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

[Tyrannica]

Dudes...

TBC was the sweetspot simply, cause of the Arena, creating an esport and competition(temporary). I remember even humble random bgs much more active and enjoyable, too.

It has nothing to do with the raiding here. There was Black Temple and especially Sunwell for the hardcore raiders and even the most casual endgame player could visit Kara 10 mann and have some joy.

It was simple, it was less about farming lfrs and lfd, cause they did not exist, there was hard content, but most of the time you did only see it with dedication to a raiding guild and most importantly the Arena provided the first and last most innovative gameplay PvP players ever faced in wow history up to date. AFTER it nothing gamebreaking was ever released.....NOTHING at all, certainly do not count machines and rbgs.

So, TBC is most easily the sweetspot, doesn't take rocket science here to figure this out.

[Deleted]

Alternatively, you feel gimped and annoyed when you have to level and gear (through a pretty grindy non-catch-up system) a character of a class you might not like just because you want to main tank or do tank heals.

It works both ways, buddy.

Or just use you internet and learn something about your class then pick your role ? Too hard for todays kids?

[SamR]

Probably because his job is to craft good games foremost not just a good MOBA or good MMO. Insight of this kind crosses genres, ignoring it because he isn't working on a MMO is just a weird ad hominem.

No, insight like "exclusive raiding is good for the game" doesn't cross genres. Mainly because most genres do not even have exclusive raiding content!

There is nothing at all exclusive in LoL and it was designed that way! Being good at it doesn't give you access to special heroes or maps. It doesn't spawn special power-ups that only you the hardcore can use. LoL is designed completely opposite of the "exclusive content for the 1%" model.

So he's the developer of a game that makes all content accessible to anyone, but he's criticizing WoW for making their content too accessible.

As for Richard Garriott, he developed one of the biggest bombs in MMO history. When your name is so closely associated with a disaster, people don't tend to take your expert opinion very seriously.

[Thage]

Vanilla and BC were grindy, boring shitfests, and calling the nightmare of attunements in BC a 'sweet spot' sounds like a great way to shoot the MMO genre in the head these days.

[MoanaLisa]

Well, really it's perfectly obvious that any attempts to compare LOL and WoW are comparing apples and oranges. The games couldn't really be more different in that respect. Financial models as well which is really what drives design decisions. Like I said earlier, Morello has some interesting things to say and as a top designer at a top game his opinion has value. But whether or not his opinion can be seriously applied to WoW in a practical way is another thing altogether.

[Wondercrab]

It's a very reasonable and smart answer, but it's also an incredibly game developer-y one.
I think the sentence "the exclusivity of content creates a psychological trick in your brain that makes the game feel endless" reflects the perspective he's coming at this from. Exclusivity of content is a trick. It creates a certain feel. Game design, and most other creative practices, are all about employing these sorts of tricks to put your audience in a particular frame of mind, but they aren't ultimately the meat of your game, especially not once people start to see through them.

I also feel like he's probably not familiar with the amount of development time vs. the amount of players who actually experienced that exclusive end game content. Or, if he is, he's saying that the "feel" of exclusivity trumps actual gameplay, which I don't think many people would consider a particularly compelling argument.

It's also important to note that he's not being critical of the design of WoW from an objective standpoint, he's merely saying his own personal values differ. Interesting post, though, and it just goes to reflect how not all developers weigh the same aspects of game design equally.

[Thage]

I remember even humble random bgs much more active and enjoyable, too.

Battlegrounds were more active because you could farm them to get gear superior to heroic 5-man gear in half the time, 1/4 the effort, and with about fifty times less abuse from the LFG channel for looking for Heroics without tier gear.

[Sniperpally]

No, insight like "exclusive raiding is good for the game" doesn't cross genres. Mainly because most genres do not even have exclusive raiding content!

There is nothing at all exclusive in LoL and it was designed that way! Being good at it doesn't give you access to special heroes or maps. It doesn't spawn special power-ups that only you the hardcore can use. LoL is designed completely opposite of the "exclusive content for the 1%" model.

So he's the developer of a game that makes all content accessible to anyone, but he's criticizing WoW for making their content too accessible.

As for Richard Garriott, he developed one of the biggest bombs in MMO history. When your name is so closely associated with a disaster, people don't tend to take your expert opinion very seriously.

