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

[Aquamonkey]

I never felt forced in BC to play more, most didn't... You think you should see all content right? Well work for it. That's how we all did it and it my god I haven't felt something as special as that for a while.

Plus, you could always go back after the next expansion comes out if you really want to see it. Some servers didn't even kill H LK until after Cata came out.

[vesseblah]

massive multiplayer online role playing game

do you want me to draw the checkpoints that make LoL a MMORPG ? 12k posts and you learnt nothing

Take a time out and educate yourself on the difference between MOBA and RPG.

[paralleluniverse]

It's a different mode to the same content, not exclusive content. Blizzard themselves say this, the whole point of the different modes is to let everyone see everything.

Call it an exclusive mode or whatever, the point is that heroic raiding is still exclusive.

[Rixarius]

Lol has arguably the worst community of any game in the history of computing, so i'd say that he should take a better look to his own game before criticizing others.

That's pretty much the MOBA community, not just the LoL community. MOBAs are extremely competitive and where there is competition, there are elitists. I started at completely "I don't know what I'm doing" nub status in LoL and now find myself bashing people who do stupid stuff on occasion.

[paralleluniverse]

lol, what an idiot

massive multiplayer online role playing game

do you want me to draw the checkpoints that make LoL a MMORPG ? 12k posts and you learnt nothing

LoL is not a MMORPG. MMORPGs are online-only RPGs where thousands of characters play in a shared world.

LoL isn't even an RPG. It's a MOBA.

Here's a list of MMORPGs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...-playing_games

LoL is not on this list.

[hatsune]

That's pretty much the MOBA community, not just the LoL community. MOBAs are extremely competitive and where there is competition, there are elitists. I started at completely "I don't know what I'm doing" nub status in LoL and now find myself bashing people who do stupid stuff on occasion.

He helped to cultivate that toxic community. Look at what they do with Tribunal.

[Repefe]

lol, what an idiot

massive multiplayer online role playing game

do you want me to draw the checkpoints that make LoL a MMORPG ? 12k posts and you learnt nothing

The pitfall of MMORPG term is that there are 'hidden' requirements for a game to be allowed to be labeled with that term. Common sense would say that MOBA games are MMORPGs, but wiki experts will prove you otherwise. It was once written that on top of massively multiplayer online role playing, a game needs to have a truely persistent world and what not else to deserve the label MMORPG ... not worth arguing over I can tell you that

[Slant]

Kids today... no idea what an RPG is. *sigh* I'm too old for this shit...

[Duronos]

I don't think you should speak for anyone except yourself. There is no "we" in "how we all did it". Only you.

BC was one of the most inaccessible periods of WOW. Only classic was worse. Such an exclusive model would not be tolerated by the current user base. The same user base that Blizzard has statistics to tell are important enough to continue catering to. The same user base that inspired such important features as the following. These have become benchmarks of accessibility that any online experience that doesn't offer them, suffers (eg. guild wars 2 and groupfinder)

1. LFD
2. LFR
3. Cross Realm Coop
4. BG gear downgrader to protect new PVPers
5. A size for everyone, LFR/10/25/H10/H25/Flex
6. Legendaries for everyone through the wrathion questline

If accessibility isn't your type of game, Blizzard is very clear. Stick with it or move on. You're not the target audience. The people who enjoy accessibility are.

It's obviously not being tolerated with the sub drop my friend.

[Belisaurio]

Take a time out and educate yourself on the difference between MOBA and RPG.

/Joke

Nothing.
Lol: Log on-->Queue-->play-->win/lose-->Log out.
Wow: Log on-->Queue-->play-->win/lose-->Log out.

[Deleted]

It's obviously not being tolerated with the sub drop my friend.

cata drops were due to excessive difficulty and exclusivity, while the recent drop is due to the game getting increasingly old, to higher competition on the market and to China going to other type of games.
and btw the game was the most accessible on the market in vanilla and since then it has become increasingly more accessible, with the partial exception of early cata.

[Duronos]

/Joke

Nothing.
Lol: Log on-->Queue-->play-->win/lose-->Log out.
Wow: Log on-->Queue-->play-->win/lose-->Log out.

Sir you win the internetz. Also are you a fan of Minish Cap?

