Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Laerazi]

I don't know... just because Vanguard was a failure doesn't mean the formula is dead. World of Warcraft hasn't really adopted "console" methodologies, but things that aren't typical in previous MMOs. Quality should be universal in the gaming industry (like in any industry), not a "console" feature. Releasing a half-finished game to the real world should be completely unacceptable regardless of what industry you're in. WoW also provides ease of use; another aspect that should be adopted by any product. Making your product accessible and overall focusing on "fun" and the "game" aspect of it, is definitely the route to take. World of Warcraft, from what I recall, was created so that even if you played alone through the entire game, it would be fun and entertaining. This is what most games fail to factor in. It should work great as a single-player, and the MMO aspect should only amplify that greatness.

I'm curious though, what types of combat you think would actually work, as opposed to the EQ/EQ2/WOW/WAR/etc. combat we have where you target and attack. There's the new AOC hack-n-slash type combat which ends up feeling spammy, and then the FPS-like combat of Tabula Rasa (which is, I guess, not different enough), so where do you go from there? Obviously MMOs are much more limited by what they can do by connection speeds, so combat can't be too twitchy or it becomes unreliable and can feel disconnected.

Vanguard tried going into an almost turn-based fighting style in it's earlier iterations, from what I saw, and that didn't seem to turn out to well.

Regarding the episodic content, seasons, growing trees, etc. No, they don't make a game fun, but that can make it more interesting, imo.

[Angry Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Teclisen

Console games focus on game play and player enjoyment, are almost never social experiments and demand a level of refinement almost unheard of in the MMO business.

I'm really not sure how to respond to this except; wrong.

[Blackguard]

Originally Posted by Laerazi

Quality should be universal in the gaming industry (like in any industry), not a "console" feature. Releasing a half-finished game to the real world should be completely unacceptable regardless of what industry you're in.

Amen.

[Campa]

Originally Posted by Teclisen

Things like "episodic content," fancy ways of dropping NPCs in the world, zones that are affected by seasons, or trees that grow over time are all just gimmicks. They ultimately are meaningless in the scope of whether or not a game is fun.

Totally disagree.

Blizzard didn't really change the typical MMO formula with WoW, they just did the best job of implementing it and removed a lot of the barriers that made it hard for new players to get into the game.

I'd argue that WoW would be even more successful if they had more of the above mentioned types of content. Or to put it in another way, if the game had expanded "horizontally*" a lot more than it has. Sure things like housing or dynamic content may be gimmicky but it broadens the appeal of the game and allows a greater variety of players to enjoy playing it together.

Take UO for example. There are tons of people who play it for features, seemingly pointless to us more hardcore minded players, like housing or player vendors or even things like "rares" collecting. If UO didn't have that variety of features and was purely a PvE/PvP game it probably wouldn't still exist today. But because of that diverse feature set UO still boasts a decent player base despite all the crap EA has done to ruin it.

WoW may have 9mil+ players but chances are they've had another 3mil+ that tried the game and no longer play. People who might still be around if Blizzard had expanded WoW horizontally as much as they have vertically (ie new levels, new dungeons, new land).

*note - Horizontal in the sense of expanding the feature set of the game.
This blog on WoW Insider talks about it more: Bring on the horizontal changes, please - WOW Insider

[Twobit Whore]

WoW is as successful as it because it simply didn't do what you suggest. Make a few things and make them really cool instead of making a bunch of things and being unable to polish them within the decade.

[Campa]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

WoW is as successful as it because it simply didn't do what you suggest. Make a few things and make them really cool instead of making a bunch of things and being unable to polish them within the decade.

The only limitation is time & money neither of which should be concerns for Blizzard given how much money WoW brings in.

For release it is completely warranted to limit what you do and make it great. But here 3 years later the base aspects of WoW really haven't changed except for PvP. PvP has expanded its feature set a ton and will continue to do so in WotLK. PvE, not so much.

Plus a lot of the features they could add to broaden the appeal of the game wouldn't exactly be major coding complexities like PvP or PvE. They'd take time to do but they shouldn't have major reoccurring recodes since they shouldn't be effected by systems like PvE or PvP, ie things that are routinely getting adjusted. Take housing for example, once implemented it shouldn't require tons of maintenance to keep it functioning.

[Old Man Potter]

Originally Posted by Laerazi

Releasing a half-finished game to the real world should be completely unacceptable regardless of what industry you're in.

While Brad McQuaid got much of the heat from the Vanguard fiasco (much of it deserved) it was John Smedley who made the decision to release Vanguard in an unfinished state. How he continues to be the CEO of SOE and still makes such obvious plunders is beyond me. Here we have the spectacle of a major MMO company that knows full well the success formula of Blizzard but willfully ignores it and continues to release crap to the MMO community.

Sure, Blizzard has its faults with WoW but it's still a much needed breath of fresh air in the gaming industry.

