Here's an amusing post on gameriot by Vir that mentions me. The comments are entertaining too. It's about the balance in World of Warcraft arenas, and making the game into an e-sport.

For the record, I'm available but I don't think Blizzard will call. ;) For one, they might say that fighting game balance doesn't apply to their game, and that I don't know their game. Shrug. The same concepts seem to apply to Puzzle Fighter, Street Fighter, Kongai, Yomi card game, and the other projects I can't tell you about. Balance is balance and the same issues show over and over.

And second, I don't think my article two years ago won me any points there. Even though much of what I complained about has indeed been acknowledged and addressed, I don't think my tone went over well.

Anyway, thanks Vir.

--Sirlin

The fine folks at GameCyte did cut a second part of my interview after all. This one touches on the more abstract concepts of balancing games. Topics include symmetric vs. asymmetric games, hardcore vs casual balance, and depth vs. fairness.

Maybe I should have a weekly show or something?

--Sirlin

World of Warcraft has made so many positive steps since I wrote the single most read article ever on gamasutra.com (literally). Most of my concerns in that article have been addressed. Back then, the PvP's honor system was so grueling that it actually endangered players' health. These days, you can create a level 70 character with any gear you want in fair competitive tournament setting. Impressive. Back then, "raid or die" with 40 people was the overriding design ethos. Today, there are no more 40-person raids and even the 25-person raids can all be done in 10-man versions.

You can hear some information about this in this video (which incidentally has less than a third of the views of my interview on the same site, sorry for the uncalled-for cheap shot).

Anyway, I just couldn't let this video go. I don't get why World of Warcraft has taken so many steps towards being reasonable and yet can't take the last, logical few. The key point here is that 10-man raids will get worse rewards (one tier lower in WoW-speak) than the 25-man versions of the same dungeons. Kaplan (lead designer) explains that 25-man raids are much harder to coordinate, have more logistics to worry about, and are more work. No argument there, I think we all agree with that. But this is the *reason* that they need to have better rewards, he says. That sounds a bit backwards.

To put this another way, there are two versions of each raid dungeon: the 10-man version and the less fun one. If they had the same rewards, not enough players would play the less fun one. So...why even have the less fun one? Shouldn't players be encouraged to play the content that is the most enjoyable to them, rather than encouraged to play content that is more logistically difficult to coordinate? (10-man versions can be tuned to take just as long, of course.)

Kaplan has moments of clarity in this video where he explains that both sizes of raids should have easy dungeons and hard dungeons. The size of the raid is not a judgment call on your worth, it's simply about how many people you feel socially comfortable hanging out with. Either one can be hard or easy, depending on the specific dungeon design. Yep! (And either can have the same rewards? No, apparently.)

Then in the same video Kaplan mentions that they considered solutions(?) like having the final 25-man raid on Arthas *unlock* the 10-man version. (What??) Or maybe when you get to the end of the 10-man version, Arthas just isn't there. Perhaps he left a note behind: "Hey guys, this is Arthas. I only value players who play in large groups and I'm a little grumpy about whole no-more-40-man-raids thing. I won't even fight second class citizens such as yourselves."

I think Kaplan knows on an intellectual level that 25 is not better than 10. (He flat out said it, in fact). He might also know that 10 is not better than 5, that 5 is not better than 2, and that 2 is not better than 1. They are just all different. Each one of those sizes can have tasks and challenges of extreme difficulty. Each one can have endless time-sinks. And yet the 40-man values of WoW's past still echo today. "Yeah, yeah we'll *have* 10-man raids, but they can't have equal loot!"

One last thing I'd like to point out is the years-old argument that players who enjoy large raids would enjoy them regardless of the loot. For the majority of raiders, this is false. I know it's false, you know it's false, and Blizzard definitely knows it's false. The last place I'd look to find people motivated by intrinsic rewards is a 40-man World of Warcraft raid. (Dear both of you who really do enjoy big raids for the own sake, even with no rewards. You are not like the others.) The actual case is that the vast majority are motivated by gear-rewards to spend time in dungeons that they would otherwise not choose to play in. If I'm right about this, why not let the rewards be equal so that they can play 10-man raids and have more fun? And if I'm wrong about this, why not still make the rewards equal? In that case, 25-man versions will be full to the brim anyway because raiders love the intrinsic rewards of completing a logistically difficult task, after all.