But seriously, how can one really enjoy WoW anymore? I mean if you like fishing but without water and the fish are just flopping around or have just died, where is the fun in that?

[Deleted]

/Joke

Nothing.
Lol: Log on-->Queue-->play-->win/lose-->Log out.
Wow: Log on-->Queue-->play-->win/lose-->Log out.

yeah, because if you do arena (pvp, so its the only fair comparison with lol) you always win?

[Belisaurio]

yeah, because if you do arena (pvp, so its the only fair comparison with lol) you always win?

It's a joke, don't go mad!

[Deleted]

Morello can't even balance his super simplified Dota clone and release content thats not either grossly overpowered or grossly useless.

He speaks about nerfing because that is all he knows how to do.

Morello is probably the least likely person I would talk to about game balance.

[LeperHerring]

Call it an exclusive mode or whatever, the point is that heroic raiding is still exclusive.

It's an "exclusive" mode, in the sense that you need skill and dedication to beat it. However, it's still the same content, which makes it pointless and not worthwhile for many (like me).

[ColbaneX]

Nobody even liked Karma anyways...

I loved original Karma.

The reason of WoW downfall is here, in this thread, half of posters are retards that think the opinion of game designer of the most played MMORPG on the planet (LoL) is not qualified. WoW is for these idiots, thats's why WoW falled so hard over the years.

Sadly this does appear to be very true... it amazes me that people can be so narrowminded sometimes.

Morello isn't qualified, everyone else on the design team does a better job than he does. Like I said, Xelnath should take over his job. The guy was on the balance team for GW1, where he failed miserably, then he set up GW2, which is nowhere near the level of product that it was made out to be.

lol, what an idiot

massive multiplayer online role playing game

do you want me to draw the checkpoints that make LoL a MMORPG ? 12k posts and you learnt nothing

WoW is an MMORPG. Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. Because there are a massive amount of players, it is online, and it is an RPG.

LoL is an ARTS(I hate to use MOBA because it doesn't actually tell you definitively what the game is) Action Real-Time Strategy game. Because it is a Strategy game in Real-Time, that is action based instead of resource farming/unit building.

[Konker]

I largely agree.

TBC was the sweet-spot of raiding fundementals. Not because raiding was anywhere near perfect at the time, but because they filled the role of end-game content while the expansion in general strongly encouraged group/guild/community cooperation.

WotLK wasn't bad and started addressing the issues of accessibility, but it was at the expense of segregating raiders into different niches.

By the end, Cata definately quashed most every game mechanic that encouraged group play and sense of community. We really tried in MoP, but ultimately the guild was so divided by level / skill / progression / gear disparity it was hell trying to find content to suit playing as a group.

There is not right or wrong way in game development, just choices of direction. Personally, I think WoW has sacrificed too much in relevance of guild/community to grant individual accessibilty. They essentially went from one extreme to the other without exploring enough of the middle ground.

Flex is a nice addition. I think that would have served us nicely. The problem remaining is that they are still segregating social groups by catering to individualized raiding styles. Again, not right or wrong, but for people who value playing with friends over playing for content LFR has had a significant negative impact.

[Jaja]

I would generally agree with with Morello said, TBC was a sweet spot for raiding in World of Warcraft.

A little effort and you were into Karazhan, a little more and you could do Gruul / Magtheridon and therefore a whole tier. Gearing up in that tier also improves your player skill and awareness and knits teams together. Then the step up to tier 5, guilds had to come together (in an mmo, NO WAY!) and get attunements before venturing into raids that were quite a step above what they were used to.

The structure behind TBC raiding, i.e increased difficulty by tiers and no raid becoming absolete was perfect. New players didn't just jump in the deep end but they could really learn their characters and gel into a raid team by starting in the easier T4 raids then progress upwards with the guild.

My only criticism was for the guild that had already progressed, into T5/T6. It was very hard to recruit without having to drag the person through previous tiers and attunements to get them up to par to join current raids. How to get around that? I have no idea.

TL;DR Morello is correct, at least in my opinion

[mastagomes]

I don't think you should speak for anyone except yourself. There is no "we" in "how we all did it". Only you.

