World of Warcraft Also Teaches Good Things
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
March 17th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
I recently wrote an article discussing the similarities between project management and leading raids in WOW. Non-gamers typically don’t understand the complexity and teamwork games, MMOs in particular, involve. In the article I ask project managers to imagine they must lead a team with the following characteristics:
-The team consist of 40 people
-Members come from six different continents
-Members have varying degrees of proficiency at English
-Ages range from 14-45
-Each member has a different view of the world, different motivations for being on the team and, at times, conflicting goals.
-The task must be completed asynchronously using text chat and voice communication software via the internet.
The resounding sentiment among project managers is that a job like that would be very difficult to complete and if given the choice they would turn the job down. As gamers we complete tasks like that all the time and we do it for fun.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
This article, about the positives of WoW as a model for work environments, is a bit of a far stretch, I feel. I can’t think that abstractly on the issue without running into very real (unavoidable) differences between the virtual world and our real world.
It’s a nice thought though, but to see the same level of motivation behind the actions of employees… I just can’t understand how you would reward and motivate to the same degree.
We work for money to live in most cases (some actually get enough to have fun); I don’t understand how a virtual world with little consequences can relate to our own world where you only get one life and arguably nothing is really geared for your enjoyment.
Someone shed some light on this for me.
March 18th, 2006 at 6:23 am
You only get one life to play that MMO in too. This is why the good lessons and bad lessons of your activities are good to take note of.
March 21st, 2006 at 6:12 am
I posted this in the last forum regarding WOW game play, but I caught it at the end of the thread so I though it would get more consideration early on here…
I have been reading this article and the responses to it here as well as what is left of them on the blizzard website and have found the debate interesting in that it points out many valid points from both sides, as well as missing some in the general context of the development of role playing games over the last 20 years.
I have been playing role-playing games for almost that length of time, and have gone from the book based genre all the way to WOW most recently. I started in original D&D, then AD&D as well as several other book based game systems along the way (anyone remember the RPG made for the Animation Wizards, just to recall the obscure). When video games became developed enough to have an rpg genre I got quite attached to the concept of questing and storylines. I prefer the personal engagement and the feeling of achievement associated with such games. One of my favorite games as a youth was Shining in the Darkness series on Sega Genesis. This cemented my addiction to games that take a long time to beat. (I wiped through Tekken 3 at all levels of difficulty in 2 days on the other hand). Then of course there was the Final Fantasy series and numerous others.
I enjoyed these games but being a skilled player I found the game play on many (such as FF) to be repetitive and longed for true role-playing that I experience in my youth with my friends in a basement using our imaginations rather then our fingers. I love the uncertainty and the interaction required. That is when I took a look at online play to see if anything was going on. This was in 96 or so long before many of the games discussed existed or were possible. While I did not find any games I did find Irc chat programs and a group of people who played Vampire the Masquerade in a text only environment. I played the same character for one and a half years in a mix of 40 players who had a dedication to character and story. I worked my character up through the ranks using both combat achievements as well as political and social play. The entire experience was mirror of reality, your character being an extension of yourself and a reflection of your personality. Eventually I fell out of this experience because as we all know permanence is an elusive thing.
Much later I got involved in playing strategy games including Warcraft as well as Age of Empires. I enjoyed the story line concepts of these games, and having been a fair chess player, the strategy was intoxicating. Only after defeating the story modes of these games would I move to online or person to person play. Honestly I enjoyed Age of Mythology because of the strong Story, as well as the difficulty. Most recently before WOW, I was playing Neverwinter Nights. Again I enjoyed playing the story and did not even multiplayer for 3 months after purchase. I enjoyed the customization aspect and the capability to create your own worlds online, as well as the fact that you could eliminated the need for NPC’s with a few good dedicated players.
Now we finally get to World of Warcraft and the relevance of this personal history to the original article. The first thing that must be accounted for is that WOW is an RPG adaptation of a STRATEGY game. Thus cooperation is necessary for success. In a strategy game, one unit does not win the battle, the well-built army does. WOW was built with this as its original framework, with the RPG concept of personal character development overlaid onto this system. The concept of guilds is an adaptation of earlier quest games (such as Everquest) and is a system that is developed to encourage the cooperation f players. This also creates intrafactional divisions that are actually a fair reflection of human society. Not everyone on one side is on the same side. Ironically I am typically a solo player, or if I do group, it is usually with a few players I have developed a bond with, whether it be playing style or personal. I routinely take on 5 man dungeons with 2 or 3 people and have more success then with a larger group. This is due to the amount of skill at strategy that the other players and I have. So I would find it sufficient to say that the larger groups make things easier for less skilled players, while those players who chose to challenge themselves attempt harder goals with fewer people gain more experience, and in my case, have more fun.
