One trend I dislike is the over-emphasis of grinding in two forms.

I remember the early reviews of WoW before I got it and the main remark of MMO experienced reviewers was "OMG WoW has a minimum of grinding" Of course they meant the leveling game but still.

There was no significant rep grinds in the game until AQ40/Naxx. TBC is dominated by rep grinds.

Rep grinds are an uncreative solution to encourage replayability and to create pacing.

Better mechanisms to encourage replayability (more randomized dailies?) and other method to create pacing (more small content releases?, world events to unlock content etc).

Rep grinds used to be for hardcore. I.e. if you really wanted to be a top crafter you ground timbermaws. Rep is day-to-day necessity nowadays and limits how people can or cannot play together.

Content accessibility and pacing is the biggest thing that WoW can improve on.

A better approach to (or removal of) attunements is part of this as well. The hiccups of TBC pacing should be a big learning experience for Blizz really.
 

I agree about the level cap -- my best memories of WoW are of questing and going to instances with a core group of 3-4 people. It was so much fun.

Then we hit 70, and the desire to do quests (I still had 3 full zones left) slowly vanished. I ran instances, but ... beh. I started raiding, received two pieces of Tier 5 gear, and by that time I was so blah with the game I quit WoW altogether.

It's been two or three months now, and I feel like going back in again and starting over. However, I am not looking forward to doing the exact same quests over. I wish there were new zones for questing.

Tobold, I went back to read your post on The Frozen Jihad and started laughing so hard when I got to the comments. I can't believe how many people thought you were being serious! Wow. Some dudes were even yelling at you for passing out false information. It's kind of sad how so many humor meters are broken. Hehe.
 

Funny, I would say that the trend is *away* from grinding. I would define grinding as "doing the same thing over and over to reach a certain goal", and in TBC (compared to original WoW) I found that there are more different activities that I can do over and over to arrive at the same reputation. It's not just farming Timbermaw any more, there is more reputation gaining involved in going to 5-man dungeons or doing quests. Getting exalted with Skyguard was fast, easy, and involved lots of different activities.

The requirement for reputation for heroic keys is not a bad thing in my opinion, as you usually gain the reputation to access dungeon X in heroic mode by doing dungeon X in normal mode. Thus at the same time you learn how the encounters work while they are still easy, and don't goof up in heroic.
 

Probably the most valueable lesson to learn from WoW, labeled as "The bad": you can not enforce player adaption. You can try to a certain degree but not till infinity. Even if they would introduce a whole expansion just for hardcore raiders, players wouldn't even try to fit into it. This is the most obvious difference to EQ1. Back then even the non-hardcore players looked up to the raiders, they tried to fit it, they tried to adapt, cause it was worth it.

This is were Blizzard crippled its own content. There is no reason for adaption. The lack of freedom isn't justified, for the experience, the loot, the whatever, cause every 12 months, the starting line is redrawn for every single player. Rendering weeks and months of gametime pointless. If your players aren't stuck in the competitive mindset of leading the progression, possessing the most powerfull loot, you can not brainwash them into this. Hardcore is a phase of a player, but he always will be casual. Does anyone know a single player that is still playing WoW hardcore mode since launch? I don't, but i know players raiding for more than 6 years straight in ancient EQ1. I doubt we see any non-stop 6 year raiders in WoW ever. They have those massive raidzones dead in the water, while in other games old content still isn't wasted like in this one. It's such a waste of development time and it goes on.

As for the good stuff: i am about on my forth twink now, and the experience from start to 70 and maybe up to heroics is pretty much flawless. You always have choice, wich you lose with reaching the level cap, may it be choice where to level, wich skill to improve, wich instance to play, wich role to play - hybrids pretty much work very good in pre-70 content, while with 70 you need dedicated talent builds for every single piece of content - and so on. Choice is very valueable and should be brought back into the endgame for all players.
 

Totally agree although I fail to see the "mining monsters" issue! :)

("unlike PvE where the loser can be a monster that doesn't mine,")

(A different way of pointing out a minor spelling mistake!)
 

