the game goes live, you'll most likely just be Tradecrafter_028414 trying to underbid everyone else. Blizzard and every other company that plans to have a player-based economy in any way, shape, or form had better plan on having a tradeskill team for long-term balancing and tuning. One of the things that's turning me off to FFXI right now is that there are only a few high end crafters, and they control the entire upper-end market, and no one has the Gil to throw away building up their skills to the point where they can craft X, Y, or Z item, because no one is buying the low end items enmasse like the first few months of the game. Another reason for long-term balancing. I don't doubt WoW success, but I wonder about their ability to cope with these type of problems.

03-24-2004, 08:09 AM	#9 (permalink)
Samus Aran Sons of the Storm Heal Bitch Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 771 +1 Internets	did he comment on the wow economy or the interaction of a player with the tradeskill system (as opposed to the economy system)?

03-24-2004, 08:44 AM	#11 (permalink)
Arcius Registered User Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 22 -1 Internets	I agree 100% about the FFXI Auction Houses, would love to see that in WoW. It's great how easy it is to buy / sell items, and the regional economies are pretty cool too. Blizzard has said that they are working on the tradiing system, hopefully they borrow the Auction House (maybe with a couple minor improvements) and just slap on a new name.

03-24-2004, 10:49 AM	#13 (permalink)
Samus Aran Sons of the Storm Heal Bitch Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 771 +1 Internets	I suppose I'm a liar because I don't look like this: http://www.classicgaming.com/mdb/sm/smart_sam04.jpg No. They don't look like their cartoon. I'm sorry you feel so abused. yank It's their opinion. Kudos to you if you make your own and it doesn't mesh.

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