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

[swagster]

Hey guys, here's GC's reply about what Morello has said

[Servasus]

I quite agree. The illusion of exclusivity and "neverending content" that Average Joe will never see is a core and essential part of the game. It gives people a goal to reach, impossible or otherwise.

as it stands, you can see everything every raid has to offer with ease - "hard modes" are just the same thing for a more dedicated crowd. It's not the same. People get bored. People unsub. People think back to better times with better content (better because they didn't get to wear it out) and lose the inclination to keep playing.

Like it or not, on some primal level, people WANT a goal they can't reach. They WANT content they'll only ever be able to see by looking up videos and getting involved in the community. It vindicates their investment. And if they DO ever reach it, it's an actual accomplishment instead of just the same thing everyone else in the game is doing.

Likewise, there are JUST as many, if not MORE people who will quit a game because it's too hard. 4.0 was a prime example of that.

[magicric]

For all you WoW fan boys who thinks WoW is the biggest most profitable game in the world, have a read of this.
gamasutra.com/view/news/179324/

I think League of Legends Lead Content Designer 'Morello' Scott's opinion on WoW is spot on and should be respected and listened to.

[Lastlivingsoul]

This guy lost me when he said he doesn't think Raids should be inclusive and there needs to be a "Psychological trick" to lure players into raiding.

Greg Street sounds like he is looking out for the silent majority who don't have time for invisible rewards set by a minority of players saving the best items aside for themselves and handing out scraps.

This is a game where players (i.e. 15-40yrs of age) should take time at the end of their day to log on with friends to enjoy being a Wizards or a warrior. Not friggin Wall Street backstabbing your way to the top of some Gamer pyramid 18 hours a day for a 16 year old tyrant. Also forum posters are just like everyone else on the internet, an anonymous know-it-all who 85% of the time has nothing better to do than troll or complain any relevant topic that appears.

There's a reason why Warcraft is so large and its not because of keeping people from seeing content. Its because people were part of a story where an army of "Savages" and "Knights" decided to take on the Death itself (Wrath), An invasion from Hell(BC), and an apocalypse worthy of Lovecraft(Cata).

Its all about a "Worthy Foe" within the story itself, the rest is just technical shit honestly.

[c2dholla619]

For all you WoW fan boys who thinks WoW is the biggest most profitable game in the world, have a read of this.
gamasutra.com/view/news/179324/

I think League of Legends Lead Content Designer 'Morello' Scott's opinion on WoW is spot on and should be respected and listened to.

well that should shut some people up. cant argue with that. lol is doing something right. when was the last time you heard wow was rapidly growing, i seem to hear the opposite. just because morello works with a game that is in a slightly different field it still has the same purpose which is to get players and make money. if morello applied to work blizz tomorrow do you think he would get the job.

i agree with morello. when you have played the end game content your motivation to play is drastically depleted. the same rules apply to just about any game. recently bought bioshock infinite beat the game in 4 days havent picked the game up in months. its called "end" game content for a reason

[LeperHerring]

Agree/Disagree? Share your thoughts.

This Morello guy nailed it spot on. It has been scientifically proven, for example, that giving people more choice will make them unhappier than giving them less choice. Humans are irrational and complex beings, and the simplistic design philosophy that took hold after TBC simply cannot produce meaningful gaming experiences (although insane brand loyalty and addiction has been keeping the numbers up).

This is where GC distills down the whole failed design philosophy that's making WoW bleed subs: "you can't take content away from most players just to have exclusive content." You absolutely can have exclusive content that most players don't play in, TBC proved this 100% and GC is 100% unarguably wrong here. Second, it's not about "taking away". You produce different sets of content that appeal to different sets of people and have different requirements for skill and dedication. Everyone is free to choose to do any of those, they're not "taken away". Of course, not everyone might have the time, or skill or whatever to do every possible thing, but that's not a problem (as TBC/vanilla proved). GC's "everyone must see all the content" turned WoW into a dull experience, that's probably one of the most uninspired and bland games out there today, living only off of old brand loyalty and addiction.

[Aquamonkey]

For all you WoW fan boys who thinks WoW is the biggest most profitable game in the world, have a read of this.
gamasutra.com/view/news/179324/

I think League of Legends Lead Content Designer 'Morello' Scott's opinion on WoW is spot on and should be respected and listened to.