Rep serves many different funtions now in TBC. Yes I agree that rep grind isn't killing 1 mob type a gazillion types.

I have no issues at all with dailies reps at all. They are sensibly easy and don't massively keep you from content.

I do have issues with 5-man groups being required to get access to them in the first place. I literally had to wait 3 weeks to get a group for Ogri'la prequests because the main questing wave for it was long over on my server.

Similar for that one group quest to get to netherwing neutral. Silly that I couldn'T get to the solo dailies simply because it was impossible to organise a group.

That kind of content gate-keeping is not good design, because if you are not in the main wave you are at a disadvantage.

But running 5-man TK instances to exalted for rep is less creative than offering a diverse set of quests that keeps sending you there with different things to achieve.

But of course if you do want aldor/scryers exalted (and not spend cash) it is killing one mob over and over.

The daily quest area rep is different and better tuned. I agree that these are way better than the wintersaber grind ever was. That doesn't mean that I'm still not having major headaches due to rep related things.

If you do raid SSC for example and want to give people benefits from Mark of Illidan hand-ins, they need exalted with CE, Sha'tar and Scryers/Aldor...

And I simply cannot see CE/TK instances in the volume that is needed to get casual friends up to pace... it is a grind, seriously. And not a good one.

Things are better with heroic access, but that's 10 months after release.

Basically rep is fine, unless it is used as gate-keeper. In the old WoW not having timbermaw rep didn't make a difference for normal play access.

I hope that WotLK does _not_ ship with the rep setup and the content lockouts and playstyle barriors that TBC had. I'll probably cancel my subscription again if it does happen, just as I did given the pre 2.1 mess and the slow pickup of other needed fixes.

WoW TBC now is much better, but consider what has been added or changed.

There are still things that need fixing. MT/BT attunement is a main grinding stones for raiders. Needs fixing.
 

Very insightful and interesting article, I would very much like to have the time to comment further on this. But I'll be sure to discuss this over dinner tonight ;)
 

I don't think we will see much innovation in WoW anymore. Blizzard already started developing their mystery 'Next-Gen MMO' so most truly new ideas will be used there.

Additionally, it's not exactly easy adding/changing features without breaking other parts of the game. Take character classes as an example:
Currently there are 9 classes in WoW, each with 3 skill trees. Since Blizzard wants them to be balanced, they have to take into account solo/leveling, 5-man groups, raids, BG PvP, Arena play and open PvP. This already results in constant tweaking - some classes have changes every patch.

Adding several new classes all at once into this mix is not something you try in an established MMO.

The new hero class may well be a test to see how the players react to a new class and the resulting shifts in game balance.
 

AS the first time zero to hero leveller, all I can say is that where is the people in old content?

I'm using both LFG tool and the channel to holler for people to join up in Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman, Zul'Farrak and the lot, but the best I can get is a PUG from hell disappearing before we enter because "It's taking too long, I'm off to level"...

Ok, people may have played the content already, but I think there is something wrong with the system if the instances do not reward one more than the speed level grind.

And as I haven't seen Outlands yet, I cannot say if it's better or worse. Heck, I cannot even say whether an area of the Old World is better or worse than another!

Just blasted through the Nesingwary quests in Stranglethorn with my (now) lv36 prot-warrior, taking out two-three levels higher mobs like no tomorrow. All the time looking for people for RFD, SM or ZF. I fear that I cannot experience the old world content at all, because it's next to impossible to enter even the 5-man content in there.

It sucks to start later. Even in a fantasy world which should be alive.

Copra
 

Totally agree although I fail to see the "mining monsters" issue! :)

Patched the post to v1.1, now the monsters are minding instead of mining. :)
 

The answer is simple. ALL content should be have multiple paths to success, just like the Fallout role playing games. Obviously, killing a Dragon should grant vastly superior loot, but how about a quest to drug the Dragon with a sleeping potion, giving you just enough time to complete a quest, and steal a minor item.