To summarize, challenge should lead to rewards. (A separate gate of time-spent can also lead to rewards since this is an MMO. I'm not ruling that out.) Challenge can come 25-man or 10-man. If you accept all that, the final step is that it's true for 5 man...and 2 man...and 1 man. You can have just as much challenge (and require just as much time spent, if you like) in any of those sizes. Different players will have a sweet spot group-size that they prefer, and no size is really second-class. The value judgment shouldn't be on group size, but rather that we judge inclusive design as better than exclusive design.

If there were challenging 2-person dungeons that I could play with my girlfriend, I'd still be playing World of Warcraft today. I get the feeling that if I made it past a gauntlet of virtually impossible monsters in a 2-person World of Warcraft dungeon that the final boss would disappear and say, "Sorry, but the princess is in another castle."

--Sirlin

Listen to my interview about MMOs over at Revolution G. It's in two parts, so go here, then click on "Download Episode 4" and "Download Episode 5."

I'm actually pretty complimentary of Blizzard. Even if I don't like the philosophy behind their terms of service, they are still one of the very best game companies in the world. That said, I probably manage to say some things that you fiercely disagree with or that will make you say, "Yes!!! Finally someone said what I wanted to say!"

I cover group vs. solo, time vs. skill, and squishy rules from a terms of service versus hardcoded rules. I talk about what applicability "playing to win" has in an MMO. I cover the kinds of changes I'd like to see to the terms of service in future MMOs, and I even try to quote some academic papers.

Check it out and make sure to visit revolutiong.com, too. Those guys really want the genre to take a step past where it is now and they seem to like me, so that makes them ok in my book. ;)

--Sirlin

I just learned that the word "lesbian" is in Blizzard's profanity filter on the World of Warcraft forums (in-game as well?). The code of conduct furthermore states that bypassing the filter (such as typing "L esbian" or "lesb1an") will result in a temporary ban from the forums, depending on severity.

So, why would this word be profane? It is a proper term, not vulgar. Blizzard Community Manager Tseric had this response:

The same reason any word might end up on a filter. It tends to be used pergoratively.
Please stop nit-picking and trying to call me out. I'm sick of locking posts.
If you want personal attention, request dialog with a GM.

I'm not sure what he's referring to there exactly, but "tends to be used perogatively" is not a very good reason. I looked up the word 'lesbian' at dictionary.com and it said to see the usage note for the word 'gay':

Usage Note: The word gay is now standard in its use to refer to people whose orientation is to the same sex, in large part because it is the term that most gay people prefer in referring to themselves. Gay is distinguished from homosexual primarily by the emphasis it places on the cultural and social aspects of homosexuality as opposed to sexual practice. Many writers reserve gay for males, but the word is also used to refer to both sexes; when the intended meaning is not clear in the context, the phrase gay and lesbian may be used. Gay is often considered objectionable when used as a noun to refer to particular individuals, as in There were two gays on the panel; here phrasing such as Two members of the panel were gay should be used instead. But there is no objection to the use of the noun in the plural to refer collectively either to gay men or to gay men and lesbians, so long as it is clear whether men alone or both men and women are being discussed.

I do not think Blizzard is intentionally shafting or mistreating lesbians, but I do think they a) are giving that appearance with decisions like this and b) are unintentionally shafting them. Putting the correct name of a group on a "profanity" filter sends the message (intended or not) that that group is a marginal, "less than" group. I ask Blizzard to reconsider this issue.

Thanks,

--Sirlin

Here's a music video about playing Dota on Ventrilo.

(Translation, if you need it: Here's a music video about playing Blizzard's Warcraft 3: Defense of the Ancients, a very popular player-created mod to the base game Warcraft 3. It also mentions Ventrilo, a program that lets several people voice chat over the internet together, often used by gamers.)

Anyway, this song is by Basshunter, and it's currently #2 on Sweden's Top 40 music chart. The song is cool and all, but the fact that the song could exist at all is what excites me. Can you imagine that song being #2 in America? Most Americans are probably too dumb to even install Dota, much less enjoy a song about it. Sounds like Sweden rocks.

--Sirlin

You know, when I play Dota, I never seem to attract the roomful of hot women that these guys do. I must be doing something wrong. (Maybe girls don't like Bone Clinkz?)

This is NOT the story of those who made this video; it's the story of a mad-genius who watched this video and his plan.

Xzin, a World of Warcraft player, is contemplating graduating from "epic" to "ledendary." He already regularly pvp's by controlling 5 characters at once: one priest and four mages. I've seen one of his videos and I'm impressed. Note that he leveled them all up by controlling all five in instanced dungeons. Note that he has no tank, just mages and a priest. Xzin his his priest and his mages are Azin, Bzin, Czin, and Dzin. His guild: Army of Zin.

