World of Warcraft article
The internet seems to be on fire with this article I wrote about World of Warcraft. You probably came here to be all mad about it. If so, go ahead and say what you must.
On the other hand, if you have some ideas about how to create an MMO that doesn't have the problems I described in the article, that would be highly constructive.
Thanks,
--Sirlin
On the other hand, if you have some ideas about how to create an MMO that doesn't have the problems I described in the article, that would be highly constructive.
Thanks,
--Sirlin
24 Comments:
At 10:42 PM, Sirlin said…
For some reason the ability to comment on this post has been broken all day. I don't know why, but it seems fixed now.
--Sirlin
At 12:18 AM, dominik rabiej said…
probably fended off a ton of flames by having a temporarily broken comment system ;)
Your points on the honor system are correct. The Honor System has nothing to do with how skilled a PvP'r you are and everything to do with how much time you can devote to staying online and hitting Enter Battleground.
There's also the rather strange issue that competition is not the "enemy" but rather your own side, who are jostling with you for ranks. Your allies are your enemies, and your enemies are your best friends, because by queueing up they give you a way of earning honor.
I think the "being alone together" experience is actually well-implemented in the 1-59 game. You can level up solo if you like, or duo, or find 5 man pickup groups to do instances. It isn't too much trouble to do this, perhaps a bit of time standing LFG in Orgrimmar, but you aren't forced to do instances in order to level. You can progress solo.
Now once you hit 60, suddenly the game changes. Your options for solo progression have all but disappeared; all that remains is the raiding game.
The raiding game itself, by its nature of lockouts and timers, is exclusionary. Once you pick a group of 20 or 40 people, you're stuck with them for the duration of your lockout timer. This of course naturally leads to elitism and community fragmentation, making the end-game entirely guild centric. For all practical purposes, other guilds could just as well not exist in the PvE game, they don't influence you at all (save on outdoor bosses, to which I will only say "Kazzak" to point out the wonderful success they are).
What's missing from WoW is a faction-wide cooperative effort. There's no reason for a member of an uberguild to team up with his fellow factionmate, unlike DAOC, there are no realm objectives such as capturing relics. Anything that matters is in an instance and the world is merely pretty decoration.
Not that the servers are stable enough to support anything on a scale of more than 100 or so characters...
All that said, I think your background in Street Fighter and intensely individually competitive games gives your analysis a unique perspective. MMORPGs are by their nature a cooperative game as well as a competitive one, and in WoW the cooperative elements have been emphasized, in an effort to broaden the market.
For the vast majority of WoW players, their main competition is not another human being -- it's the game itself, either in a raid instance or in some abomination of a battleground queue system. Even Arathi Basin and WSG eventually degenerate into a grind for faction or honor with players focused on maximizing their per hour gains and completely glossing over what you and I might call the competitive aspects (i.e. fighting). This is not helped that losing quickly is rewarded over putting up a tough fight.
Last Fall, I GM'd a PvP-only guild on a new server and I can't even begin to see how many fishing/dancing groups as my guild's reputation spread. People refused to fight -- because the game gave them the incentive that not fighting was better than fighting and losing. Witness the rampant afking before the deserter penalty was implemented.
Your points as to the necessity of a guild are correct. This is the nature of the beast, and it is present in Guild Wars as well (at least at the highest end of play). There really isn't room for 1v1 competition in WoW -- classes are not balanced against each other at all.
Perhaps the most fun I've had in WoW have been 5v5 events set up in the Stranglethorn arena, where my guild organized teams from both sides (coordinating over IRC) to have a large gladiator style tournament.
Don't get me wrong, WoW is a wonderful game... its popularity attests to its superiority to everything else out there. It is far from the best possible MMORPG, however.
I appreciated your insights on Gamasutra (along with playing to win articles from a few years back) and look forward to reading more on your blog.
--dominik
At 7:23 AM, Anonymous said…
Using real-world analogies always opens you up to counter scenarios, and it's anoying to see people get hung up on them.