I don't care about the damed loot. I just want to complete the quest and check out the zones!
 

Of all the bad points you mentioned, one stands out for me:
Lack of social engineering.
WoW was my first MMORPG, but the thought that a guild should be some sort of family, staying together for a long time came to my mind within a short time.
I'm playing this game for 3 years now, but still I was unable to find or create a guild like this. They simply don't seem to exist and people don't seem to want them. Whenever I find people I like, they usually already are in a guild. And even if those guilds only activity is using the guild chat, they don't want to leave. At least until they see another guild with better raid progression.
It seems like everyone stays in guilds and leaves guilds for completely wrong reasons.
I think its kind of absurd if someone uses green chat as the only kind of guild feature and their raid (consisting of people from a dozend different guilds) has to use user-created-chatchannels and alts to mule raidbank-content.
But that was exactly the situation of the last 2 raids I was in over the last one or two years.
 

Quote =##=: I don't care about the damned loot. I just want to complete the quest and check out the zones!

Agreed!!! I want to experience the content by finishing the darned quests and see the quest chains to the end! Now I'm already deprived of some of them, and I think I have only just started!

Copra
 

I agree that WoW has lower level content issues. Soloing/duoing outdoor content from 1-60 is currently the "best" way. There isn't much point to dungeons if all you want to do is level up for TBC.

But this isn't much different from EQ. You would not believe how empty old world and old expansion zones were. Revamps actually helped some, much like they are probably helping with the 2.3 old zone revamp. Once WoW gets several paths from 1-60 (by adding Kunark style expansions) then more content will get left behind.

Raid content in EQ stayed fresher. But that was because there were no instances. The top guild dominated the top raid content for months. The second guild dominated the next level and so on.

I think fixing social engineering would help a lot. I think making the harder outdoor content easier is a step in the wrong direction. There wasn't THAT much of it, yet there are no longer hardly any outdoor elites to pose a challenge that required a group.

As for the rep grind: there are some reps which aren't a grind, but there are several which are. Once you finishing all the quests, it a GIGANTIC slog from Honored (which tends to be easy to attain) to Exalted. And the rewards aren't always that great. A few have just maybe one usable item, a tabard and a "fun" item (new mount or pet). I guess I shouldn't complain too much. There isn't much point to the Darkmoon Faire either except "fun" items.

I think a problem I have with finding enough people is the balance of Alliance to Horde on my server (70/30). Being Horde makes enjoying mid-level content extremely difficult.
 

I wanted to mention that I advocate a shift to 5-man progression in that article as a possible solution to the issues I outlined, not as THE solution.

Your comments about making raiding more accessible and friendly would also address the issues, to an extent, but I'm skeptical that riads involving more than 15 players will ever be really accepted and loved by most of the playerbase-- they'd be happier with smaller options, I think.

As for your trend-spotting, I think you're dead on with "The Good" points.
 

I think if they'd actually start thinking outside the box they built and try to use "positive" reinforcement in thier social engineering schemes they might actually get the growth in the US an EU to start up again.

The 1 to 70 game is perfect right now for someone who wants to solo. But for anyone else it is broken.
But blizzard is like a bad parent. If they want the "kids" to do something they punish them for doing anything else. The problem with that is it works for a short time then the rubber band snaps and the kids start rebelling.

I'd go back if they would implement some positive scheme that would encourage people to group. I hate to solo so I don't play anymore. That and I'd love to see guild goals and rewards that would give players a stake in thier guild. I think that would greatly reduce guild turnover in successful guilds.

It really frustrates me when I hear people (Not pointing at anyone here) say that old content is old and you can't expect them to touch it. That's pure BS. If they'd go back and just do little tweaks from time to time. Change up the loot. Add new stuff, Quests, named mobs etc. People would eat it up. You'd see people running all over the place looking for the "easter eggs".

But that would require thinking outside the box. And blizzard doesn't seem to be too good at that. Though they are experts at releasing fun polished games.
 