Zin is now planning to scale up his efforts to take down Ragnaros, the boss of Molten Core, all by himself. He'll need to buy 40 copies of World of Warcraft, by 40 monthly subscription fees (about $600/month), have enough computers to run 40 instances of the game, and use 40 monitors (most of them will be 8.4" monitors). He'll need a physical space that can accomodate all the equipment, and by his estimates, he'll need at least the equivalent of two T1 internet connections for bandwith, which you can't really get from residential dsl or cable. I'm guessing that the hardware and software costs will be more than $20,000.

This is also quite an interface challenge and micromanagement challenge. I think he plans to use one keyboard to controll all this and an assortment of (legal) macros. Just planning and executing a UI setup to accomodate this task is probably a full time job, in my opinion. Of course, he's already proven himself in controlling 5 characters at once in pvp and in instances, so perhaps it's just a matter of scaling up what he's already been doing for a year.

His gameplan premise is to have 35 of his 40 characters be mages, lol. He hopes that with high enough dps (that's damage per second for the jargon-impaired), he will be able to end the fight against Rag before the 120 second mark, when it gets a lot more hairy.

Xzin, to me, sounds like some kind of Batman character. I'm sure right now he's building his super computer setup deep in the batcave, illuminated by the glow of 40 monitors. He's wealthy enough that he can spend time and money on hobbies without being bound by the drudergy of the common man. His entrepreneurial spirit gives him the will to believe that "it can be done" and to actually stick with it until it happens. I don't know why such a totally ridiculous and silly thing should be so inspiring, but somehow, I think it is.

Incidentally, since it's proven extremely difficult to find anyone much of a clue who wants to pvp with me on ysera (horde), maybe I'll try the Xzin route myself on a smaller scale, lol.

Ok, for reference, here's the link to Xzin's post (those posts aren't saved very long though)

The text of his first post on the subject is below.

--Sirlin

Xzin said:

I posted this a little while ago and I wanted to get the take of the WoW community at large.For those of you who don’t like to take the time to read anything - I want to solo 40 characters at once. Meaning - I want to play an entire raid - by myself. This is not a statement about WoW - this is a challenge and I like challenges.On to the background:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q u o t e:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9024435764919244981

Rag has about 1.1 mil hit points, give or take a few hundred thousand. 35 mages, with buffs and decent gear and a 76 second kill = 14,473.68 dps. That means each mage is doing 413.53 dps, including resists, crits, etc. Not out of the realm of possibility with every major buff (Oxy head, ZG, etc).I wonder if I could solo rag with enough mages……..

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A bit of background. I solo 5 characters right now. At the same time. 4 level 60 Mages and 1 60 Priest on a PvP server. I have been doing this since release and I have been pretty successful with my setup over the last year or so. I pretty much destroy Alterac Valley fights but the whole time invested factor being the primary reason people advance in PvP is a very poor game mechanic but that is aside the point right now. Anyway -

I had a thought. I looked around and seeing that I already have much of the hardware, I thought to myself - what if I took it a step further and bought 35 more accounts and connected the computers needed to run 35 more accounts and I leveled up 35 more accounts to 60? A bit of a tall order but nothing outlandish. I leveled up at the same time, soloing instances all the way to 60. I can solo DM North (full tribute) as well as UBRS, most of LBRS, etc….. without any tanks - just mages and a priest. So I know this can be done, atleast leveling up 5 at a time, seven more times to get 40 level 60s.

This begs the question -

Could I actually “solo” 40 players at once? Would I want to? When I get some time off, I will most likely do so. Aside from details like the $600 per month fee and the hardware and networking requirements needed to perform said feat - I wanted to hear from the community about what you thought about this.

Note: I do not bot, I will of course NOT be using any third party programs, I have no intentions of selling or farming (nor would I make any money doing that anyway - and trust me, my time is worth far more than that). I doubt I would even PvP with this setup - it would be basically me soloing raid instances…. mostly just because it is a pretty unique challenge that I believe I can accomplish. Very few people multibox on a level that I do already, let alone take things to this level. So what about it?

What do you as a community think? Do you think I will meet great success or fail miserably? Any particular problems that I am not thinking about? Vael, Domo might be a tough fight, etc. Brainstorm with me - positive or negative I am interested in hearing what you have to say.

