WoW should have user generated content

[ragnarokvr1]

You know what gives SC1, WC3, and SC2 so much longetivity? Custom user maps.

You know why you shouldn't say that's "simply untrue" or any variation thereof? Because that would make you look extremely ignorant, so please just keep reading.

The aforementioned games all had map editors, and WoW should have a similar system for quests and dungeons/raids.

People could create their own "Fall of Silvermoon", "Beyond the Dark Portal", "The First War" quests and encounters and PVP maps and whatever else they could think of, and it would give people things to do and things to play.

I see people all day long the MMO C forums claiming they're old school Warcraft fans of the RTSs and blah blah, well if you actually are, I'm sure some of you besides myself would like to create/recreate some of their own stories through WoW.

On top of that, you'd have current Blizzard patches that would advance the present day content and lore, but when people would finish that, they'd have something else to do.

Now go ahead and inspect my previous posts and threads and make ignorant comments about how this is a stupid idea because of unrelated things I've said in those posts, and eventually close the thread. Good day.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I'd love to see a dungeon maker added to WoW.

But for the love of god don't do what Valve does with TF2. Don't take the work of players and repackage it as your own content and push it live as stuff we have to farm for weeks on end.

First of all, player-made content should be off the LF system. If you want to do it you should have to form your own group, and manually search for and download it (through an in-game search engine of course).

Secondly the rewards should be entirely superficial, like pets, titles, mounts, or transmog gear. So you don't feel you need to run it.

Third, please screen the stuff coming in. Because with 9 million players you can expect at least 3 million "troll" entries.

[MoanaLisa]

You have someone rather important at Blizzard more or less on your side about that.

Greg Street in an interview before 4.3 dropped:

"It would be a huge challenge to get something like that in place; on the other hand it pays dividends really well because it gives players something to do because they're spending time creating content and playing through each other's content, which is content that we don't have to develop," Street said. "We certainly got an awful lot out of the powerful editor that StarCraft II ships with. I don't know how long it would take us to develop something like that.

"It would be hard, but we have a lot of players that just want to feel like they're a part of the world, spend time in it and contribute to it at the end of the day. I think it would be really popular if that was something we were able to pull off. Minecraft is a great example because a lot of those players are showing off it's actually a creative medium and they're impressing each other with the tricks they've been able to figure out."

The fact that he even mentions this means he has it tumbling around in that head of his. Nothing may ever come of it, but it's pretty interesting that anyone at that level is even contemplating such a thing.

EDIT: Link for those inclined to pursue it. It's a good interview if you haven't read it but really old now. This is from page 3.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...er_.php?page=3

After all, user-generated content was how Street got into the business in the first place.

[Xs]

The problem is you're comparing box copy sales to a sub/exp model, why would people pay for the game when private servers could hold their own user created content raids? With how good some of them are already, you know there would be some with truly amazing content that would attract thousands of players.

I'm also pretty sure City of Heroes had something similar to this with create your own dungeon, which led to people making farm dungeons that gave them what they wanted far quicker than anything the devs had made and had to be hotfixed into oblivion, balancing would be almost impossible when you're in an mmo character progression system, the only way to make it possible would be to have them as nothing more than max level scenarios that reward barely anything, and I really don't feel that would be worth the effort for the Blizzard team

[Aeluron Lightsong]

third, please screen the stuff coming in. Because with 9 million players you can expect at least 3 million "troll" entries.

this this this this is so true.

[huth]

I'm also pretty sure City of Heroes had something similar to this with create your own dungeon, which led to people making farm dungeons that gave them what they wanted far quicker than anything the devs had made and had to be hotfixed into oblivion, balancing would be almost impossible when you're in an mmo character progression system, the only way to make it possible would be to have them as nothing more than max level scenarios that reward barely anything, and I really don't feel that would be worth the effort for the Blizzard team

That and possible legal issues due to the game being sub based are what i see as the biggest issues.

Yes, it could a lot of interesting stuff to the game, but the restrictions that would have to be implemented might very well kill the system before it even lives.

this this this this is so true.

It's also a massive problem. The amount of resources required for that screening might actually exceed that required to just do it themselves.

[Justignoreme]

User-generated content has a potential venue in user-generated transmog gear. It doesn't step on anyone's toes, it doesn't need to be subject to balance and there are some very creative people out there. All of it has to be screened and approved by Blizzard and if currency is associated with it it should be in-game gold only.

[bionics]

Third, please screen the stuff coming in. Because with 9 million players you can expect at least 3 million "troll" entries.

With how slow they are to fixing some of their own blunders... I can only imagine how long it's going to take for them to do the same for content that users submit themselves.

[ragnarokvr1]

Absolutely not. As someone who only enjoyed wc3 through its user content I recognise the appeal, but I can think of nothing more buggy, repetitive and awful than a player made raid encounter. Either the engine would be constructing predefined attacks (thus the repetition) or they'd rely on their own amateur coding and amateur bug tests.