The remarks about 1-70 being a solo game is insightful. Even today, most of WoW is a solo game with a chat channel attached.

For me that's the main tradegy of current raiding. It's the most social aspect of the game yet it's tuned to not be accessible enough to give more people access to it.

Creative ideas to facilitate social play is the main thing that WoW hasn't innovated well and Tobold said that by remarking on the LFG situation.

I really wonder how WARs "quest zone" idea would pan out, but WAR is kind of in perpetual postponement.
 

Great post. I hope that they decide to break the trend of not adding new classes to the game. Sure with TBC we got two new races (and I have to say, both the Blood Elf and Draenei starting areas are terrific). And by opening up the shaman to Alliance and the paladin to Horde, they sort of gave each faction a new class - new to them, anyway. But I was really disappointed when I saw that the upcoming expansion includes neither new races nor classes. And no, I'm not accepting the new Death Knight as a new class, because I can't help but believe that, if it's like everything else they do, it will have some ridiculous prerequisites that only the hardcore gamers can attain. I have a full time job and a child - I can't do hardcore.

All that being said, I'm still starting to look forward to the expansion. I think even the most cynical gamer has to admit that WoW has gotten right more than it's gotten wrong.
 

Don't get me wrong I love WOW but I honestly think it's dying. Most of the peeps I raded with either quit or started a low level alt to "enjoy" old content.

I honestly hope Wrath is good but I have a feeling it's going to be more of the old "RAID OR DIE" content. I just don't have the time for Raiding anymore.
 

I'd say stagnating is more accurate. It's not dying. But if anyone else gets the magic formula right they could be in trouble. But I"m not seeing anything yet that looks like a big threat to them.
 

The slow stagnation will turn into the death throes if nothing is done to help a newcomer to come along with grouping. It's already been discussed even in this blog how the people start WOW full with excitement and enthusiasm, rush the Old World content through, soloing, and when they hit the Cap they are unaware of how to play the class or how to perform in a group.

Someone said earlier that there is a learning curve and tutorial to the end game, and it's the part that people are forced to skip. It's called the Old World instance content, which no-one cares anymore. Maybe Blizz would do a huge favour to the end game people by revisiting the former instances and adding some incentives there to run newcomers through the excercise gym?

Copra
 

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sigh.....here's a post from eyonix in reference to make molten core useful again.

We've just gotten off the phone with Majordomo Executus who has apparently been reading this thread, and he's asked that players please let his master sleep.

I'm guessing they would rather lose thier player base before they are willing to touch the "old stuff" again.

Having worked with developers before I suspect its part of the newer is better for your resume syndrome.

no one wants to put on thier resume theyve been maintaining and tweaking an existing system. They want to fill up thier resume with all the new things they've helped code.
 

I guess so. But if you think of the current superhero cartoon scene, there might be a parallel in there.

The great Marvel/DC heroes came up around 60s', thrived in 70s and stagnated at 80s'. Then came the prodical son's of the industry, the writers and artists who had lived with the heroes in their youth. What did they do?

Frank Miller killed Batman, and recreated the saga from the start. Then he revamped Daredevil to the heights this blind-as-a-bat-lawyer had never been. Alan Moore killed a set of old superheroes in Watchmen and revived Swamp Thing to such glory that he's still somewhere there!

Maybe it's not the time yet, but someone will put emphasis on the old content, rip it apart and shove it into new shape. Hopefully soon, as it might bring 'new blood' to the game as well.

Back to the subject: as people are not prepared properly for the requirements of end game (the newcomers who power level to cap), they will most probably quit as they cannot get into the end game ('cause they don't know how to play their class, they suck and get /ignore and so on). The frustration/quitting level is getting lower and lower the more competition there is.

So, the logical solution would be to introduce a good tutorial... wait, it's there... like I said, it's the levelling game which should direct the new players to learn their class. And you cannot learn group dynamics or the functions of a working holy trinity by soloing, right?

Somethings bound to break.

Copra