Xzin, Azin, Bzin, Czin, Dzin

Pasted below is an interesting e-mail exchange between a World of Warcraft player and a Blizzard employee. The employee says great stuff because it appears he just wrote the response himself, rather than anything passing through the PR department that removes all content from its communications. (Anyone remember that slashdot 10 questions to Blizzard fiasco?) Anyway, his response is terrific.

The part I'm focusing on is his math that estimates there would be tens of millions of character transfers requested immediately if they allowed anyone to transfer characters from any server to any server. I also know that Blizzard circulated a survey a while ago that asked people if they would be willing to pay $40 for a character transfer. I know that sounds expensive, but people might be willing to pay that so they can actually play with their friends. (Side note: I can play with my friends in Guild Wars. Yes that game has too much instancing, but the ability to switch "servers" instantly is riduclously good.)

Ok, so $40 multiplied by, tens of millions--say 25 million--character transfer requests (remember,  people will want to transfer multiple characters) totals $1 billion. Holy cow. Even if the numbers are way off and only a 10th of that is true, that would still be $100 million...for character transfers! Business-wise, this is truly...epic!

wtb solo instances with epic gear so I can compete in bg's. pst.

--Sirlin
p.s.: Why did Silithus claim to have solo content, but then have raid bosses in the quest chain? Why did 1.10 claim to have 3 solo epics with the tier 0.5 armor, but actually requires you to have the tier 0 armor first, which can only be gotten from lots and lots of 5 man content? Just call it 5-man epics if that's what it is.

Ok, anyway, here's the long paste of the two e-mails I mentioned:

find it amazing that a company such as yours cannot maintain a proper playing environment. I think that you owe every player that plays on the Detheroc realm an apology because not only is it your job to maintain the servers but also it is your job to provide a smooth playing experience free of server crashes and lag. This is not the first time that this has happened, and I don't know how many more times it will happen, but you people have a duty to fix this problem because we pay you.

-A very upset customer

And here is the Blizz response.

Hello,

I will do my best to address what I can and hopefully give you some perspective as to what we are trying.

I will address this from the stand point of server performance and character transfers. Since the realms are crowded, people are clamoring for a transfer off their server right away. There is a general misconception about how the character transfers work. While you may think this is a simple drag and drop procedure like you would do a Windows file, this is not even remotely close to the case. I cannot go into details why as that is proprietary information but I can tell you this: While we do offer realm to realm transfers occasionally, transfer from Server A to server B is a much less complicated of a process than designing and coding a system to transfer from Server A to *any* server A through Z. Multiply that by the fact that Servers A to Z will be able to transfer to Servers A to Z and there are a lot more variables involved. Multiply this by the amount of users we have, most of whom have stated they have a character they would like to transfer. Add to that the number of users that have more than one character that they want to transfer. Even at a low estimate, the number of individual requests that our system will have to handle is in the tens of millions.

Yes...tens of millions of characters trying to transfer almost simultaneously. That is mind boggling. This is an extremely high number of transaction to track simultaneously and there are very few systems in the world that can handle something like that. The short version: This is indeed a complicated, time consuming, extensive process and is not in any way shape or form even remotely close the scale of the limited transfers we are currently offering. It is the difference between busing 30 people from Philadelphia to Boston...and evacuating New York City and dispersing them to every other major city in the United States.

To address server stability, at any given moment the login server is perpetually being pinged by more than a 1/4 of a million people trying to log in during peak hours. It doesn't matter if you are NASA or Microsoft. With the sheer amount of people trying to log in at any given moment no system in the world can handle that kind of concurrency without buckling a little under the load.

But do not think we are just sitting idly by bathing in your $100 bills. This is farthest from the truth. I do appreciate you taking the time to email your feedback. I play on the same servers you do so I can understand the frustration you feel and can most assuredly empathize. I play on one of the more frequently down and problematic servers that seems to mirror the worst with its availability and population issues.

But please let me put this into perspective: the queues. This game is the most popular game in the world. Not the biggest MMO, not the biggest RPG, but the biggest game. Now while all that sounds fun and fancy, managing 6 million concurrent players worldwide is a logistical nightmare. That is approximately 1/6th of the population of California; and only slightly higher than the population of Los Angeles County. Remember cities have an entire staff of council members in each city to handle and delegate tasks to improve the flow and productivity of the city. City populations do not grow from zero to 6 million overnight. We did.

