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

[Fagatronics]

A few things other than raids need to be considered regarding the inclusive/exclusive debate. Only Osmeric even brought up the start of arena and the term "welfare epics"

Also, I don't hate Ghostcrawler, but he started in games with RTSs and made his way straight to an MMO. Clearly, there is room to say that a MOBA dev could transition his knowledge to an MMO also. Yes, that is a very blatant example I'm using for good reason. Either you agree or disagree, but there should be no discrediting.

You made some great points. I'm surprised more people didn't acknowledge them. Hopefully people will just take it as an opinion from a well regarded game designer because that's all it is. Agree or disagree, fine by me.

But this attacking of LoL and Morello's knowledge/character is just sad. Then again, this is the Internet...

[bmps]

I would be more inclined to wait 8 years and see if Morello still has the same philosophy. As a game, WoW is 8 years old and in that 8 years, there are only so many ways you can push a button, dodge some fire and burn a target. Of course it is going to get stale. People will realise it is the same old same old, just with a new model and higher polygon count. More people have got bored with their marriages in the same time frame. If League of Legends is still growing after 8 years then I believe it will lend more weight to his philosophy. Until then, I think it is just speculation. He could be right, he could be wrong.

However, I am not sure that exclusive content was what made WoW grow so much in the first 2 expansions. I don't think people started playing the game after being told that they will most likely not see the final bosses and get the coolest weapons. Sure it may have kept people as they repeatedly threw themselves against boss after boss, waiting out the next nerfs so they can down him, but I think the growth can be more attributed to the fact that word was getting out and WoW was no longer a niche game that only a certain subculture of people played. It had broken into the mainstream. More people knew about it so more people tried it out. Think of when emo went viral. A lot like that. But that is my opinion.

As for Morello, I like his attitude towards it and the fact that he was also willing to defend against bitter and unfair criticism of Ghostcrawler. I don't necessarily agree with what he said, the cause and effect seems too simple and one faceted.

[Flower Milk]

I'm just going to leave this here.

http://i.imgur.com/gheaXVt.jpg

Morello is seriously the worst game designer in the world, and him agreeing with the way that the direction WoW is taking just puts even less faith in the game for me. I left LoL for a reason, not because of "accessibility" or whatever, but because their ideas for things were just absolutely terrible and not compelling in a MOBA setting at all.

[Flower Milk]

Heh. Typical lack of nuance and intelligence of people... In one he's talking about the aestetics of a character design, in the other he's talking about the gameplay of a character. One is art, the other are mechanics. I see this a lot ... people claiming that someone smarter than them is "contradicting" himself, because they lack the braincells to understand the nuance and difference of what is being talked about.

Is this one better for you?

http://i.imgur.com/a8ZxYmd.png

[l33t]

Well, he's definitely right in some points.
The worst thing that came with "I pay as much as everyone, it is my privilege to have everything in game handed to me on a silver plate" mindset was the degradation of playerbase skill. You can say everything you want, but in fact nowadays we have quality replaced by quantity.
When we played BC, we had to earn everything. People who were top-ranked were in fact almost like living gods among server communities. First kills of a bosses were a memorable events, which were speaken about for days. And if you just see a person in full t6, it automatically meant that person has a pro skills.
Compare that to what we have now. First kills mean nothing because noone cares. Top ranking means nothing, because noone cares. Top items mean nothing, because noone cares. No wonders even top raids are slowly destroyed, because noone cares nowadays. And those random people... oh, their lack of skill is beyond good and evil in all meanings of that. And I don't even want to speak about pvp aspects in modern wow.
It saddens me watching wow slowly transforming into some sort of a Diablo3 game, a game which challenges a player only at maximum difficulty level.

[Pull My Finger]

hey guys look how mad this guy is

the amount of ad hominem, god forbid you take lfr away from those people

oh wait, I'm fully prepared for the ensuing shitstorm

Hm, that actually wasn't very exciting at all. Merely a mild wisp of wind compared to the flatulent hellstorm of butthurt anti-LFR-diarrhea one gets to read on these boards every single day.

[purramandakitty]

Come on guys.

LoL is obviously a good game. WoW is obviously a good game. You can make incredibly strong arguments for both being the best game of their respective genres to ever be made. I like WoW, and my personal opinion is that the quality of the game has only ever increased and the current game is better than the game has ever been previously. I don't like LoL or Moba games in general, but I don't hold contempt or think less of people who do like them. Similarly I don't hold it against people if they don't like WoW.