MMO players, especially younger ones (noticeably into their late teens even), have a hard time hearing their game does not revolve around developed skill. If people are put off by that then they're most likely going to miss out on the article, which I thought was quite good. Thanks for posting it.
At 7:28 AM, Anonymous said…
Isn't rewarding skill even more "elitist" that rewarding time? The percentage of people with free time is likely greater than the percentage of people who are truly skilled.
At 7:32 AM, Anonymous said…
First, I would like to say that I agree with you on many points. I play many types of games. Chess, M:TG, FPS, RPGs, Fighting, Arcade, Dancing, and I think that's all. Through all of these games, I've learned many things. I was thinking about looking into MMORPGs, but to my dissatisfaction, they did not please me.
I wanted to be able to get my friends and I to level up, naturally, and some how abuse the system. Namely, becoming a mercenary group for players to hire on quests or player-killers. WoW doesn't even support this type of gameplay.
I want to be able to abuse the set up of rules, looking for loop holes to be the best. What Blizzard seems to do, is just ban you. As you said, they should change the coding. Not blame me because of their own programming.
I've learned strategies for fighting. (one on one, one on group, or basically war) Take your advatages and minimalize your disadvantages. I've learned how to think from outside my perspective. I've learned patience. I've learned team work and friendship. Open-mindedness. My entire mind frame is based on what I've learned. I learned many things, and I pass on my knowledge. I've learned from you Sirlin. Play to win.
I'll do what I can to help you with MMORPGs. The only thing I can think of now (I'm in school and will probably be late for my class for this) is dividing the reward for quests.
Have all players and groups be able to go to every quest. Have a set reward for each quest no matter the number of players. If there is only one item, then the group must decide who gets the item. You learn that to help others while you get nothing material in return. Sorry, I can't elaborate as much as I would like to. I'll try think up some more ideas. I have no idea if WoW does this or not, but it doesn't seem like it from the raids and such.
At 7:35 AM, Anonymous said…
To the one before me...
In the real world, I would hire people who can get things done fast and with a great amount of skill. Rather than something mediocre or even done at the same level, at long periods of time.
Sirlin is trying to teach gamers lessons of the real world. Does it matter what he's trying to teach? As long as it goes with our society's structure, it will be a well taught lesson.
At 7:46 AM, HappinessSam said…
I'm not sure that I'd agree with you about the group>solo thing. I would lean to the viewpoint that teaching kids to get on with and organize 40 other people is a fairly humungous achievement.
Also, whereas ploughing time into WoW doesn't really teach anything, in most other areas of life you're only going to get better if you're willing to spend the time. Therefore I would say that coming into a situation with an attitude that time spent is very important could be considered a fairly beneficial trait.
At 9:22 AM, Anonymous said…
To say 1 hour should be equal to 1,000 hours is a childish reflection of how some people want instant gratification.
On the other hand, the honor system really does suck ass because people who lose can actually reach higher in the rank system than people that win... they just need to lose a lot more.
At 9:35 AM, peppyfellow said…
Sirlin, it seems to me as though WoW is engineered to be addictive. I used to only have one friend who played WoW...then another started playing, and even another (one of them even bought gold with real money). They often stay home or find excuses not to go places so they can play WoW all the time. One of them even passed up a date. They often talk about it extensively (almost all the time) whenever we're all out together and they'll make injokes about anything concerning the game when any oppurtunity arises, alienating anyone who doesn't play.
Now, even more of my friends are playing (one more guy friend and two female friends). Yuck. It just doesn't seem like a good game, rather, an addictive game.
What is even stranger is that one of my WoW playing friends said that he doesn't like fighting games because they "are the same thing every time."
At 11:41 AM, Brinstar said…
Another insightful piece, so well done for that. I do agree with most of your points in the Gamasutra soapbox thing. While I agree that it is perfectly valid to play an MMO on your own, I think that a major part of MMO play is the co-operation. I think those 40-person raids are absurd though. I've read that the best, most successful teams range from between 4 - 10 people, so I think 40 is really excessive, unless there are squad commanders that report to a "general" who is then responsible for the tactics of thise 40-person raid. I really don't know how raids work, since I don't play much WOW (it's been rather dull for me, so I'm probably going to quit). Anyway, I think most of your points are spot on, particularly the issues you raised about Blizzard's TOS policies.