With any kind of large growth there are bound to be problems. Did we think we were going to do that? Not in our wildest dreams. So, what do we do when everyone wants to play? If the realm is maxed out you implement a queue. If you've ever been to Disneyland or any other popular theme park, what happens when the latest and greatest attraction opens up? People flock to it in record numbers. Let's take the Indiana Jones ride for example at Disneyland. It opened up 1995~1996. First day it opened it had a queue of 6 hours.

Let's say we hypothetically removed the queue just so everyone who wants to play on your particular server can access it. It's analogous to allowing every single person on the ride on at the same time. Can the ride handle it? In no way shape or form. Can you demand the designers of the roller coaster to rebuild it so it CAN take that many riders? Not even in the slightest. Also, while sure there are plenty of demands for refunds at that particular theme park most refunds will be turned away.

Is your anger justified? That is entirely up to you. I play the game on the same realms you play on and experience the same frustrations. I cannot compare my feelings to yours as you experience it differently. We've received many calls and emails from players telling us how much they're enjoying World of Warcraft and that they would just like to have a more consistent connection experience. In order to achieve this, we will continue our analysis, and we'll continue to take further measures as needed, such as login queues, patching, and general maintenance.

I understand you are angry/frustrated/disappointed/all of the above. If you are looking for specific on what we plan on doing about the problems, you only need to look no further than the General Forums: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=7352436&p=1&tmp=1#post7352436. This post discusses the hardware updates we are implementing. Also, as further evidence of upgrades we've opened up 8 new realms in the last two weeks as well as opened up an unprecendeted number of transfers to low population servers.

This gives you the scope of the task and hopefully it'll help you understand it is not as simple as just "fixing the servers now". So the end result is and will remain....we are sorry, and we are working on it. We have the most up to date technology in this industry, but the sheer numbers of players that came in droves (tens of thousdands and all at once might I add) have challenged us and are now allowing us to grow.

In conclusion, the questions you are asking are literally outside the realm of Technical Support. We have been growing at a prodigial rate to accomodate the influx of customers and we're still growing. If you've played Everquest or Ultima Online or any other MMO, you'll have witnessed every single one of these companies experienced even greater problems than what WoW is experiencing. There were even times of week long outages with no word from their community at all.

I am sorry I cannot adequately answer all of the questions you have asked. As much as I would like to address them, I have tried answering your questions as best I can. And for that I am sorry. We understand that issues like these affect your experience greatly. Technical support does not have the ability to affect any type of compensation or time extensions for the difficulties you have been having.

Even though I said World of Warcraft teaches the wrong things, that certainly doesn't mean it can't teach good things too, or that this sentence isn't full of double negatives. I don't disagree with anything in this article from news.com.
The author has good points that coordination in World of Warcraft is a "real-time, always on collaborative environment." Between user-created UI enhancements and multiple simultaneous chat channels, it lets players act very efficiently together, even more efficiently than they do at work, which calls into question why we aren't using similar ideas in business. The chat channel configuration and UI tools used in raids are fairly applicable to managing large teams in business as well.

It's also an interesting note that it probably takes a better leader to lead a Warcraft guild than to lead the same number of people in an actual company. If you're bad leader at work, people have a huge barrier to exit and difficulty getting rid of you. If you're a bad guild leader, then people can leave in 2 seconds and set up a new guild without you. Upshot: you actually have to listen to people and not be a jackass.

My points about group > solo (why not reward both?), time > skill (why not reward both?), exclusivity of guilds (why not make it easy to join multiple comminities?), and the TOS (why not create a reasonable set of rights for players instead of a fascist state?) still stand. But it's good to look at the other side too, and see the good lessons that are there.

--Sirlin

I think Blizzard locked and later deleted all the threads on the worldofwarcraft.com forums that had to do with my article. I see censorhip is their solution (not censorship of me, but of all the players who wanted to talk about the topics I raised). Is it their right to delete these threads? Of course it is. It seems like a pretty juvenile thing to do though. Either the ideas have merit and should be discussed or they don't and should be attacked by the other players. Either way, censorship is a pretty unenlightened way of solving a problem.

Edit: There does seem to be one thread left here.
For some reason, it took me over and hour to find it. Weird.

--Sirlin

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

http://www.innewsweekly.com/innews/?class_code=Ga&article_code=1172

It's hard to even play World of Warcraft without wading through all the chat about how this or that tactic is "gay," and yet Blizzard did not allow a guild to advertise that it's a friendly safe-haven for gay and lesbian players. The reason Blizzard gave is that such a guild could cause those members to be harassed, and that other players would not like that the guild is discriminating based on sexual orientation.