Skill is a relative term and can be applied differently depending on the context. In the WOW context it is how well you learn your class and how well you cooperate with other classes. I can certainly say that players at the same level of the same class and similar stats play the game very differently and with varied results. Though I do not wholly dispute the fact that the game does reward Grinding over skill, I do find that well skilled players spend a whole lot less time grinding away. It takes skill to organize your quest, find the best path to get all of them completed, and to calculate what is the best way to take so you can get a little grinding at your profession done along the way, or just find a good spot to fish along the way.
Usually players of similar skill cull out those they wish not to play with and stick to those that enforce their playing style, forming guilds and loose agreements to perpetuate their inclinations. Of course there are varying levels of maturity and motivation, so you inevitably get players who are Hack N Slashers, Grinders, Questers, etc. Some rely on guilds to achieve their goals, while some are driven by the motivation of achieving it on your own with the help of a few good friends. I have had it asked of me why I have such a high level character without a guild and how rare it is to see someone not in a guild and my response is simply that I don feel like it. Of course I have had people try to convince me how much better it is and so on, but I simply find that assuming an individual role is more satisfying to me. It is not a better way to play the game; it is simply what I prefer. I have had both positive and negative experiences with both guilds and individuals and I react accordingly to those groups or individuals. One of the merits of the game is that it is vast enough to allow you get away from these circumstances if you so chose to.
As to the faults of the Honor system I am inclined to agree, they do reward time invested and are geared to reward people with a strong competitive urge. I simply ignore the Honor system and base my sense of accomplishment on my character development. A lot of the personal achievement and satisfaction of the game is in intangibles not measured by stats or rank. I am sure some of us remember the look on a friends face when we just finished an exhausting round of Goldeneye more then we remember how many more kills we had on him that day. In WOW I think I remember whom I beat the dungeon with, more so then how I did it. This is the value I find in roleplaying games.
As for the concept of storyline, WOW is attempting a vast task. You are trying to manage an incredible population of individual players while maintaining a static and coherent storyline. While the idea of different server ratings (I find it disappointing that RPG servers are the least populated) is an attempt to cater to individual tastes, the in game storyline seem a bit static. I think this is the game’s major weakness. The divisions used to maintain the horde and alliance sides, such as no communication between factions, as well as the focus simply on raids and attacks that have no lasting affects on your character save for reputation conflicts leave little room or relevance for true role assumption in the game. It seems the concept of role playing is secondary to the concept of strategy and structured goal achievement. If you complete a quest to rid a region of a certain invasion, t is still there the next day and so on. There is no real consequence to your action, in the grand scheme of things, save that which the developers script into the NPC threads.
On the argument of the terms of service and the restrictions applied to the game by the company you have to remember how many people are involved in playing the game and some measure of restriction is necessary. There was nothing more aggravating then having someone camp out your corpse in Everguest and you losing all your gear. While some rules seem absurd and restrictive to some players, then are advantageous for lesser players, especially when you have to consider that just because you have an honor system it does not mean that players play with honor. Unfortunately this is just a case of mob rules (no pun intended) and having to at times take care of the lowest common denominator. Of course no laws are perfect and will always alienate some segment of the population. For me simply being a player and not a developer, I cannot interject on the argument of how Blizzard manages its investment except in the quip you get what you pay for.
In conclusion I would like to address the one thing that no one has seems to discuss or consider even though it the final subject of the original article and that is “what’s next?”
While WOW has made many vast steps in the development of MORPGs it could definitely stand for some improvement, especially in the personal, intangible, character development aspect of the game. Blizzard has achieved a vast and seamless world for its players full of many wonders and despite its problems is a great achievement. It is inevitable that the system of play will develop and there should be a definite move to develop a more involved combat system that focus more on miner skill, i.e. instead of blocking and attacking being instance scripted actions the strikes should be chosen and the dodge made through controlled action, not simple the cast of a die. Jade empire is a good example of a game that attempts to marry the concept of a roleplaying game and a fighting game, focusing both on skill and personal development.