At 2:00 PM, Anonymous said…
Sirlin, I believe that the best way to make a MMO that fits your requirements is to go the route of Kingdom of Loathing and allow a limited amount of "turns" a day, or hours played. Of course, players could have as many alternate characters as they wanted. The problem then is that you have players being rewarded by playing daily. Perhaps a system other than "experience" is the answer?
At 3:36 PM, DominikDalek said…
The problem is, I believe, that exposing real world problems with high accuracy in MMORPG would be harmful (even if it'd be obfuscated.) Imagine that you're making building plans. You can learn what to do to make house usable. You can learn how to be competitive on market, and it's all about skills. Cute, isn't it? Another player can actually build this house, learn to conform to specs, learn to do what ppl who know certain thigs better (planing) tell him to do. It's so perfect! You can become a real bartender, learn to listen to people, learn to earn money. This is all so cool! But what happens if you stop caring about real life? There are games already which enable both paying for certaing goods as well as gaining real money from characters (players) work. You don't need real world job to survive, pay bills, eat... Take a look at Project Entropia to understand what I mean. Both real life rules and time-over-skill rules in artificial environment can be immersive and dreadful. No rules of "fun" will change it, there is always a common sense factor in it. Without common sense, even a game with rules by rules of fun ;) will be dangerous. When you don't need real life problems and computer game can be a substitute of school of life, our civilisation will be doomed.
At 4:15 PM, Anonymous said…
Disclaimer: While I condsider myself a gamer, I got my MMO phase over with AC a LONG time ago. I talk with friends who play WoW but I have not played it myself, nor do I ever intend to.
Time>Skill -
1. Is it time or persisitence? Is there no skill in leveling rapidly during time spent? Is persisitence not worth rewarding?
2. If the idea that time>skill is totally alien to you...you never read the Tortoise and the Hare did you?
3. Are there ulterior motives to this design? Is the design meant to keep you playing? Is there a revenue model that expects players to buy the game and at LEAST play X months before moving on? Are there technical reasons why a player might have a negative experience if the game (feature) were purely skill based?
Group>Solo
1. See ulterior motives above.
2. So playing by yourself in WoW is inheritly less fun? I've heard that's not the case from some players. That it in fact succeeds in this regard AS LONG AS, you don't need to feel as though you are the BEST.
In the end, I think your original article comes off a little whiney. Kind of "WoW is a neat game but it totally sucks for us solo guys that want to re-live our Street Fighter days of glory", is how I interpreted it. Mind you, your days of glory as a Street Fighter player extrordinare may still also be ahead of you. Hey on that note....aren't there fighting game tournaments where you guys ban the use of certain moves becasue they are thought of as exploits or unfair advantages? Do you alter your tournament rules to acoomodate these short comings?
At 4:45 PM, pat m. said…
to the above poster:
no, we don't ban moves in fighting game tournaments. pretty much everything outside of physical contact with the other player is allowed.
At 5:26 PM, chrome said…
I stopped playing WoW months ago, for several reasons. When I saw the title of your article, I expected to see an article that I might agree on in a lot of points.
Instead I noticed that wour whole attitude towards the game is so exaggerated and biased, that even your most plausible arguments are easily overshadowed.
There is so much ignorance that I dont even know where to start:
>But far worse is the idea that
>millions of children are learning
>that doing things on your own is
>bad.
This statement is so over-the-top and stupid, that I dont even know what to say. Let me just say one thing: If we're having one problem in this world, its for not working together enough, not the other way around.
Besides that, since you seem to believe that games have so much power that they absolutly brainwash every person - or at least child. Is'nt then Streefighter a lot more irresponsible for showing a world, where every conflict is solved by fighting? You are contradicting your own arguments.