That's pretty funny, LoL has 12 million DAILY active players. WoW barely peaked 12 million per month counting Asia players logging in for even a second (Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers).

[Yriel]

For all you WoW fan boys who thinks WoW is the biggest most profitable game in the world, have a read of this.
gamasutra.com/view/news/179324/

So where does it state that they make more money ? They have more players. No one ever denied that. Most FTP games have a lot of players.

[Osmeric]

That's pretty funny, LoL has 12 million DAILY active players. WoW barely peaked 12 million per month [...]

You seem to be insinuating the WoW players log in once a month. Also, comparing paying subs with free to play active players is comparing apples and oranges.

[Pull My Finger]

Huge geniuses here in this thread. LoL has more players than WoW. Surprisingly, a free to play game has more player traffic than one where you have to pay a monthly fee. Astonishing.

Also, Kesha is the highest authority and an absolute luminary of songwriting and music performance. "Die Young" went double platinum. That's a whole lot of people, you know. Whatever she says is gospel.

Bunch of kids.

[Aquamonkey]

You seem to be insinuating the WoW players log in once a month.

That is the bare minimum to be counted as a sub (Asia pays by the hour). LoL gets as much traffic every day.

Also, comparing paying subs with free to play active players is comparing apples and oranges.

Doesn't stop people from comparing WoW to F2P MMOs.

[Keny]

"everyone must see everything" mentality has driven WoW downward.

This, X9000 .

[Lumineus]

I think Morello is right in a way, but he's also very wrong. Raiding in World of Warcraft didn't become more inclusive in Wrath of the Lich King because of anything the developers did, it became inclusive because the playerbase improved their ability to clear the level of raiding content that was delivered. He thinks Burning Crusade is the sweet spot? Great, I agree. Let's dial the tuning and complexity of raids back to Kara/Gruul's, Hyjal/BT so we can have thirty thousand guilds clearing ToT instead of three thousand. The idea the current content needs to be more exclusive is laughable.

[Sarevokcz]

Exactly. I think -that- is what Morello tried to say when he meant he would've made endgame more exclusive...

Blizzard seems to design raiddungeons with the idea that they are going to be finished in a few weeks. They even fine tune the raidbosses to the point that they are reasonably beatable, even the hardmode ones. If they made raiddungeons seem more endless, by adding several last and optional bosses that are incredibly hard to beat, mathematically almost impossible to beat perhaps even... then people would keep having the idea in their heads that there is always more to do... that they didn't -finish- the raidcontent and can just unsubscribe until the next new raidcontent.

The best raiding experience of my life was BC ... when both Vashj and Kael'thas were 'bugged'. We cleared everything else, just these last two broken fuckers wouldn't go anywhere to nearly down. They were the only raidbosses that for a long while made me feel intimidated by them... until Blizzard nerfed/fixed them... but when we finally got them down, omg, it was a major thrill like I've never felt before...

Its called "rose tinted glasses." we had couple dozen wipes on Vashj before we beat it and about same ammount of wipes on Kael, it was nowhere as difficult as some WotLK HMs and not even close to Cata and MoP difficulty. It was thrill mostly because at the time some of the mechanics were new and sort of refreshing. Throwing Cores around? Zero gravity phase? The idea behind legendary weapons? (which would be basically extra action button nowadays) were all fresh new stuff in WoW, everyone wanted to see that. The content wasnt really exclusive, considering we beat it with a national guild, that struggled on Vael in BWL(!) and for the most part (SWP and late BT) was way easier than now. Poeple were just BAD back then and having equipped alts was a nightmare if you didnt start early enough. I mean jesus christ, Ihad more wipes on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=717CoVJ687M mechanic that on actually hard mechanics nowadays, simply because people didnt have a clue how to play the game and that was the only difficulty holding them back.

[juzalol]

Its called "rose tinted glasses." we had couple dozen wipes on Vashj before we beat it and about same ammount of wipes on Kael, it was nowhere as difficult as some WotLK HMs and not even close to Cata and MoP difficulty. It was thrill mostly because at the time some of the mechanics were new and sort of refreshing. Throwing Cores around? Zero gravity phase? The idea behind legendary weapons? (which would be basically extra action button nowadays) were all fresh new stuff in WoW, everyone wanted to see that. The content wasnt really exclusive, considering we beat it with a national guild, that struggled on Vael in BWL(!) and for the most part (SWP and late BT) was way easier than now. Poeple were just BAD back then and having equipped alts was a nightmare if you didnt start early enough. I mean jesus christ, Ihad more wipes on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=717CoVJ687M mechanic that on actually hard mechanics nowadays, simply because people didnt have a clue how to play the game and that was the only difficulty holding them back.