My point is it doesn't matter that his game doesn't have exclusive raiding content and blizzard's does. You are moving from MOBA: has no exclusive content to MOBA designer: cannot comment on good game design as it pertains to exlusive content. Which is just a non sequitor. Same thing with Richard Garriott. Hitler could have made Morello's post and it would still be accurate. Until you demonstrate why it isn't on its merits and not based on who's saying it, you haven't made a cogent argument or anything that can even be responded to besides pointing out your fallacious reasoning.

[Holtzmann]

Or just use you internet and learn something about your class then pick your role ? Too hard for todays kids?

What if the guy doesn't like playing another class? I know some people will play classes they don't like just to top the charts. That's fine. But most people in that situation will just shrug, say "guess the game is not for me" and drop out. I have personally met a lot more people who did that instead of leveling a Warrior if they wanted to tank but their Druid or their Paladin couldn't do it.

Burning Crusade is considered the "sweet spot" because of a few factors: nostalgia is one of them. The game still being fairly new is another. World of Warcraft was, even back then, known as a game where the people who played it and left were vociferous about what they didn't like about it. It was bleeding subscriptions as always, because it was not very well designed balance or gameplay-wise. But there were a lot of people who had never played it subscribing to balance the numbers and result in a net gain. Now there are fewer people subbing, and so the playerbase drops.

Player attrition is a natural thing in games. Don't assume World of Warcraft's "decline" is simply because people are unsubbing in droves. It's also because there are fewer people subscribing because the game has both more competition and less people who have not been already exposed to it to sign up again. You can't run a game on veterans, no matter how hard CCP Games tries to say with EVE Online, you need new blood to grow and the MMO market as a whole is declining.

[SamR]

My point is it doesn't matter that his game doesn't have exclusive raiding content and blizzard's does. You are moving from MOBA: has no exclusive content to MOBA designer: cannot comment on good game design as it pertains to exlusive content. Which is just a non sequitor. Same thing with Richard Garriott. Hitler could have made Morello's post and it would still be accurate. Until you demonstrate why it isn't on its merits and not based on who's saying it, you haven't made a cogent argument or anything that can even be responded to besides pointing out your fallacious reasoning.

What? He says that exclusive content is good game design. He is the lead content designer for a game without any exclusive content.

How is pointing out his actions being different from his words a "non-sequitor"?

It would be like Tom Cook coming out and saying that an open and hackable software platform is better than a closed platform.

[Sniperpally]

What if the guy doesn't like playing another class? I know some people will play classes they don't like just to top the charts. That's fine. But most people in that situation will just shrug, say "guess the game is not for me" and drop out. I have personally met a lot more people who did that instead of leveling a Warrior if they wanted to tank but their Druid or their Paladin couldn't do it.

Burning Crusade is considered the "sweet spot" because of a few factors: nostalgia is one of them. The game still being fairly new is another. World of Warcraft was, even back then, known as a game where the people who played it and left were vociferous about what they didn't like about it. It was bleeding subscriptions as always, because it was not very well designed balance or gameplay-wise. But there were a lot of people who had never played it subscribing to balance the numbers and result in a net gain. Now there are fewer people subbing, and so the playerbase drops.

Player attrition is a natural thing in games. Don't assume World of Warcraft's "decline" is simply because people are unsubbing in droves. It's also because there are fewer people subscribing because the game has both more competition and less people who have not been already exposed to it to sign up again. You can't run a game on veterans, no matter how hard CCP Games tries to say with EVE Online, you need new blood to grow and the MMO market as a whole is declining.

It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to characterize TBC as "bleeding subscriptions" while defending WoW's current iteration. It seems pretty obvious that the numbers don't add up and you cant just dismiss that with "nostalgia."

I mean, which isn't to say you can't legitimately enjoy WoW's current iteration more than TBC. I'm just saying if blizzard caters exclusively to people with your mindset their games will go into decline. Which is fine, when the dust settles and WoW has 100k subscribers it will still be around for you to play. I just mourn the degradation of a once great game. I also suspect you'll be playing wildstar or some other game because honestly it seems like people Morello know what you truly want more than you know what you truly want. But hey, if I'm wrong, you can play wow for the next decade.