This is exactly the kind of thing that is completely embarassing about Blizzard policies and a perfect illustration of how bad our virtual worlds are right now.

Even though Blizzard has a history of trying to babysit every possible player behavior, I didn't think they'd attept to regulate player-run guilds. Maybe it's ok if a guild has only Christian players in it, as long as they don't advertise? Maybe the Gay and Lesbian guild could have "stayed in the closet" and been ok?

The irony is that decisions like these are meant to make the game a "happier, safer place," and yet they will eventually drive away reasonable people looking for a reasonable environment in which to interact. Blizzard already lost the founders of that guild as customers, and I guess they lost me too.

--Sirlin

I don't know why I play World of Warcraf (it's such a silly, backwards game) but apparently I do play it. Looks like server transfers will be available soon. For the last two months, I've gone back to Kilrogg (horde, pve) server, where I play battlegrounds 99% of the time. I'm pvp rank 8 now, as if that meant anything at all.

I'm skeptical about the existing guilds there, and it would be nice if people like you would join up so we could smash some faces. Mostly pvp, but we could fight some monsters, too, sure. If you are looking for a guild with lots of rules and a raiding schedule that affects your real-life schedule, then please don't respond.

Here's the requirements:
1) Do not advocate "just hold these 3" in Arathi Basin. This is the main reason my guild would exist in the first place: so I never have to hear that strategy advocated again. If you think you might ever say that line, then please stay away and do not talk to me.
2) Don't be a retard. Normally this would be the #1 requirement, but I guess a retard would be better than someone who advocates counter-productive strategies.
3) Speak normal English. Type out all the words and everything. Don't call things "gay" and don't be racist.
4) Don't be concerned with trivial things like your guild rank.
5) Don't be concerned with obeying or enforcing Blizzard's Terms of Service. I don't care what it says, and I'm just waiting for the courts to prove that they don't either. I don't care if you buy gold, use terrain exploits, use bugs to your advantage, or trade wins with the alliance. You shouldn't care if other people do those things either. Gold buying will be decided by the courts, not by Blizzard. Terrain glitches and bug exploits are what any competitive gamer worth his salt would use if they are available. Trading wins with the alliance is what the current honor system forces you to do. Blame Blizzard for the poorly designed system, not the players for doing what the system forces them to do to be Rank 14. FYI, no I haven't done any of those things myself.
6) Oh, and don't be of the mind "world pvp > battlegrounds."

So if anyone wants to get a decent game of AB going, maybe with a few instance runs on the side, then say so here, and maybe we can join up on Kilrogg or something, and put a guild together.

--Sirlin

All I really play these days are the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. As hoped, they do have some of the basic properties a competitive game needs to even be a competitive game: there is a beginning, middle, and end to a match; there are clear rules about who won and who lost the match, and there are roughly equal numbers of players on each side.

That's a good start. There are also elements to the battlegrounds that make them total trash as a competitive game. The thing I can't figure out is...why do the elements that I hate (and that ruin the game as a "real competitive game(TM)" end up making me play way more than I otherwise would? Also, if I could create a similar game any way I wanted, what would I change?

First, let's look at these "trash elements" as far as competitive games go.
1) You can fight computer-controller monsters and you get loot that helps you win in pvp. Why?
2) While fighting computer controlled monsters, your ability to organize with 40 other people matters more than your individual skill. Why? (This is just a sub-problem of the first problem.)
3) If you play A LOT of games, you gain enough "faction reputation to buy new gear that helps you win. Note that even if you lose, you still gain the faction rep, just slower.
4) There is a pvp ladder system. If you are ranked very, very high in this system, you get better loot that helps you win. This ladder system is hopelessly brokenly designed FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF FAIRNESS. Note that this is an MMO and it's not about fair pvp.

So why do I play these battlegrounds constantly? The answer is 3 things:
1) It's fun.
2) I can get faction reputation to get better gear.
3) Maybe I can get a high pvp rank if I put insane time into it.

Why am I so baited by 2) and 3)? Can you imagine Street Fighter if you could just "play a long time" and get a better Dragon Punch? Lol, it's craziness. And yet it owns me.

I could write a whole article on the craziness of the pvp rankings, but mabye I'll save that for next time. Anyway, if I could create a similar game, what would I do differently? Just eliminate 2) and 3) so that you can never gain items to make you better? That's the first obvious answer, but unfortunately those rewards are so damn strong, that it gets a lot of people to play. What if the rewards did not affect gameplay? Like if they were cool looking clothes your character could wear, and they are hard to get, but they don't give a gameplay advantage. I'm guessing that only a very small percentage of players would be baited into caring about that.