Compared to the skill level of players back then it was extremely difficult.

Just because the average skill level of players now might be higher doesn't change the fact
that back then the encounters were extremely difficult for the players to deal with.

And Blizzard is trying to push everyone to the endgame with faster and more convenient leveling
which I don't think is a good move. There are huge amount of players who just enjoy the story,
exploring the world and collecting stuff and don't have any interest in the endgame.

Rushing people to max level content and offering a simple way to clear it makes the game and the
world seem to be super small and shallow. They should make the leveling an epic journey while keeping
the endgame rather exclusive for the players willing to commit. Never beating the game will keep the
casual crowd playing as it seems that there is infinite amount of stuff to discover and do and the exclusive
raid content and rewards will keep the hardcore players playing.

You can't really do this anymore tho as they already gave out so many convenience features they can't really
take them away. Too bad really.

[Bloodfire]

For all you WoW fan boys who thinks WoW is the biggest most profitable game in the world, have a read of this.
gamasutra.com/view/news/179324/

I think League of Legends Lead Content Designer 'Morello' Scott's opinion on WoW is spot on and should be respected and listened to.

Another couch analitic.
Though people spend more on those F2P hence you don't have any chance there if you don't got specific runepages for each hero.
And that my friend, costs more lifehours to spend.
Comparing to WoW where you pay and get everything at once.

In general, F2P consumes more of your cash rather than P2P. All that differs is speed of progression.
In F2P, you're over9000 times below person who pays for everything.
In P2P, you stand at the same level, all that matters is the level of skill. Surely, some people may use $ in order to get maximum Loot, but IRL, skill that works better stands higher.

[Sarevokcz]

Compared to the skill level of players back then it was extremely difficult.

Just because the average skill level of players now might be higher doesn't change the fact
that back then the encounters were extremely difficult for the players to deal with.

And Blizzard is trying to push everyone to the endgame with faster and more convenient leveling
which I don't think is a good move. There are huge amount of players who just enjoy the story,
exploring the world and collecting stuff and don't have any interest in the endgame.

Rushing people to max level content and offering a simple way to clear it makes the game and the
world seem to be super small and shallow. They should make the leveling an epic journey while keeping
the endgame rather exclusive for the players willing to commit. Never beating the game will keep the
casual crowd playing as it seems that there is infinite amount of stuff to discover and do and the exclusive
raid content and rewards will keep the hardcore players playing.

You can't really do this anymore tho as they already gave out so many convenience features they can't really
take them away. Too bad really.

So much of mumbo jumbo about "lfr is bad" ? You could have saved some time and just outright say it. But honestly, if you actually consider LFR as a real raiding and that "LFR raiding" is eating into the exclusivity of HM raiding, I have nothing else but "are you serious?" HM and heck even noromal raiding is already tons more exclusive now than ever before...

[Verdugo]

Erh, no. You must've fought the nerfed version then. Back when we were doing tries on both they both were literally bugged, unbeatable, impossible. Nihilum through the not so small feat of soulstoning their entire raid on every pull eventually got Vashj down, but she was still bugged and instantly respawned with the spore bats still remaining in the fight and filling the room with poison...

Kael'thas was bugged because he started building aggro in phase1 ... and was untauntable. This meant that as soon as he joined the fight he would go straight for all the healers and kill them one by one.

Thus the only choice during that period of time was that we could only farm the other bosses in the dungeon and had to hopelessly bash our heads against Vashj and Kael the whole time. Just like C'thun was impossible at launch it kept the guild more active and engaged. Top raidguilds tend to more inactive the moment the last boss is downed... people tend to unsubscribe until the next raidcontent is out.

So bosses were better when they were glitching pieces of shit?

[swagster]

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

[Gamez]

this is like when people who've only developed single player games talk about what wow did wrong and how they know how to do it right. In bioware's case, we can see how that turned out. Anyone expecting an amazing pve endgame from eso?

eso = ????