League of Legends Lead Content Designer 'Morello' Scott talks about World of Warcraft

[cityguy193]

This thread had me thinking a bit more about WoW and more specifically what got me into raiding in the first place.

It was during an UBRS run (Upper Black Rock Spine) back in Classic. During this time, this dungeon was a 10man dungeon. Classic had dungeons that, in a sense, had progression to them - a concept carried into tBC. UBRS and 45min Baron Run in Strath, were at the top. You had to be geared enough and know wtf you were doing to complete these without wipes or not achieving the bonus objective in Strath for bonus loot.

I was in a PUG doing this 10man dungeon I'd done many times before. I was there specifically to acquire pieces for my Dungeon Set. Remember those? We haven't seen them since tBC. The 'dungeon tier' gear sets for people who didn't raid, or were thinking about getting into raiding. So there I was, working with this PUG, progressing our way to the final boss. It was going slowly but surely, and then someone had to leave just after we downed the Beast. Someone invited a friend/guildie they new, and in comes this rogue. This guy was in T1/T2 wielding Perdition's Blade off Rag from MC and the BWL Dagger in his offhand.

Being all decked out in raid gear, he looked very cool (those tiers were very well done art wise), which I thought was cool at the time. Freaking epics in every slot. But what blew my mind, was the insane damage he did in that dungeon the rest of the encounter. This guy just MURDERED IT.

What is important to remember is, back then you ran a lot of different dungeons to get your 'Dungeon BiS' items, and even then the fights were decent and close. So to see someone just plow through the content doing just massive numbers, and I took pride at the time in my capabilities by reading up on guides and such to max out what I was doing, but to just see what this guy was doing..

That's what got me into raiding. That's what made me see those trade chat yells for ZG and finally jump into one to see what it was like. I didn't want to be mediocre anymore. I wanted to be a badass, and if I had to put in a lot of time and effort to work for it, like anyone else, and further separate me from others, all the better.

The raiding bug bit me hard.

Classic and the Burning Crusade had that 'tier' of content to them. The pre-raid progression dungeoning, which did prepare you for the raids at the time you'd first start entering, especially UBRS. We had the Dungeon Tier sets. We had some hard boss encounters for the gear level (remember, people were running around with level 45-60 gear in those dungeons). It wasn't just gear preparation, but also encounter preparation.

This concept was given a vicious blow in Wrath of the Lich King and annihilated in Cataclysm, and we have not seen it since. Instead what we have in it's place is a concept that leaves players with no options but to start participating in 'walk thru' raid content that does nothing to inspire people to greater levels of play (skill with toon, and human interaction wise).

Previous to LFR and LFD, when we wanted to Dungeon or Raid, we had to spend time forming a group, getting there, and learning to deal with more personality types then perhaps we'd like to. This made us less prone to 'instant annoyance' which is rampant now, even in myself, with the current scenario. I used to be grateful when I got something going PUG raid or Dungeon wise before. I used to be tolerant of mistakes people made. Now in LFR and LFD I see I am not the only one who lacks patience with others.

It's not because I'm old or have been playing this game so long. It's because getting those groups requires no real effort. It requires patience, which quickly turns into annoyance. Seriously, I don't get wait times, especially PvP wait times. I just jumped on Guildwars 1 yesterday and I had 30-45 sec PvP queues in a game that's deader than shit.

The thing is, I have always had a thing for working with new players. Before it was the content that got them interested. Now? Not even. It's the guild/raid/social environment that hooks them for me. That's odd to me. It's not the game that keeps them logging in and coming back, it's who they are playing with.

That kinda says something about the current state of the game. Doesn't it?

That sort of memory is similar to how I felt when I wanted to get into raiding. Sadly, it is impossible for wow to replicate such a memory unless they take away all the conveniences they put in.

In hindsight, the convenience started with flying mounts, then led to queing for dungeons, then eventually queing for raids. It is impossible to understand if wow would have been a better game without such features, but I feel like it would def create some sort of exclusiveness of content, in a good way.

[Nikijih]

*Cough*

The sub decrease didn't happen until Cataclysm launched. The peak of subscribers was literally 2-3 months BEFORE Cata launched, and well at the end of Wrath.