What I can't stand is the constant back and forth bickering and insults. Someone just called Morello "the worst game designer in the world". This thread should be about debating the philosophies behind games, can't that happen without the constant "you're a fanboi and your game sucks" and "the other game is the worst game ever" comments?

[melodramocracy]

Ghostcrawler says that's "a pervasive myth".

So, sorry, you're largely wrong.

That's human nature. So I'd rethink siding with GC on this.

[Recom]

Morello talking about game balance is the biggest LOL i've had this year ! I've never liked the man but his statement is just shockingly stupid.

LoL used to be a great game during closed/open beta and in the early days of release but it slowly fell because of new champion mechanics (they all have a dash/escape, insane burst, bruisers outdps nukers).

Not to mention his comment on exclusive content, heroic raids (and even a few normal bosses) are more exclusive than ever, just look at figures : 9113 guilds defeated Lei Shen NM, that's less than 200,000 people out of EIGHT millions, how is this not exclusive ? How is making content for less than 1% of the playing population an interesting choice for the dev team ? (Don't get me wrong, heroic being very exclusive is fine, but normal mode shouldn't be and Morello is saying that it should..)

[Yriel]

Well, he's definitely right in some points.
The worst thing that came with "I pay as much as everyone, it is my privilege to have everything in game handed to me on a silver plate" mindset was the degradation of playerbase skill. You can say everything you want, but in fact nowadays we have quality replaced by quantity.

And yet LoL itself embraces this mindset.

[Tempestblue]

Majority of players feel like they accomplished just as much as the heroic raiders when they down Lei Shen in LFR.

Thats the real point of your whole argument isn't it? Indignant rage that people who clear LFR can feel like they accomplished something. Even though it no way affects you the fact that they can feel good about themselves leaves you with a salty taste in your mouth.


I love all the praise for this Morello person's opinions over players opinions even though he has 0 experience creating a MMO.

While the same people claim GC has no idea what he is talking about and they know what is best for the game.........seeing as he has all the experience and all.

[Osmeric]

That's human nature. So I'd rethink siding with GC on this.

No, I don't think you are correct here.

[Sarevokcz]

Eh, no? LFR is pretty much the only content I do nowadays, but everything higher just feels like the same shit to me.

"I have an opinion, therfor everyone else has to have same opinion"

I do LFR on alts and I do heroics on main and they dont feel like same shit to me.

[smartazjb0y]

Am I just reading a different thread than everyone else did?

I don't play LoL, never have, and I have no idea who Morello is. I disagree with his notion that "exclusivity is good"....

But why are people attacking him? He bent over backwards just to point out HE DOESN'T KNOW IF HE'S RIGHT. He points out over and over that it's HIS opinion and it's how HE'D do it if he were head of Blizzard, BUT he doesn't know if he'd be right. He goes OUT of his way to make it clear that this is his opinion based on what he knows, even though he doesn't have access to the data Blizz has.

His posts were honestly some of the most respectful "criticisms" of WoW I've ever read, even though I vehemently disagree with him. He plainly states that he could be completely wrong. I've never seen forumgoers criticize Blizz respectfully or add "I may be wrong and maybe Blizz is right."

And even then, the whole tangent about "oh he's a systems designer for a MOBA not an MMO" is irrelevant to whether or not his points are "correct" or "incorrect." Just because you think his job position makes him unqualified to talk about WoW doesn't automatically make his points incorrect.

I could take someone who's never even heard of WoW, tell them about the game, and if they told me "maybe the game would do better if there was no sub," it doesn't matter that they don't know what WoW is, it could be a valid point. In the same vein, if any WoW player posted exactly what Morello posted, we'd be discussing the idea of exclusivity, not spending our time talking about if a MOBA dev's opinion is relevant.

[jax]

I love all the praise for this Morello person's opinions over players opinions even though he has 0 experience creating a MMO.

Ryan moved on to do QA and eventually design at ArenaNet, doing content creation and balance design on the original Guild Wars, and helping create the framework for Guild Wars 2

GC had no experience creating a MMO either seeing as his only work in gaming was on AOE that was a RTS.
Though some say GW/GW2 isnt a MMO its just as much a MMO as AOE is if not more.

What was the point again?

[Sniperpally]

Am I just reading a different thread than everyone else did?

I don't play LoL, never have, and I have no idea who Morello is. I disagree with his notion that "exclusivity is good"....

