Does Blizzard know what they are doing?

[ElGallo]

Originally Posted by Zarcath

Experience wise, the only person in the position to tout their game as 2nd generation is Brad's Vanguard. He already has a first generation MMO under his belt.

Well, Koster was the guy behind UO and then made SWG. Moreover, McQuaid sounds more like Koster every day.

Wait, that isn't very reassuring, is it?

[Etadanik]

At the end of Beta, I asked myself the same question, and my answer then was #5. They had then just pushed in last minute changes such as spell components, 100% (or was it 75%) item decay on release death, and no combat mana regen, received horrendous player outcry, and then in a matter of weeks altered several major changes so drastically that you wonder why they were pushed in the first place, as any idiot could've seen that the changes would've wrecked havoc on gameplay. But the real problem with this is that not only was it a bad move in terms of game mechanics, it was also a pretty terrible move in terms of timing. Why would you push such drastic changes at the last minute instead of during earlier Beta, when you could've monitored their progress? Was it a last ditch effort to preserve some sense of difficulty in WoW, when hardcores were complaining that the game was too easy? Was it some publicity stunt where you try to make the beta testers give good press and then unload on them right before Open Beta? Who knows. At the time I considered it a pretty bad idea to push in all the "tedium" at the last minute before the game goes gold, since it essentially alienated much of the beta players and gave off the impression that the game was getting worse (my philosophy was: never make things more tedious; start with tedium, and then improve).

Of course, there's also the whole class balance screw-ups that really made you wonder who was doing the balancing (Master Conjuror? WTH?). Only now, it seems, has Blizzard apparently caught on to the errors they were making, that beta testers told them some 8-12 monthes ago.

In retrospect, I'd settle on two different options. One of them is that Blizzard has some idea of what they're doing, but is mostly stumbling in the dark for the right implementation. So far they've been lucky that their legions of subscribers are so loyal that they see serverside problems and waiting times as sweetening the time they actually do get to play (an exaggeration, but clearly the pbase did not quit en masse as some predicted). Because WoW is made with typical Blizzard quality with some idea of what they were doing, their lack of real innovation and retreading of previous mistakes is not such a big deal because hey, many people dealt with it for years in EQ, so there's no reason why people wouldn't be willing to deal with it in WoW, provided that the game itself isn't that bad - and it isn't.

The other option is that Blizzard knows what they're doing, but that their company infrastructure/outside pressures are incapable of sustaining the kind of rigorous development cycles that MMORPGs typically require. They might have had a clear direction, but that direction was compromised in order to achieve acceptable short-term results, such as pushing in drastic, patch-up changes suddenly and then revoking them when they proved to be disastrous. This led to initial departures from the company on the developer front. The people who stuck through the company restructuring then found that Blizzard was increasingly moving away from the kind of development environment they wanted to work in, thus leading to the second set of departures.

So is it genius or madness? Insight beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals, or ignorance born from inexperience bred with arrogance? I'm no longer in the position of arguing #5, given that Blizzard has, more or less, retained a player base of 1-2 million people for 8+ monthes. At least, if I were to argue such, no one in the *business* world would take me seriously, and I'd likely be fired from company management if I were in that position. Scoff at Blizzard? Might as well say that Bill Gates should've never went up against Apple in those early days.

[Kasonic]

Originally Posted by frott

Viewpoint 6:

I have no idea what Blizzard knows.

This is an excellent point not enough people seem to care about. We don't know JACK SHIT what is going on internally, or with Vivendi, yet we make wild speculations and then base our opinion upon said speculation.

[Zorlac]

Originally Posted by DJk_zero

Tig is a good example in that he *gasp* actually posts (albiet rarely ) in the raid forum to tell people wtf is going on.

- Ahhh yes. I remember. Early January 2005, something along the lines of: We are aware of the 8 debuff limit, it will be addressed in the near future. (emphasis mine).

Tigole is nothing more than a corporate puppet. And he lies too. Some people have a very strange definition of "near future".

[Duppin]

Originally Posted by Kasonic

This is an excellent point not enough people seem to care about. We don't know JACK SHIT what is going on internally, or with Vivendi, yet we make wild speculations and then base our opinion upon said speculation.

What, precisely, is the point of posting this?