Your definition of "Peak" is wrong. The "Peak" is the exact highest point between two slopes. The slope only started going downwards the moment when Cata was released.

You are just arguing semantics... The end of WOTLK is still WOTLK, and the peak is still the turning point between "growing" and "decreasing", you are merely pointing out that it wasnt an instantanious shift, which I never said it was.

At the end of the day I was simply pointing out that a game's population peak does not represent the point at which its playerbase was most satisfied, as has been implied countless times in this thread, but rather that its the point at which the playerbase started being dissatisfied/disgruntled enough to reverse the migratory flow (more people leaving then people joining). A saturated market can explain part of that shift, but not all of it.

[Malkazam]

Well both of games have the same problems.

On LoL you have an horrible community

On WoW you have an horrible community

Morello should take cares of is own game before..

[Nikijih]

Well both of games have the same problems.

On LoL you have an horrible community

On WoW you have an horrible community

Morello should take cares of is own game before..

Morello is a game developper, not a community manager. Thats like saying Honda sucks at making houses so they shouldnt comment on how Ford builds SUVs... its completely illogical and borders on moronic.

[Exaelitus]

Understand that a big part of the motivation to do something challenging is because it is not something that everyone does, that is what makes it desirable, that is what makes it exclusive and that is what gives it value, and it is this value that WoW is lacking. A value that WoW was built and developed apon, at a time when the game was far more popular than it is now. This is a fact, we are arguing in a situation where WoW is less successful than it once was.

It's also a fact that since WoW has lower subscription numbers, it is magnitudes easier to pin your personal preferences to those subscription losses. I just heard a rogue in the WoW forums post the same argument, but instead of exclusive content being the culprit, it was because of nerfs to the rogue class, shuriken toss being the nail in the coffin. If you want to know why people quit, consider what they are playing now. In most cases I have seen, it is games with absolutely no exclusive content. I quit and returned for the opposite reasons you're stating.

Part of the problem with your argument is that people who support it are generally more vocal by design. Someone who quit because they loathe the exclusivity that more socials players get, is significantly less likely to comment or vote on why they quite because that is a social activity. I guess my point is, this argument is more deeply divided than you think, you're over-representing yourself, and your evidence is biased.

[Nikijih]

It's also a fact that since WoW has lower subscription numbers, it is magnitudes easier to pin your personal preferences to those subscription losses. I just heard a rogue in the WoW forums post the same argument, but instead of exclusive content being the culprit, it was because of nerfs to the rogue class, shuriken toss being the nail in the coffin. If you want to know why people quit, consider what they are playing now. In most cases I have seen, it is games with absolutely no exclusive content. I quit and returned for the opposite reasons you're stating.

Part of the problem with your argument is that people who support it are generally more vocal by design. Someone who quit because they loathe the exclusivity that more socials players get, is significantly less likely to comment or vote on why they quite because that is a social activity. I guess my point is, this argument is more deeply divided than you think, you're over-representing yourself, and your evidence is biased.

No one has unbiased evidence because its all anecdotal. Even Blizzard cannot tell you why ppl quit (dunno about you but i "quit" 3 times over 8 years and never once filled the "why do you quit" survey...).

The fact of the matter is, there are MANY factors to the decreasing subs. A saturated market, the mutual exclusivity of the MMO genre (ppl rarely play multiple MMORPGs at the same time), the growth of its original playerbase (who are no longuer gaming kids), design decisions, etc. And i'm not even touching on the thousands who quit due to issues not directly related with the game (recession, new job, social life taking more time, studies being more demanding, etc).

All one can do is observe what happens around one's self and try to make some sense out of it. That means relying on anecdotal and empirical evidence, and that means we may very well have different experiences with the situation at hand. However, it remains that correlations can be clearly traced between major design philosophy changes and the timming of the population losses. Correlation isnt equation, but it can help us reach a common, more objectively understandable, ground.

P.S. What we should try to avoid are self-contradictions. You accuse him of over-representing himself and call his evidence biaised, but then you provide exactly the same kind of evidence and use it to try and prop your own position as being the one representing the majority's without any proof of such thing. You are doing exactly what you accuse him of doing, you know?