My answer really should be "Counter-strike doesn't give any item-advantages before the match even starts, and that's how it should be." But these rpg forces are SOOO strong, that as a game designer, I can't just totally ignore them.

Thoughts?
--Sirlin

Buying gold in MMOs such as World of Warcraft has been a hot topic for years. It's all over the forums on www.worldofwarcraft.com right now. One side thinks "I've worked so hard to earn my gold, why should someone with real-life money get to buy it?" The other side thinks, "I have a job and can't play 15 hours per day. Why should kiddies with more free time get to mindlessly grind gold? They have more time, but it's worth it to me to spend $1 to get over 10 gold, so I do." Neither side can seem to understand the other.

I'm not sure why one side sees grinding gold as some amazing accomplishment that they earned. Farming gold is just as retarded as buying it on ebay, really. A lot of these complaints are coming from the angle that buying gold makes the playfield uneven in the competitive game of World of Warcraft. Newsflash: World of Warcraft is not a real competitive game. I think I've covered that one. There is no beginning, middle and end to a game (except in CTF matches), and people don't come to the table with the same resources the way they do in chess or Street Fighter or tennis.

This is the part where some of you write me mail about how people don't come to the table with the same resources in those games either because some people bring skill and others don't. Or maybe you'll say some people have more time to practice tennis so they get to bring more skill. Surely you know how bankrupt those comments are. The whole point of competitive games is that skill is the one uneven thing you are allowed to bring into and otherwise even match. Some people need lots of time to develop skill, and others don't. But no one buys skill (directly).

Also don't write me about how tennis gear or Magic cards cost money, so people bring different things to the table based on money in those games. No they don't. If you are a real Magic tournament player, you can get any card you want by trading or buying. A certain amount of cash or connections is needed to even play for real. Similarly, tournament tennis matches don't happen between people with $9 gear and people with $9,000 gear. Tournament tennis players have access to reasonably similar amount of gear and get ot compete based on a combination of skill, strategy and stamina.

MMOs are inherently uneven playfields. Unemployed kiddies grinding for gold vs. wealthy professionals buying it only highlights this issue; it doesn't create it. I guess I'm saying you can't really complain about people bringing different amounts of resources into a game that's entirely based on uneven playfields in the first place.

You know who the real loser is? Blizzard. Why aren't they finding a way to make money off this? Sony is. They have new servers for EverQuest that are flat out labeled as 'gold buying' servers. You know going in that you can trade real money for in-game money, and so can everyone else. If you don't like it, go on another server (where it happens anyway, btw), but at least Sony gets to make some money off it.

If you're still upset over this issue, maybe take up a real competitive game such as chess, Street Fighter, counter-strike, Magic: The Gathering, or...I don't know...Scrabble. No one will ever trade US dollars for extra letter tiles against you.

--Sirlin

And finally, the game launches for real. I've been playing it for a year now, so it's been a long time coming. If you'd like to join my guild (you must be a non-idiot), then come on over to the Kilrogg server (pve horde west coast) and join the White Rhombus guild. Either e-mail me or send in-game mail to UnholySirlin. See ya.

--Sirlin

Level 0 Undead Warlock

Either e-mail me or find me on Beta server 10 (horde) to join my guild (I'll probably be logged in as VoidSirlin or StompSirlin). It can be our last dry run before the game is officially released in a couple weeks. Please be not an idiot and/or really good. Thanks!

--Sirlin

I just had the most ridiculous "discussion" ever in general chat in World of Wacraft. I was killed 4 times in a row in Hillsbrad Fields by several players 20 to 30 levels above me (I was a level 23). Is there anything wrong with those players killing me on a whim? No, certainly not. It's the PvP server and players will do whatever they can do. But it propted me to ask this question in general chat: "I've been killed several times in a row by high level players where I had no chance because of the level difference. What is the point of the PvP server, again?"

Several people started saying nasty things to me, so I clarified that I was not criticizing the server, nor did I want to leave. I am actually really asking what the point is. Surely it's not the constant high vs. low level fights because no skill is involved and the outcome is determined. I postulated that perhaps once you reach the cap, there is lots of meaningful pvp (at level 60 vs. level 60). I expected answers such as "yes that's true, and also there are these other good things..."

But no. I think one person attempted an answer, but only came up with a single sentence saying that it increases the danger of the area, and therefore the challenge and the fun. That's a start, but 8 other people answered questions I didn't ask at all, that they assume I was asking.