I've been reading Gamasutra for years and all this time has not one article been so low in quality as yours.. and this comes from someone that doesnt even like WoW.
At 5:49 PM, Anonymous said…
Hmm. Apparently the above poster didn't even read the whole article on his beloved site. Sirlin clearly said that SF ISN'T about beating people up. That's like saying that chess is about destroying your enemy in all out war, which Sirlin also mentioned.
Dawolffman
At 7:49 PM, chrome said…
Hmm. Apparently the above poster "Dawolffman" didn't even get my comment on his beloved site.
I love Streetfighter. My point is that sirlin is using two measures. One moment he is abstracting by saying that Streetfighter isnt teaching violence. The next moment he goes like "But far worse is the idea that millions of children are learning that doing things on your own is bad.".
At 8:18 PM, Alex said…
Exactly, he was hinting to the underlying messages...
SF-- Two people locked in combat.
Lesson: Yomi, strategic thinking, "sleight of hand", etc...
The game is not teaching you to use yourself as a human bullet, channel electrical currents through your body, spit fire, or travel around the world challengig top-ranking fighters.
WoW-- The player explores a world of magic and mischief to defeat dungeons and monsters.
Lesson: Strategic thinking, team work, time>skill, etc.
This game is not telling you to go out into the world dressed in armor and attack whatever creature you come across to magically become stronger, nor will they drop items or gold. Now, if you walked around and slaughtered helpless animals and then used their bones as tools and weaponry, that's a LOT more realistic.
It's actually obvious that sirlin was using the same measure for both SF and WoW. That is, of course, the underlying message in the game.
At 11:56 PM, Anonymous said…
What people don't seem to understand is that while spending more time can lead to a development of skill, the main determinant to success in the real world is skill itself, where success is measured by results.
Ever wonder why college tests test you on you well you understand the material, instead of how long you've spent cramming? You don't cram for 30 hours and then magically pass a course.
-JLC
At 9:03 AM, Chozo said…
Mostly agree with all but a few of the following:
"When Lord Kazzak was added to the game, Blizzard also added a list of Terms of Service rules that would make your head spin. None of these rules were hard-coded; they were all "squishy" rules added on top of the actual game rules. And now for your reading enjoyment, the Lord Kazzak Official Rules of Engagement (I did not make these up; they are real!):"
There are 6 outdoor raid bosses currently in the game, and so far the rules only pertain to one of them. There's a reason for this, due to how Kazzak works. The nitty-gritty:
-Kazzak has an AoE shadowbolt that does 2k to everyone within range of him, regardless of if you're on his aggro list or not.
-Every time Kazzak kills someone, he regains a quarter of his total health. This alone isn't a big issue except that...
-Kazzak "goes supreme", where he starts using his AoE shadowbolt every few seconds, making him essentially unkillable. This happens if more than 40 people try to attack him at once (anti-zerg ability) or you do not kill him within 3 minutes.
The reason the ToS rules exist is that an unflagged (PvE) or friendly faction player can get themselves killed or cause Kazzak to go supreme and there's nothing you can do about it with the tools provided in game. It's not the most ideal solution, but it's a bandaid until a fix gets added (ala banning rooftop camping until they gave the goblin bruisers guns).
Free-speech: you brought this issue up in an earlier article. Free speech is nice, but there's a reason why private entities and public ones are held to a different standard in regards to it (Wal-mart can kick you out for holding a Klan rally in there store, for example).
Yeah, I think the rules about language can occassionaly be a pain, but the bigger problem is assholes provoking people into saying a bad word and then calling the overworked GMs on them, who are too busy to bother looking over the chat logs. However, I would assume you're not allowed to start dropping racial slurs on your opponent in the middle of a fighting tournament, so I don't see how some restrictions are horribly problematic in regards to the general chat channels.
