3 Things WoW Gets Wrong, And The Solutions

[Grogo]

Seen a great post on Reddit ( by skilliard4) regarding 3 things MMO's get wrong and the solutions to that. I think it specifically pertains to WoW for sure.

Here :

1. Abandoned Content

This is especially a problem with themepark MMOs. Developers make these massive, beautiful worlds, only for players to never return to 90-95% of the content after experiencing it the first time.
There's a problem when endgame consists of playing in 2-3 endgame zones, while the other 30 zones serve no purpose but leveling content.
It just makes the world feel so small, and games get repetitive as a result. I can't find myself sticking to an MMO when endgame is just running the same 2-3 raids every week. Overall, this design results in a huge waste of high quality content.

2. Lack Of Rewards:

A lot of times MMOs will create fun, unique gameplay, but give players no reason to play it. Many times its more efficient to run boring dailies than go on a challenging raid. Challenging content should be heavily rewarding for more than just gear, it should be profitable so that people don't stop running it after they get what they need.

3. Repetitiveness

Perhaps the #1 reason people burn out in MMOs is because they're tired of doing the same thing. Log in, do daily quests, dungeons, and raids, maybe garrison/farming system of some sort, log out.
Designers should find ways to make it so each day you log in to the game is different. Randomized themepark events and sandbox events help allow for this.

The solutions

Either add downscaling(like Guild Wars 2), or add some form of purpose to old Zones. Archeage does this very well. Each zone acts as a spot for players to own land, has tactical value for trade packs, and has special weather conditions. Black Desert does it well too, with the ability to capture trade nodes or own a castle, a dynamic weather system, resource system, and economy in which you must transport items between cities.
With features that add purpose to old zones, games suddenly feel a lot more massive, alive, and exciting.

Add Ways To Progress Characters Besides Gear To Avoid Power Creep

One way that PVE content loses its meaning is power creep-each patch when a new raid comes out, old gear becomes useless, and encounters become trivial.

A solution to this is to create forms of character progression that are more subtle and don't devalue old content. GW2 might nail this with Heart of Thorns and the mastery system, but we don't know yet.

Ideally, you provide a reason to run all available instance encounters other than just for gear. The best way would be a daily gold reward that increases in value the longer it has been since you ran the dungeon, increasing up to 300% after a week. That way the "inefficient" dungeons don't get ignored in favor of just running the easiest ones each day. Another way is having unique crafting mats drop in specific dungeons.

Mix Themepark and Sandbox
Both models have their perks. Themepark allows for high quality PVE encounters, and sandbox allows for dynamic content that does not get repetitive. Ideally, traditional dungeons and quests would be placed on a large, seamless world, with sandbox elements being built around it.
By combining the two, you get the best of both worlds.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Reuse content and offer continuity.

I'd love to wear this T10 gear as current gear, not simply as transmorg, for example. It'll also save on bank space as it'll be continually upgraded! Been wearing it since transmorg was available, so it's even part of my character's personae.

Make crafting mats usable across the levels, too. EQ2 we used lower level mats to make spell upgrades. EvE all mats are used in crafting ships and it's systems.

Offer a mat sink too (e.g., rebuilding Stormwind etc), so we can go out and farm and have somewhere to even put the mats in (this game penalizes that timesink. EQ2, I'd farm for 15hrs straight at times, come back with 40+ rares and shinies, simply chilling to music). Their broker system is also terrific, as you're not penalized with time limits in what you sell, just how much you can sell at a time. Can load up the salesman crates once a month, and be done with it all. HATE the micromanaging of sales in WoW, it's horrible.

[Tomana]

Reuse content and offer continuity.

I'd love to wear this T10 gear as current gear, not simply as transmorg, for example. It'll also save on bank space as it'll be continually upgraded! Been wearing it since transmorg was available, so it's even part of my character's personae.

The problem with re-using abandoned content is that in order to avoid faceroll, you need to implement a downscaling mechanic of some kind (which is horrible) and run into potential unintended mechanics. For example, having level 100 spells in a (upgraded) level 70 raid will change quite a lot. Not to mention that a 70 boss has a lot less mechanics. Or you have to re-tune all the bosses, which defeats the point of re-using content.

Make crafting mats usable across the levels, too. EQ2 we used lower level mats to make spell upgrades. EvE all mats are used in crafting ships and it's systems.

EvE is based on stuff getting destroyed on a daily basis. WoW isn't.

Offer a mat sink too (e.g., rebuilding Stormwind etc), so we can go out and farm and have somewhere to even put the mats in (this game penalizes that timesink. EQ2, I'd farm for 15hrs straight at times, come back with 40+ rares and shinies, simply chilling to music).