[Deleted]

Today WoW is just an MSORPG, Massively Solo Online Role Puging Game.

[mosely]

Part of the problem with your argument is that people who support it are generally more vocal by design. Someone who quit because they loathe the exclusivity that more socials players get, is significantly less likely to comment or vote on why they quite because that is a social activity. I guess my point is, this argument is more deeply divided than you think, you're over-representing yourself, and your evidence is biased.

This is sort of a stretch. You have no way of knowing how accurate forum representation is of the general population. People throw around terms like "vocal minority", but that's just rhetoric used to avoid challenging one's world view.

[hatsune]

but you can't really build a MMO on leveling/mid-level game. Star Wars: The Old Republic tried that and they crashed and burned very quickly. And as a game matures, less and less people spend time leveling, and more time at the endgame.

Well its part of the experience clearly and a better levelling game will help your MMO. I loved SWTOR even in its most buggy launch mode. I cleared the single player (did I actually type that?) and left within a month. It was pretty good too. WOW could certainly do with some questing improvements.

That said, SWTOR was filled to the rim with madmen at the helm of the TORTANIC. The forums were a mess, the ban policy was insane (you are banned for AH trading!), the unsub button disappeared and bans handed out for those who helped people unsub, the engine was crap and the HD sprites were a lie. Ability delay was everywhere, character freeze bugs, weeks to resuce a bugged character, bosses who were totally bugged and didn't give loot when killed. NO LFD/LFR. Its probably fair to say SWTOR died from having a bad implementation rather than being actually bad.

[Posokhov]

Yes, but I don't see the tie in. Your statement standing by itself, WoW only had 1/3 of the players of LOL. You're comparing free to play to a Sub base and I don't think you can compare numbers like that. He statement WoW being the most popular game of the century is just wrong. Unless I guess you're ulttimarely poinnting out that the fellas has a popular enough game to qualify to make comments.

He (Malcor; The poster I originally responded to) made a blanket statement that Morello was jealous because "WOW is the most popular game of the century".
I countered with, "But it isn't".

It doesn't matter if WOW has a monthly subscription vs League's F2P if you're gauging a game simply on popularity. If you were gauging the games on quality, this is no longer something that is objective. This is now something that is subjective.

Perhaps I should clarify what the intent behind my original post was.
It wasn't about whether I agreed with Morello or not.
It wasn't about whether I agreed with Ghostcrawler's design methodology either.

It was about the content of Malcor's post, which was loaded with fake quotes in order to strawman Morello. It was then loaded with Malcor making the very black-and-white statement I began this post with.

[SamR]

1) Stop comparing LoL and WoW. LoL has no exclusive content because the MOBA genre, unlike the MMORPG genre, does not involve exclusive content, period. Its not a design decision, its a genre limitation.

Are we allowed to compare WoW to GW? You know, GW. The game that purposely ditched exclusive raiding and PvE competition. Where players just invest time for cosmetic items.

Exclusivity doesn't seem to be a necessity in GW, a MMO that Morello worked on.

Like I said, hard to take someone seriously who does the opposite of what he tells others to do.

[Flutterguy]

Exclusivity is what actually drove me away from WoW towards the last 5 or so months of BC. Raiding had become such a fraternity that it was impossible to break into it past T4, maybe T5. PVP was PVP and there was basically nothing else to do. Game became a chore. Wrath still had its exclusivity with hard modes and eventually heroic raiding. Heroic raiding is the exclusivity now. Even before Wrath, content was not mysterious. Who else watched Nephelim's Illidan kill on youtube? You never had to actually do the raid to experience its content. People didn't just want to see the content. They wanted to experience progression for their characters.

[Repefe]

Exclusivity is what actually drove me away from WoW towards the last 5 or so months of BC. Raiding had become such a fraternity that it was impossible to break into it past T4, maybe T5. PVP was PVP and there was basically nothing else to do. Game became a chore. Wrath still had its exclusivity with hard modes and eventually heroic raiding. Heroic raiding is the exclusivity now. Even before Wrath, content was not mysterious. Who else watched Nephelim's Illidan kill on youtube? You never had to actually do the raid to experience its content. People didn't just want to see the content. They wanted to experience progression for their characters.