"Do you think level 60s on the other side should hold your hand and give you candy?" one person said. "Uh no, that is not what I asked. Of course they should do what they do, the question is what is the point of the pvp server? I'm not saying there is no point, I want to enjoy it."

Then people said it was silly to criticize a system that isn't done yet. "I never criticized anything, I'm actually honestly asking what the point is."

"It sounds like you are criticizing with such sarcastic comments."

"I have said nothing at all sarcrastic, or with hidden meaning. It is a real question."

Then someone trash talked me for being "just a lowbie" because I'm only level 23. I guess they didn't take into account my 17 other characters (not kidding) over the last 11 months.

It was all really quite amazing. These players were all so ridiculously defensive, that they took my question as a disguised attack, even though it was actually a real question. I was hoping to use their insights to defend the seemingly pointless state of the pvp server...but even the pvp players themselves could hardly offer one shred of explanation to the sad state of affairs.

Before you go writing me letters about this, you should realize that I am Mr. Competition, and that there's a 99% chance that I'm more interested in player vs. player conflict and that I'm a better player than every single one of those fools who just insulted me. But...the kind of competition I've seen so far has been totally uninteresting.

I think a good answer on their part might have been, "Level 60 vs. 60 pvp is meaningful. Other equal level pvp is meaningful, and you'll be more likely to find it another zone, such as Ashenvale (someone did say this, though not in such a friendly way). High vs. low pvp where one side has a 0% chance of winning is not meaningful, and will be greatly reduced by the upcoming honor system that discourages such things."

A strange thing has occurred to me, though. I actually think there will be more meaningful pvp on the NON-pvp server than the pvp server! To lay the groundwork for this seemingly crazy arguement, let's first look at the things that will be the same on pvp and non-pvp.

1) Both systems allow consentual duels between people in your faction (yeah, yeah I know that's not "real" pvp to most. I'm just listing the things that are the same.)
2) In both systems, the starting areas (where you are for about level 1 to 20) do not allow you to be attacked unless you voluntarily do something to turn your pvp flag on.
3) Both systems will feature "battlegrounds," areas marked as pvp only that will feature big battles between horde and alliance. You can earn "honor points" by participating in this kind of pvp. The better your faction (horde or alliance) does, the more honor points go to your side, and in turn, to you.
4) In both systems, you can attack all enemy NPC's including quest givers, merchants, and travel-enabling NPC's. After doing this, your pvp flag is on and you can be attacked by anyone on the other side. (On the pvp server, you could be attacked regardless.)

So what's different?

1) On the non-pvp server, after you go to an enemy town and attack some npc's, you won't be able to attack random people checking their in-game mail or sitting around afk. You will only be able to fight real combatants...people who have decided to defend the town.

2) On the pvp server, you can attack and constantly be attacked, by people of such radically different level that you have no chance.

3) On the pvp server, you can attack and constantly be attacked by people who happen to be a close enough level to you, that a meaningful fight might occur.

People interested in 1) and 2) have cloaked themselves in a false veil of "competition." They are not seeking actual competition, but instead mindless fun. Mindless fun is fine, but don't pretend you are doing anything remotely interesting or "skillful." Now, 3) actually is interesting. That's what it's really all about. But if you take all the pvp interactions that occur on a given day on the pvp server and the non-pvp server, the percentage of interactions that falls into category 3 (interesting pvp between similar level enemies) must be embarassingly low. The percentage on the non-pvp server I would expect to be much higher, because people are consensually entering combat, and will presumably tend to do that when there is a remote chance that an interesting battle might happen. They would tend not to do it when the battle is so lopsided, that even entering into it is a farce, and waste of time.

There is definitely hope that the honor system will save the day on the pvp server. Even then, though, I have to believe that more interesting pvp would happen in a more consensual system, just by the nature of it. Or at the *very* least, a much better ratio of "real pvp" to "pointless, predetermined" pvp would happen under the more consensual system. I'll reserve judgment until the honor system is unveiled, but here is my current plan:

I will play on the non-pvp server (pve, aka the standard ruleset). I will engage in pvp at times when it's interesting, which includes raids on enemy towns and participation in battlegrounds. And I will start a guild to do this. Hopefully the people in the guild will be at least one of the following: a) civil and interested in game design, perhaps even game designers themselves, and b) are incredibly, ruthlessly good at games. Open Beta starts very soon. So who's with me?

--Sirlin