With very few exceptions, you're correct, we can't confirm what may be going on internally at Blizzard.

That's why people are making their best guesses based on what information they do have; I'd venture to say all of them would be willing to admit that their guesses are only that, educated guesses.

I'd be surprised if some people haven't hit fairly close to the mark, though.

[Burf]

Originally Posted by leane

The side imbalance is somthing to look at DAOC for. For a long time they wouldn't admit that one side was seriously skewed. Once they finally accepted it they've been slapping bandaids such as the /level 20 and /level 30 to try and jumpstart the ailing realms.

On that note...I wonder how many people would jump over to a DaoC type cross-server where the whole server is friends to each other? Any class can group, form guilds, communicate, do each other's quests, visit each other's cities, etc...?

[hootie2]

I think the big problem with some of you people was the year long beta.

There is alot to do in this game but its not very deep or hardcore.

If most of you had jumped in from release with little ot no information then you would be having fun.
I did this i joined two months after release to avoid the bugs and start fresh in a new MMRPG.

Was wow a new EQ to me?
Hell no and i didnt want that anyway.

Because i dint spoil myself it is a fun game, that i enjoy and by the ime i start raiding hardcore it wil probably offer more depth also.

[Bizanich]

They tried a server like that called Gaheris.

I heard it was boring.

[FuckYou]

It has nothing to with being in beta. I was in beta, closed and open, and was hyped up for retail. The 8 months of beta I played has no impact on post-retail shitty server stability, lack of content, gay queues, bogus community relations, and other garbage.

Beta has/had nothing to do with it.

[leane]

Originally Posted by Bizanich

They tried a server like that called Gaheris.

I heard it was boring.

Ya, DAOC tried it but the reason it failed to impress was because DAOC wasn't focused on PvE except as a mechanism to gear up for PvP.

WoW might have more success with it since its a PvE game thats trying to pretend to be a PvP game.

Personally I loved the DAOC PvP servers, you could go anywhere in all three realms and gank anybody. Best part was you didn't lose exp for dieing (just coin for repairs) but you could gain exp for killing other players. I gained a number of levels just by killing others in the field. Once you got past the grey gankers (people killing low levels just for fun) it was actually a lot of fun. Running around getting into fights nearly everywhere. And guards wouldn't interfer at all so lotta fighting right in the middle of the outlaying towns. (Capitals were non-PvP safe zones which was cool too so you could go there to craft and shop safely) Gaheris followed the same system of go anywhere b ut dropped out the fun PvP.

[Taggle]

Blizzard knows exactly what they are doing.

They made a game that 1,900,000 folks love, and 100,000 folks hate, half of whom still pay.

World of Warcraft is a smashing success. It will continue to be so for a long time because it is a great game. It's just not the style of game that the people that frequent this board want to play.

Halo 2 could be the best game since Kid Icarus, but I wont ever know...it's not my style, nor should it be.

(for the record, I find WoW only mildly amusing)

Edit: fixed typo.

[Taggle]

Originally Posted by ElGallo

McQuaid sounds more like Koster every day.

This is crazy talk. Both of the above are accomplished designers, but they have a completely different view of how these games should feel and play.

The cliffnotes:

McQuaid - Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Koster - Virtual Worlds

[frott]

Originally Posted by Taggle

...the best game since Kid Icarus...

The wizard is dead, long live the wizard!

[Ossoi]

Originally Posted by Taggle

This is crazy talk. Both of the above are accomplished designers, but they have a completely different view of how these games should feel and play.

The cliffnotes:

McQuaid - Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Koster - Virtual Worlds

I love this gem of a quote from Koster's website :

"Yeah, it may be heretical as a game designer, but I think balance is
overrated. Fun is more important."

In other words, who gives a fuck about making a balanced game..

Suffice to say, SWG upon release was an unbalanced pile of trash, which resulted in the entire game having to be redesigned.

[Taggle]

Originally Posted by Ossoi

SWG upon release was an unbalanced pile of trash, which resulted in the entire game having to be redesigned.

Also, SWG was not fun, balance aside.

In a totally sweet game design move, critters have 3 HP pools, weapons attacked only one pool, and if any pool reached 0, the critter died. Sooo, three players with different weapons killed the critter only as fast as the one that could solo it the fastest.

Awesome.