But that's what I am missing in current WoW. Ever increasing ilvl of purple item is very shallow gear progression. It's all the same with few stats and number tweaking. And difficulty wise there is no progression at all in LFR.

Let me give you an example of interesting progression. Every raid type has difficulty levels .. lets say 10 akin to monster power. At its easiest the difficulty is 1. At it's hardest the difficulty is 10 meaning +500% to monster health, +250% to monster damage or something more elaborate. Beating the raid at certain difficulty increases your difficutly cap higher by 1. This happens at every level, FLR, FLEX, NORMAL, HC. Beating key difficulties rewards you with tier gear.

With that LFR guys can go nuts in LFR racing to beat LFR10, Normal guilds can pace themself and progress through Normals at their capability and Flex raids give option for pugs to go high or low depending on how they are doing.

It's similar to rating in MOBA games. You progress through the game self tunning game difficulty based on your performance.

[Akka]

Exclusivity is what actually drove me away from WoW towards the last 5 or so months of BC. Raiding had become such a fraternity that it was impossible to break into it past T4, maybe T5. PVP was PVP and there was basically nothing else to do. Game became a chore. Wrath still had its exclusivity with hard modes and eventually heroic raiding. Heroic raiding is the exclusivity now. Even before Wrath, content was not mysterious. Who else watched Nephelim's Illidan kill on youtube? You never had to actually do the raid to experience its content. People didn't just want to see the content. They wanted to experience progression for their characters.

The last five monthes of TBC ?
You mean when the exclusivity was at its lowest, raids were nerfed into Oblivion and we saw PuG routinely do T4 every week ? When we had a first taste of what the "everything for everyone"-fest WotLK will become ?

And you're saying that this is when EXCLUSIVITY drove you away ?
Hu... Right...

[Nikijih]

Are we allowed to compare WoW to GW? You know, GW. The game that purposely ditched exclusive raiding and PvE competition. Where players just invest time for cosmetic items.

Exclusivity doesn't seem to be a necessity in GW, a MMO that Morello worked on.

Like I said, hard to take someone seriously who does the opposite of what he tells others to do.

I would point out that morello was doing balance design and content creation, and had no control over the game's core philosophy, but instead I will simply point the irony in your post. You quoted my words, but you seem to have read them extremely selectively:

2) This is not about his credibility as a speaker, its about whether or not you agree with what he is saying, and why.

Stop this childish ad hominem argument, will you? If you have no comment to make about his ideas and opinions, then you have nothing to bring to this conversation, it really is that simple.

[Exaelitus]

The fact of the matter is, there are MANY factors to the decreasing subs. A saturated market, the mutual exclusivity of the MMO genre (ppl rarely play multiple MMORPGs at the same time), the growth of its original playerbase (who are no longuer gaming kids), design decisions, etc. And i'm not even touching on the thousands who quit due to issues not directly related with the game (recession, new job, social life taking more time, studies being more demanding, etc).

My point wasn't contrary to this. In fact, this is my stance on the issue. I said I quit for the opposite reasons he posted and you implied that I was arguing that that's why everyone quit. That was just an example, that I recognize as such. I didn't tie a majority to it.

All one can do is observe what happens around one's self and try to make some sense out of it. That means relying on anecdotal and empirical evidence, and that means we may very well have different experiences with the situation at hand. However, it remains that correlations can be clearly traced between major design philosophy changes and the timming of the population losses. Correlation isnt equation, but it can help us reach a common, more objectively understandable, ground.

The problems is there are too many correlations to draw here, so picking one doesn't work well in this situation. Doing so in the manner that he did looks very much like a confirmation bias.

P.S. What we should try to avoid are self-contradictions. You accuse him of over-representing himself and call his evidence biaised, but then you provide exactly the same kind of evidence and use it to try and prop your own position as being the one representing the majority's without any proof of such thing. You are doing exactly what you accuse him of doing, you know?

No I didn't. I didn't claim that my position was a majority. I said the issue was deeply divided. In fact, I never stated that there was one reason for the subscription losses. Also when I said biased evidence, I was not referring to his game play experience, I was referring to his use of posts and polls to back of his claim of a majority (in his previous posts).