I think we need AQ-like war efforts, yeah. Maybe for the Burning Legion expansion?

[PosPosPos]

Seen a great post on Reddit ( by skilliard4) regarding 3 things MMO's get wrong and the solutions to that. I think it specifically pertains to WoW for sure.

Here :

1. Abandoned Content

This is especially a problem with themepark MMOs. Developers make these massive, beautiful worlds, only for players to never return to 90-95% of the content after experiencing it the first time.
There's a problem when endgame consists of playing in 2-3 endgame zones, while the other 30 zones serve no purpose but leveling content.
It just makes the world feel so small, and games get repetitive as a result. I can't find myself sticking to an MMO when endgame is just running the same 2-3 raids every week. Overall, this design results in a huge waste of high quality content.

Reusing old content requires a lot of development time if it isn't built to be that way from the bottom-up.

GW2 was designed from the very get-go to incorporate "old" content into the end-game. WoW isn't due to the fact it's a very old game on a very old engine using a very old concept. Major systems changes to 10 years of content would take more effort than simply developing a sequel. Yes, really.

2. Lack Of Rewards:

A lot of times MMOs will create fun, unique gameplay, but give players no reason to play it. Many times its more efficient to run boring dailies than go on a challenging raid. Challenging content should be heavily rewarding for more than just gear, it should be profitable so that people don't stop running it after they get what they need.

That's why you sell carries after you get what you need. Mythic carries are extremely lucrative, and if you or others choose not to do it, it's your choice, and a very ignorant one.

Taking 2-3 hours to do a full Mythic carry is easily worth more than ten thousands of "boring dailies". And even if you can only do heroic carries, it's still very profitable especially on a populated server. I get 30k gold for 2 hours of heroic BRF each week. How many dailies do you think is required to even reach this relatively small sum?

3. Repetitiveness

Perhaps the #1 reason people burn out in MMOs is because they're tired of doing the same thing. Log in, do daily quests, dungeons, and raids, maybe garrison/farming system of some sort, log out.
Designers should find ways to make it so each day you log in to the game is different. Randomized themepark events and sandbox events help allow for this.

It doesn't work the way you think it does. People are more perceptive to patterns and trends to such pseudo-random events than you give them credit for and will find them repetitive at around the same rate anyway. This reason is precisely why GW2's gameplay was met with lukewarm reception and is only buoyed by the fact the game didn't require a sub so you could always return at any time to do stuff at your own pace.

The solutions

Either add downscaling(like Guild Wars 2), or add some form of purpose to old Zones. Archeage does this very well. Each zone acts as a spot for players to own land, has tactical value for trade packs, and has special weather conditions. Black Desert does it well too, with the ability to capture trade nodes or own a castle, a dynamic weather system, resource system, and economy in which you must transport items between cities.
With features that add purpose to old zones, games suddenly feel a lot more massive, alive, and exciting.

Again, this requires major systems changes and development time on par with simply making new content.

Add Ways To Progress Characters Besides Gear To Avoid Power Creep

One way that PVE content loses its meaning is power creep-each patch when a new raid comes out, old gear becomes useless, and encounters become trivial.

A solution to this is to create forms of character progression that are more subtle and don't devalue old content. GW2 might nail this with Heart of Thorns and the mastery system, but we don't know yet.

Many newer MMOs offer such "alternative progression paths". None of them have worked as well as the developers have claimed they would. I would be skeptical rather than enthusiastic of any such bold claims of any game making any further such claims.

Ideally, you provide a reason to run all available instance encounters other than just for gear. The best way would be a daily gold reward that increases in value the longer it has been since you ran the dungeon, increasing up to 300% after a week. That way the "inefficient" dungeons don't get ignored in favor of just running the easiest ones each day. Another way is having unique crafting mats drop in specific dungeons.

....there's no point to use anything other than the random dungeon finder unless you need to farm specific quest items anyway. This entire point of yours is moot.

Mix Themepark and Sandbox
Both models have their perks. Themepark allows for high quality PVE encounters, and sandbox allows for dynamic content that does not get repetitive. Ideally, traditional dungeons and quests would be placed on a large, seamless world, with sandbox elements being built around it.
By combining the two, you get the best of both worlds.

That worked so well for GW2. That was also sarcastic by the way.

Although truth be told, it wasn't a failure per se, but wasn't an overwhelming success that their own developers and the general public hype had predicted - so either players don't really care about sandbox content as they claim they do(lots of similar precedents of people saying they want something and when given said something say they actually want something else), or it was executed poorly. Given my rather long stint of playing the game for quite a few months previously, it's my personal opinion it's more of the former than the latter, although the latter did play a part when only few events were ever worth doing.