[Stoerm]

RE: adding new horizontal features to WoW

On the other hand, you don't start feeding the Golden Goose a new diet.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Old Man Potter

While Brad McQuaid got much of the heat from the Vanguard fiasco (much of it deserved) it was John Smedley who made the decision to release Vanguard in an unfinished state. How he continues to be the CEO of SOE and still makes such obvious plunders is beyond me. Here we have the spectacle of a major MMO company that knows full well the success formula of Blizzard but willfully ignores it and continues to release crap to the MMO community.

Sure, Blizzard has its faults with WoW but it's still a much needed breath of fresh air in the gaming industry.

Sigh, this isn't the proper thread for such discussions, but no.. Smedley did not make that decision. Sigil did. They squandered the money given, they got a little reprieve from SOE in the form of distribution duties and the bonus of free beta servers and file distribution, and finally they failed to generate any VC to fund further development of the game.

Smed may make some bad decisions, but Vanguard was not one of them.

[Wodin]

Originally Posted by Campa

The only limitation is time & money neither of which should be concerns for Blizzard given how much money WoW brings in.

Argh. Does no one understand the lesson of the Mythical Man Month anymore? Part of the reason Blizzard's games are so fucking amazing is that the integration is seamless. You don't have a jarring experience going from one section of the world to another, and you can't look at a quest or a raid mob or an item and say "well obviously the Fort Worth team designed that one."

As far as PvE not changing so much, they've done some extremely cool stuff in the new encounters. Mage tanking is novel and interesting, warlock tanking was expanded. Teron is an amazingly cool fight that takes the nascent idea that was present in Razorgore and brings it to life.

Plus a lot of the features they could add to broaden the appeal of the game wouldn't exactly be major coding complexities like PvP or PvE. They'd take time to do but they shouldn't have major reoccurring recodes since they shouldn't be effected by systems like PvE or PvP, ie things that are routinely getting adjusted. Take housing for example, once implemented it shouldn't require tons of maintenance to keep it functioning.

Again, statements like this one are just blatantly false. Remember when they twiddled the wrong bit and level 3 Judgement of the Crusader would cause a paladin to instantly summon a Black War Kodo? Shit like that happens all the time, and adding these features that you claim "wouldn't exactly be major coding complexities" would end up causing hundreds of that "why the fuck did that happen" class of bugs. That's a problem with any software project, not just an MMO.

[Draegan]

But Wodin it would be so easy. Easy.

[infrared]

Originally Posted by Wodin

Remember when they twiddled the wrong bit and level 3 Judgement of the Crusader would cause a paladin to instantly summon a Black War Kodo? Shit like that happens all the time, and adding these features that you claim "wouldn't exactly be major coding complexities" would end up causing hundreds of that "why the fuck did that happen" class of bugs. That's a problem with any software project, not just an MMO.

When you don't properly version your code, mistakes like this happen. Just because a customer relations team member tells you a simple explanation like "twiddled the wrong bit", doesn't mean thats how it actually happened. Blizzard has reintroduced bugs that were once fixed in the passed a few times now...

In the particular case of the Level 3 Judgement of the Crusader issue, the chances of adding a feature that has NOTHING to do with player abilities causing this mistake is nearly impossible. How something like this gets passed a QA white-glove is beyond me... do you NOT test all player abilities (especially when a change has been made or a large game release is being pushed)?

[Plorkyeran]

Originally Posted by infrared

In the particular case of the Level 3 Judgement of the Crusader issue, the chances of adding a feature that has NOTHING to do with player abilities causing this mistake is nearly impossible. How something like this gets passed a QA white-glove is beyond me... do you NOT test all player abilities (especially when a change has been made or a large game release is being pushed)?

How does casting "Summon Black War Kodo" have nothing to do with player abilities? The bug could easily have been as simple as entering the spellid for Rank 3 JotC wrong. While it's something that really should have been caught by QA, it's not something that points to a critical flaw anywhere.

The significant number of bug regressions does indicate there's something wrong with thier source control, but considering they still use CVS I don't find that very surprising.

[infrared]

Originally Posted by Plorkyeran

How does casting "Summon Black War Kodo" have nothing to do with player abilities? The bug could easily have been as simple as entering the spellid for Rank 3 JotC wrong. While it's something that really should have been caught by QA, it's not something that points to a critical flaw anywhere.

The significant number of bug regressions does indicate there's something wrong with thier source control, but considering they still use CVS I don't find that very surprising.

I didn't say casting 'Summon Black War Kodo' had nothing to do with player abilities. I was referring to additional features being added to the game, such as housing in this example, as being something that wouldn't affect something like player abilities.

[Twobit Whore]

But it could. Even something as simple as opening your door may be a 'player ability' on their end, it just doesn't look like it on yours. Not to mention placing items, moving items, deleting items. Storage and etc.

Everything can affect something else.