This applies to the "gay-friendly" guilds idea, for the same reasons you're not allowed to create a pro Christian/Muslim/Abortion/Republican guild: it's typically too much of an invitation to start shit for both sides.
eBay gold: it's mainly an issue because of the number of exploits gold farming companies use (teleport hacks et. al). Plus, as one lawyer wrote giving people property rights over virtual items is pretty much invitation for a shitstorm that offers no conceivable benefit.
So yeah.
At 11:14 AM, John Lynch said…
Check "Hard America, Soft America" out. It's Michael Barone's book on pretty much the same issues raised in your article.
What worries me is that given the choice, people tend to prefer risk- free cooperative games to competitive skill based games. I played Planetside a lot, and it is ruthless. No advancement is possible without literally killing other players for experience. Leveling up is pretty quick, and having a better character didn't matter as much as FPS skill. Most play was solo. How did this game do? Badly. WoW? Hugely succcessful.
At 11:54 AM, Tom Henderson said…
Interesting article. The whole TOS thing seemed like a digre4ssion though, not really germaine to your key point about lessons learned.
In any case, I'd like to make a few points.
First the definition of fun you quote is very interesting. It really resonates with me as a game designer. However you seem to be making a huge conceptual leap, i.e. that the learning involved is directly analogous to real-world learning. I see this as not at all a given. In other words people are wired to like the act of learning, and what your learning can be real world or not. Looking at what they learned for real life "lessons" is not the same thing at all and has little to do with how fun the activity is.
Of course its reasonable to assume that people do learn real life lessons from gaming, as they do from any activity, but these real life lessons are not whats fun about the game. Your keyt point is a good example of this the "learning in a safe environment" of Warcraft is learning the many skills, equipment, etc. NOT learning that "time > skill".
So my problem with your remaining argument is that all games can be analyzed to show similarly "dangerous" messages. Does not Mortal COmbat teach that all problems are solved with violence? That no one can be trusted, even your best friends will fight you to be top dog? That skills in one arbitrary area define a ranking of people? That Finishing downed opponents is the only way, no mercy?
Similarly, good "lessons" can be found in mosty games as well. Team work, general social interaction and economic principles are all lessons you can learn from WoW. Other lessons are organization, causational relationships, and risk reward analysis.
I believe it is impossible to know what lessons a game will teach any individual, besides what it teaches about playing the game itself (the fun part). Each person will be effected and changed by a gaming experience in ways that are shaped by that experience filtered by their unique perspecitve. In fact you are a case in point, you didn't learn that time > skill from WoW. In fact the experience has brought home to you the opposite.
At 1:09 PM, Brinstar said…
Chozo said: ...as one lawyer wrote giving people property rights over virtual items is pretty much invitation for a shitstorm that offers no conceivable benefit.
Couldn't one argue that shares in a company are also "virtual property" that one buys and sells on the stock market? The difference is that the law, the government, and the general populace have all agreed that shares have value, and that people can own them -- despite the fact that you cannot physically touch the shares that you own in a company. It's a virtual property of a kind.
One of the problems with this virtual gold buying and selling on eBay is that people disagree over the validity of this practice. Blizzard says it's not allowed, but people can very easily go to eBay or elsewhere to buy in-game gold. It's a fairly common practice, since there wouldn't be a market if people weren't buying it. However, I am sure that most players would never admit to buying gold with real-life money, since there's a stigma attached to it. Also, the market is not regulated, so you've got people exploiting the situation.
At 2:56 PM, Chozo said…
"Couldn't one argue that shares in a company are also "virtual property" that one buys and sells on the stock market? The difference is that the law, the government, and the general populace have all agreed that shares have value, and that people can own them -- despite the fact that you cannot physically touch the shares that you own in a company. It's a virtual property of a kind."
Couple problems with that argument.
1. The company sells the shares itself.
2. There are numerous legal hoops to jump through. You simply can't start selling or buying shares of Tom Dick and Harry Co.
If you give people ownership over their virtual items, you open up the door for lawsuits because you, say, changed the color of their house or nerfed the stats on their items. There's no practical benefit for a company to ever consider such an idea, because the designers are hamstrung by outside factors in trying to balance their game.
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