But why are people attacking him? He bent over backwards just to point out HE DOESN'T KNOW IF HE'S RIGHT. He points out over and over that it's HIS opinion and it's how HE'D do it if he were head of Blizzard, BUT he doesn't know if he'd be right. He goes OUT of his way to make it clear that this is his opinion based on what he knows, even though he doesn't have access to the data Blizz has.

His posts were honestly some of the most respectful "criticisms" of WoW I've ever read, even though I vehemently disagree with him. He plainly states that he could be completely wrong. I've never seen forumgoers criticize Blizz respectfully or add "I may be wrong and maybe Blizz is right."

And even then, the whole tangent about "oh he's a systems designer for a MOBA not an MMO" is irrelevant to whether or not his points are "correct" or "incorrect." Just because you think his job position makes him unqualified to talk about WoW doesn't automatically make his points incorrect.

I could take someone who's never even heard of WoW, tell them about the game, and if they told me "maybe the game would do better if there was no sub," it doesn't matter that they don't know what WoW is, it could be a valid point. In the same vein, if any WoW player posted exactly what Morello posted, we'd be discussing the idea of exclusivity, not spending our time talking about if a MOBA dev's opinion is relevant.

I think a lot of it is cognitive dissonance. At this point people have invested so much into WoW, for many, to accept criticisms of it undermines all the time they spent and continue to spend playing it. I think that's why you see such strong emotional reactions and attacks on Morello, because for some, his way of thinking represents an existential threat to them. So its not about engaging his ideas its about destroying them, because they represent a threat to what players have built.

I think most people are over it and don't have their identity bound up in the current iteration of WoW, which is why you see a lot of agreement with Morello, even from people who continue to play. But there's always that subset of players with their pathological need to feel that whatever is the case currently is justified. People will always defend the status quo if they're heavily invested in it, and will fear change (or the spectre of change) as a threat to their efforts.

[Deleted]

the fanboys will still stay that everyone must be able to see everything because they pay a sub fee but yeah hes absolutely right, I hope they will listen to him^^

[smartazjb0y]

I think a lot of it is cognitive dissonance. At this point people have invested so much into WoW, for many, to accept criticisms of it undermines all the time they spent and continue to spend playing it. I think that's why you see such strong emotional reactions and attacks on Morello, because for some, his way of thinking represents an existential threat to them. So its not about engaging his ideas its about destroying them, because they represent a threat to what players have built.

I think most people are over it and don't have their identity bound up in the current iteration of WoW, which is why you see a lot of agreement with Morello, even from people who continue to play. But there's always that subset of players with their pathological need to feel that whatever is the case currently is justified. People will always defend the status quo if they're heavily invested in it, and will fear change (or the spectre of change) as a threat to their efforts.

If I get what you're saying, sure. But, I could probably fit into your idea of someone invested into WoW and its status quo. Like I said, I really do disagree with Morello, but that doesn't stop me from seeing that his criticisms are very, very respectful. It's a shame some people just see a guy not agreeing with how Blizz is doing things and move into "automatic attack mode" instead of rationally looking at things

[Osmeric]

Sounds to me like Morello is trying to sabotage a competitor. A real scum move, actually.

[Terahertz]

Morello talking about game balance is the biggest LOL i've had this year ! I've never liked the man but his statement is just shockingly stupid.

LoL used to be a great game during closed/open beta and in the early days of release but it slowly fell because of new champion mechanics (they all have a dash/escape, insane burst, bruisers outdps nukers).

Not to mention his comment on exclusive content, heroic raids (and even a few normal bosses) are more exclusive than ever, just look at figures : 9113 guilds defeated Lei Shen NM, that's less than 200,000 people out of EIGHT millions, how is this not exclusive ? How is making content for less than 1% of the playing population an interesting choice for the dev team ? (Don't get me wrong, heroic being very exclusive is fine, but normal mode shouldn't be and Morello is saying that it should..)

Reason why not that many many people have defeated lei shen is because there's barely no reason to anymore. Why raid and put lots of effort to deck out your char in 522 gear when you can do LFR and get ilvl 502-510 gear and 522 gear from nalak?

Exlusive content is good. It gives players a goal to work towards. What is there to work towards nowadays when many people are set and happy with LFR gear? Why bother with the hassle of normal/hc raiding and guild stuff when you can just lay back in your perk guild in full LFR gear?

I have nothing to work towards besides perhaps leveling multiple characters to level 90. Besides that I've got only PvP to keep me -somewhat- motivated.