You have no way of knowing how accurate forum representation is of the general population.

That's true, which why I said certain people are inherently less likely to participate (mainly those that don't like to participate), instead of giving their rate of participation. Also, if people don't know how accurate forum representation is, then that is another reason why it's not a definitive source.

People throw around terms like "vocal minority", but that's just rhetoric used to avoid challenging one's world view.

And people often use the term "just" so they can fabricate a single reason for something that actually has multiple possibilities.

[Deleted]

This thread reminded me of everything horrible with the WoW community, notably the tendency to act like dirty politicians whenever they decide to take a side, dodging arguments, escaping questions, attacking the speaker instead of trying to refute what he is saying, etc. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, you are acting like children.

1) Stop comparing LoL and WoW. LoL has no exclusive content because the MOBA genre, unlike the MMORPG genre, does not involve exclusive content, period. Its not a design decision, its a genre limitation.

2) This is not about his credibility as a speaker, its about whether or not you agree with what he is saying, and why.

3) Yes, WOTLK was WoW's peak. However, no, that does not mean WOTLK was the best model, quite the opposite. It means WOTLK was when they stopped gaining subs and started loosing them instead. THATS what a "peak" means: its when you go from growing to decreasing.

4) No, WoW did not retain a high number of subscribers with its last xpacks. What it did is open vast markets to give the illusion that it managed to retain subs. Look at it this way: if they still lost overall subs even after launching in the asian markets, it means there were more people during that period leaving WoW in NA and EU than there were people joining it in asia.

5) A new difficulty, for many people, does not equate to new content. Pretending heroic difficulty is "unseen content" for someone having done LFR is akin to pretending Skyrim in Master is an "unseen game" for someone who played over 200 hours in Adept.

6) No, you cannot just "ignore LFR" if you dont want to see content before the actual raids, because it was set up as a significant stepping stone towards being able to obtain the ilvl necessary to reach said raids, making them de-facto necessary for anyone wanting to get into normal modes.

7) Yes, people want to be "special snowflakes", and no matter how derogative you think that is, its not. Its normal. These are social games, and the social aspects of it, including the desire and possiblity to somehow stand out from the crowd, are a big part of the appeal. If you want your achievements to be remarked as such, then it needs to be somewhat rare/exclusive, otherwise its not an achievement, its just... something you did. Without a social pyramid, there is no top to thrive for and reach.

/cheers

agreed on all 7 points

(point 3 isnt quite that straightforward and open to discussion, but all the others r solid :P)

I hope ur ready for the flaming u will get from the blinkered who feel Morenos observations are simply something which Wow needs to defend against... intelligent people will just engage in discussion.

[Golden]

I don't understand why MMO-C even allows these threads. All these threads ever break down to is, "Blizzard, please design this game specifically for my play style and eject all the other players."

[SamR]

I would point out that morello was doing balance design and content creation, and had no control over the game's core philosophy, but instead I will simply point the irony in your post. You quoted my words, but you seem to have read them extremely selectively:

So basically he has no idea if exclusive content works for a MMO or not since that wasn't his job. But somehow he's qualified to comment on it?

Stop this childish ad hominem argument, will you? If you have no comment to make about his ideas and opinions, then you have nothing to bring to this conversation, it really is that simple.

This whole thread is an appeal to authority. There are plenty of threads on this forum discussing the exclusive content topic without trotting out the name of a content designer to legitimize arguments.

You want to use Morello as evidence to back your arguments. And I'm questioning whether he has the standing to contribute any more to the argument than the average forum poster.

You want to present an expert witness, be prepared to have the credibility of your witness questioned.

[SamR]

In this thread we can learn that many people know what an 'appeal to authority' fallacy is, by name, but don't actually know it's not a fallacy when it refers to an actual subject matter expert. Pay more attention in your 101 Logics classes. :P

That's the whole point. He's not a subject matter expert because everyone keeps telling me that LoL and WoW are completely different games and can't be compared. And even with his work on GW, his defenders trot out some weird excuse that he only designed content and didn't influence the philosophy of the game.

Tell me, Anarchor, how is Morello a subject matter expert on exclusive MMO content when he's never been involved in any way in creating or implementing exclusive MMO content.