As a wrap-up, these proposed "solutions" are made by someone who has obviously no experience whatsoever in the game development industry, not even a shred. It's obvious when said "solutions", if ever implemented on the scale described, would cause more problems than solve. If anything, these are wonderful examples how WoW should never attempt to solve their problems with.

It's really easy for someone to make broad and lofty claims like "reuse content" or "create more dynamic content", but from preceding examples anyone with a shred of common sense or insight into how game development works would know the difficulties and complications behind what seems simple at a glance.

[Grogo]

Reusing old content requires a lot of development time if it isn't built to be that way from the bottom-up.

GW2 was designed from the very get-go to incorporate "old" content into the end-game. WoW isn't due to the fact it's a very old game on a very old engine using a very old concept. Major systems changes to 10 years of content would take more effort than simply developing a sequel. Yes, really.



That's why you sell carries after you get what you need. Mythic carries are extremely lucrative, and if you or others choose not to do it, it's your choice, and a very ignorant one.

Taking 2-3 hours to do a full Mythic carry is easily worth more than ten thousands of "boring dailies". And even if you can only do heroic carries, it's still very profitable especially on a populated server. I get 30k gold for 2 hours of heroic BRF each week. How many dailies do you think is required to even reach this relatively small sum?




It doesn't work the way you think it does. People are more perceptive to patterns and trends to such pseudo-random events than you give them credit for and will find them repetitive at around the same rate anyway. This reason is precisely why GW2's gameplay was met with lukewarm reception and is only buoyed by the fact the game didn't require a sub so you could always return at any time to do stuff at your own pace.



Again, this requires major systems changes and development time on par with simply making new content.



Many newer MMOs offer such "alternative progression paths". None of them have worked as well as the developers have claimed they would. I would be skeptical rather than enthusiastic of any such bold claims of any game making any further such claims.



....there's no point to use anything other than the random dungeon finder unless you need to farm specific quest items anyway. This entire point of yours is moot.




That worked so well for GW2. That was also sarcastic by the way.

Although truth be told, it wasn't a failure per se, but wasn't an overwhelming success that their own developers and the general public hype had predicted - so either players don't really care about sandbox content as they claim they do(lots of similar precedents of people saying they want something and when given said something say they actually want something else), or it was executed poorly. Given my rather long stint of playing the game for quite a few months previously, it's my personal opinion it's more of the former than the latter, although the latter did play a part when only few events were ever worth doing.


As a wrap-up, these proposed "solutions" are made by someone who has obviously no experience whatsoever in the game development industry, not even a shred. It's obvious when said "solutions", if ever implemented on the scale described, would cause more problems than solve. If anything, these are wonderful examples how WoW should never attempt to solve their problems with.

It's really easy for someone to make broad and lofty claims like "reuse content" or "create more dynamic content", but from preceding examples anyone with a shred of common sense or insight into how game development works would know the difficulties and complications behind what seems simple at a glance.

Easy there Hoss, could it be said that your response is made by someone who has obviously no experience whatsoever in the game development industry, not even a shred?

I disagree with you, what he stated made sense to me, your response does not change that. Especially made in such a caustic manner. This is a discussion not a court battle.

[gor3howl]

Easy there Hoss, could it be said that your response is made by someone who has obviously no experience whatsoever in the game development industry, not even a shred?

I disagree with you, what he stated made sense to me, your response does not change that. Especially made in such a caustic manner. This is a discussion not a court battle.

You call his response caustic but then start your reply with a jab... He made a lot of valid points, and to add to that the community seems to lash out when Blizz rehashes content so adding a downscaling like in GW2 would I feel go over less than well.

[cuafpr]

forced down scaling in old zone would piss me the hell off, i don't want to deal with kobolds around goldshire if i go back there. WoW has to much content to use all old content as well, you'd have to limit like the timewalker weekends are going to do, and accept the fact it wont be tuned to current class designs.

[Kudos]

I remember back in Vanilla, there were flask recipes that dropped from the last bosses in dungeons. While I don't remember which flask, I recall running 'Live' side Stratholme to kill Balnazzar multiple times so that my guild had access to the flask recipes.

I think that there's some merit (apart from mount farming) to do something similar in future expansions / content.

[LilSaihah]

IMO Diablo style seasons or Path of Exile style Leagues in which you play through the content from start to finish over the course of maybe a few years idk.

At the end you get a cool achievement.