[wariofan1]

Frankly, even if I didn't fancy TBC all that much, I think he is right. Not all content is for everyone, it shouldn't be that way, and while giving some bosses a few new abilities is exclusive, it doesn't feel that way. Part of what drove me and a lot of players in Vanilla was looking up to these mighty raiders, it drove us to become better, even if we might never reach our goals. What's the point in becoming better when you've already beaten the last boss? Yes, there's different difficulties, but we all saw how well that worked with Diablo 3, I have no intentions of doing the same thing over and over while pretending it's new content, because it isn't.

I like MoP, it's my favorite expansion thus far, but no expansion has or will be perfect, and the reason I'm finding it hard to play these days is because I feel like I've done what I can with raids currently, I've only cleared LFR yes, but what's the point in doing the same thing over and over? Ever since Wrath there's been nothing to strive after, and while I admit that the content was too exclusive in Vanilla and even TBC's endgame, I don't think that dumping the game down at such a rapid turn as they did in Wrath was the right thing to do.

Morello is an intelligent guy, I admire him even if I don't like what LoL has become. However, that's still only what he is, an intelligent guy, but even if he's just that, I still agree with him.

[Sniperpally]

What? He says that exclusive content is good game design. He is the lead content designer for a game without any exclusive content.

How is pointing out his actions being different from his words a "non-sequitor"?

It would be like Tom Cook coming out and saying that an open and hackable software platform is better than a closed platform.

Alright, well, until you come to grips with the basic tenets of logic I don't think there's anything more to discuss.

[jaber2]

Bad idea on flex raids, we never wanted/needed it, dev's just simply made something for the sake of change.

[fangless]

He makes a great point that you need to design a game that the players want, TO A POINT. You also have to be a designer, moving to what the players actually need.

[KrazyK923]

Bad idea on flex raids, we never wanted/needed it, dev's just simply made something for the sake of change.

And yet people have been complaining about the jump of difficulty between LFR and Normal for all of MoP, and people have been bitching about being forced to pick only 10 or 25 with no option in between since BC.

[Holtzmann]

It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to characterize TBC as "bleeding subscriptions" while defending WoW's current iteration. It seems pretty obvious that the numbers don't add up and you cant just dismiss that with "nostalgia."

I mean, which isn't to say you can't legitimately enjoy WoW's current iteration more than TBC. I'm just saying if blizzard caters exclusively to people with your mindset their games will go into decline. Which is fine, when the dust settles and WoW has 100k subscribers it will still be around for you to play. I just mourn the degradation of a once great game. I also suspect you'll be playing wildstar or some other game because honestly it seems like people Morello know what you truly want more than you know what you truly want. But hey, if I'm wrong, you can play wow for the next decade.

Read the argument again. Burning Crusade was losing subscriptions at the normal rate, but it was gaining subscriptions at a huge pace because the game was new and exciting and a lot of people hadn't played World of Warcraft yet. That's what made the game grow all the way to Wrath of the Lich King. At 12 million subscriptions (which probably meant at least 15-18 million people had tried it at some point) World of Warcraft became big enough to start to deplete its pool of potential new players, which made it difficult to recoup the losses from player attrition. Specially after the fiasco that was Cataclysm's "let's get people to use crowd control!" heroic dungeon system early on.

Mind you, I'm not defending WoW's current iteration. Not directly, at least. I'm saying that its decline is not only related to game quality but also to the normal cycle for a game. Very few games last as long as World of Warcraft did with an userbase nearly that big, specially in a saturated market. The devs have two options: either cater to the veterans and try to fall as slowly as possible, or try to make the game more enjoyable for a new generation of players to try to have it grow again. So far, they seem to have chosen the latter, which will allow them to sustain the game longer.

Also, do tell: what is my mindset? I've never asked Blizzard for more or less raids, with more or less difficulty, I've always been content with running heroic dungeons and old content. Don't try to put words into my mouth.

[LeginNoslen]

I really wish he would have said "Personally, I think Burning Crusade is a sweet spot" earlier so I could have stopped reading sooner.

[Deleted]

That guy said very smart things. I agree with most of them.

[Deleted]

What BS! The game is OLD, the graphics are OLD, people want to move on, how many people play WC 2 even though it's great? More people who got to see content broke the game? Dumbest argument ever.