Please leave the game design to the game designers.

You don't need to screen the content, you can access it through instancing technology and use it / download it whether you like it or not. How the hell are you gonna screen hundreds of thousands of entries, are you insane?

Repetitive and awful, I guess you're referring to things like rehashed Scarlet Monastery (3 times), rehashed Zul'Gurub, rehashed Scholomance, rehashed Shadowfang Keep... shall I go on? Game designers are people who did computer science courses. I don't need a computer science course to know that doing a raid 50 times is boring. That's common sense.

[MoanaLisa]

It may sound a bit cruel to say this but they could start the filtering process by making any tools they provide for user-generated content (there would have to be something after all) work at something other than what an entry-level user would want to contemplate. That would select out a lot of people right at the start.

It's a really difficult thing though and something I never expect to actually see. It's a fact though like GC said in the quote I provided that user-generated content has served SC really well. Warcraft before that.

[Edds]

hundreds of penis levels
thousands of mario levels
.etc

[Nah]

I would be in favor of player-made transmog gear à la Valve games.

[Deleted]

The filtering issue would solve itself with a rating system I believe. Make incentives for people to try new user generated content and rate it, make it so it's checked multiple times so trolls don't simply down/up-rate every single piece of content to get these incentives faster. A play-based filter so to say.

Also, in WC3 there were hundreds (thousands) of troll maps, too. It still worked because over time, natural selection took place. Another reason for the custom map system in WC3 to work was that there weren't too many possibilities to troll people by creating such maps. Just make it a bit restrictive.

[Hayro1]

If they did do this it'd have to be a pretty extensive screening process, otherwise troll entries would be all too common and take up way too much time, not just Blizzards' - but the playerbase as well trying to rifle (or just look through) the massive amount of entries.

[Rucati]

There's no way this would work. Ignoring the fact that 95% of WoW's player base are too stupid to have any idea at all how to make a dungeon, there's also no way Blizzard could go through all the entries. They'd have to hire an entire division just to scan and play through user generated content, which wouldn't be worth it at all for them because they'd gain nothing from this at all.

Not to mention the number of absolutely horrible and idiotic quests/dungeons that will surely arise. The reason it works in games like WC3 or SC2 is because the community just won't play maps that are bad, but all maps can be played. If all the dungeons have to be screened by Blizzard (they would have to) then Blizzard will be wasting a significant amount of time going through 99 terrible dungeons/quests to find 1 good one for all the players to play.

Simply not worth the time or financial investment. They'd gain nothing from it, and the community surely wouldn't either.

[ragnarokvr1]

Modding and custom content has always proved a boon for video games, to a greater or lesser extent. People are still modding games from the 90s.

They don't have to offer something as powerful as Starcraft's or WC's editor from the start, they have release a more basic version and improve on it as time goes by. Start with triggers and map editing and from thereon implement special effects, phasing capability etc.

We'd see a Defend Stromgarde custom scenario in less than a week. Castle siege content, BAM. I'd pay 15$ for that in a Warcraft setting.

[nehunter]

I have an idea: what if players could buy land in WoW, and depending on their income/boss kills they could build on that land games(like plant vs zombies one) or quests doable by other players, or even dungeons rewarding gear customized by the land owner.

[Charge me Doctor]

No more hats please i will die, noooo

[Deleted]

User generated content in WoW would be amaaazing XD - so i could make things like this: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ould-have-been Multiplayer lol.

[Azrile]

Absolutely not. As someone who only enjoyed wc3 through its user content I recognise the appeal, but I can think of nothing more buggy, repetitive and awful than a player made raid encounter. Either the engine would be constructing predefined attacks (thus the repetition) or they'd rely on their own amateur coding and amateur bug tests.

Please leave the game design to the game designers.

The original NWN had an amazing toolset for creating RPG content. There were games ( and I created one) that were downloaded 100,000´s of times. But the reality was, it took a long time and some real website ranking or you would simply download garbage stuff 99% of the time. You really had to hope your game went viral, and many really quality ones didn´t.

Also, there have been other MMO´s that tried this and it was a big failure, but preventable. Creating easy dungeons so you can farm gear for yourself.. yeah.. bad idea.

But what about if the user content requires both out-of-game work, as well as ingame currencies.

Imagine if you could create a dungeon under your house.. but you had to ´pay´ monsters to inhabit it, and you had to place treasure there yourself? The game could then catagorize ýour´ dungeon based on how much loot you had placed in it.. and other players could que for it. ´this dungeon has 3,000 gold and 4 epic items with an average ilvl of 464´ ... and you as the creater had to pay 50g for every mob placed in it, and maybe 1000g for every boss type mob.