BC was one of the most inaccessible periods of WOW. Only classic was worse. Such an exclusive model would not be tolerated by the current user base. The same user base that Blizzard has statistics to tell are important enough to continue catering to. The same user base that inspired such important features as the following. These have become benchmarks of accessibility that any online experience that doesn't offer them, suffers (eg. guild wars 2 and groupfinder)

1. LFD
2. LFR
3. Cross Realm Coop
4. BG gear downgrader to protect new PVPers
5. A size for everyone, LFR/10/25/H10/H25/Flex
6. Legendaries for everyone through the wrathion questline

If accessibility isn't your type of game, Blizzard is very clear. Stick with it or move on. You're not the target audience. The people who enjoy accessibility are.

I hardly would have called myself hardcore, no where close, but I found the content just as accessible to be frank. In terms of difficulty, the game back then really was not any harder than it is now, especially when thinking about the current Heroic Modes. You claim that the current user base would not tolerate such an 'exclusive' model now, but the current feedback and subscriber numbers seem to indicate something completely different than what you are suggesting, even though this is a very simplified view of the state of the game and subscriber numbers, it is still relevant to your claims.

We can't know how the game would have turned out if they kept a model similar to that of The Burning Crusade, but I really feel the game would have lasted longer if they kept along that sort of path. As to the benchmarks of accessibility, I counter with the following:

1. LFD - The queues currently range from anywhere between 11-20 minutes unless you fill 1 particular niche role, so for 60-80% of the people queuing LFD they aren't saving ANY time to previous methods of trying to find groups for dungeons, the ONLY thing LFD has truly done is eliminate a sense of community within servers. Granted I think the LFD system in general was a good idea, in hindsight, in terms of accessibility and time saving, there really is no difference to before, you sit around for 10-20 minutes waiting for a queue to pop or fill in that time doing dailies or AHing, or something similar at the cost of community/server interaction. I don't know if that trade off was worth it.

2. LFR - Probably the most wanted feature by the 'vocal' players. Everyone was so hype for this feature at launch, and now, well, it's honestly trash. LFR admittedly does open up the game for people to see more content faster, but it severely detracts player progression from the game. Essentially, you can experience the whole games content in a period of less than 20 hours, with no effort or WANT of effort. What I mean by this is, players honestly no longer want or need to put any effort into the game before they are done with it, offering no captivating feature for them to remain, which ultimately hurts the game so much more than not having LFR in the game in the first place. Anyway who an not see this is going to be into a very harsh reality when things eventually crumble if things aren't changed somehow to drive players to want to experience content by improving and striving to do their best (regardless of their skill levels).

3. Cross Realm Coop - I think Blizzard would have much better been served by developing technology that consolidated servers rather than having 50-100 servers with those servers interacting with each other. If Blizzard could establish limits on server numbers to spread the player base among a certain number of servers ensuring server/community cohesion, rather than making everything so anonymous, it would bode well for the game. Though I will grant some cross server friends amongst friends are great, but in term of LFD/LFR I agree, it should be limited to people you know for cross server interaction.

4. No real opinion on this.

5. This is probably the most contentious issue I have with myself regarding this manner. I personally can see how having the game progress into 10/25 was a great thing for flexibility, even for myself personally at times with friends etc.. but I also saw how poorly it was managed in terms of equality of difficulty and how much it detracts from the raiding scene. As much as it may have worked for me at times, I honestly believe the game is better served with only 1 raiding format, whether it be 10 or 25, it doesn't matter, at a minimum make the difficulties no longer equal to each other like Wrath (Blizzard themselves have alluded that bring 10 person up on gear levels and TRYING to make both difficulties on equal paring has actually alienated more people than it actually brought in).

6. I personally enjoy the Wrathion quest lines, and if LFR wasn't in the game I think people would enjoy them significantly more, even IF they were slightly harder/longer to obtain.

Lastly, Blizzard has targeted accessibility over good engaging content, and I don't care how much you pretend to say that such accessible content is engaging because in it's current format it isn't, people play and then they leave quite fast because of how accessible it is. So if we're not the target audience and we leave, the people who stay eventually leave to, because that is what is happening right now, it's a cascade effect. There is a middle ground to be met, somewhere between TBC and WotLK, but Blizzard horrible overshot the mark or didn't want the game to go there at all (due to the vocal player feedback), and the game has been steadily declining since then.

This all coming from someone who PUGGED ILLIDAN (and didn't have to wait 40 minutes to get another 24 people together).