The area it most needs to open up in is the character development and the inclusion of a fluid storyline that is directly influenced by the players and their actions. To achieve this it would be required that major NPCs be replaced by role actors. A staff of storytellers should be hired whose role it is to influence the general course of history, while leaving the details to the players. Thus experience based development would have to be coupled with significant social and interpersonal development that is the discretion of the players. Alliances should be made and broken. World should be found and forgotten. Friends and enemies should be made and forgiven. .
The greatest achievement of a player should not be to reach a certain level, but to have his character past into the memories of other players because of his personal choices and actions. I would introduce this as the concept of Personal Myth Development which so central to the old style book based roleplaying games. This would also introduce the often misunderstood concept of Final Character Death. There would have to be a final achievement, after all the levels and experience and quests, which would let you retire your character with the honor which he or she deserves. Whether is it the final sacrifice for the common good or to save a loved one, a final descent into madness or if circumstances dictate the unfortunate or foolish death, or even the final ascent from man to hero to myth to god, the story must continue beyond the scope one single individual to create a true role playing experience based both on skill and strategy, as well as personal and group development. Such a system would allow the development of myriad storylines under the watch of a dedicated staff of professionals that is probably hard to even conceive at this point, but it is not unattainable. To go into the fine points of such a system is not appropriate in this setting but I am sure we have all had ideas and dreams of such a thing. If Blizzard is not the company to do this then it is simply the prerogative of someone else to do it…
March 21st, 2006 at 11:13 am
Othinthal, I read your whole post and was unable to find any arguments supporting or disagreeing with this thread’s topic of WoW as a positive “lesson for business leadership”. I did enjoy reading your post, but how do you feel WoW relates to the business world? I’m curious about other people’s opinions in this matter because, personally, I just don’t see any direct correlation.
How does WoW teach better leadership skills that are transferable to the business world?
One might as well say that playing Soul Calibur II teaches you how to fight in real life with many forms of weaponry or that playing Forza Motorsport makes you a better racecar driver. Personally, I don’t think either of those assumptions hold any water… and neither does WoW as a tutor for corporate leadership.
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:07 am
Cody K. well, point taken, I see how I omitted the true essence of the thread. So here is how I would see its relationship to the business world.
1. Personal Development -
In WOW you have to develop your character in a variety of ways, whether it be in how you manage your talents, which professions you choose, or even down to which kind of character you wish to be. In my own personal experience I have found Role Playing games in general have a strong influence on how we interact within the real world. For the most part peoples’ characters behave as a mirror of themselves, whether it is as they are, or as a projection of whom they would like to be. Role playing games allow us to develop ourselves in a safe environment and exploring different ways of approaching a situation, all with the input of a group of peers involved in the same situation giving us feedback on our performance. Most corporate settings I have been in have used some form of loose role playing in order to develop personal skills as well as confidence.
If you look at the way you develop your character it can be a metaphor for how you would approach the any role in a real life setting. First we all decide what we want to be and which course of life we would like to engage in. This can be consider a class choice, so just like in WOW you choose to be a warrior, a hunter, or a priest, in real life you might choose to be a athlete, a wildlife specialist, or…well a priest.
Each of these choices in the game provides you with certain skill sets you must then develop in order to be successful in your class. These “talents” and “professions” are then developed in order for you to perform then at a level of greater efficiency. This then involves you in a problem solving thread of how to improve your skills until you can achieve the objective. You develop a goal in the game, which is your objective, and the harder your goal is the more time and energy you will have to invest into achieving your goal. As you develop certain talents and professions, you become more proficient and confident in using them, thus you come closer to achieving your goal. Depending how you balance your certain talents determines how fast and which way you develop your objective.
Here is a comparison:
WOW - you choose to be a hunter and then you have to decide a) which kind of hunter you want to be, and b) which profession will most assist you in achieving that goal. If you choose to be a marksman for instance, then you may choose engineering to make better weapons and scope to improve your range attack, while if you choose to be a survivalist you might take enchanting to improve your abilities, or you may just choose to be well rounded and take leatherworking to improve all your statistics for diversity. Whichever choice you make you sacrifice some skills and advantages for others, since you can only invest time and energy in some talents and not all at once. Then you have to seek out trainers who have these skills already and learn to develop these skills through their guidance. Their guidance is not alone sufficient, as you must contribute significant amounts of your own time in order to develop your skills to their fullest potential. The more skills you develop the more effective you become in all tasks, and you have more resources to fall back on. So if you develop cooking, fishing and first aid along with your main profession, it generally makes life adventuring easier in WOW.
IRL - Following this same train of thought say you chose to be an artist (drawing from real life here, since it is easier to evaluate the learning process). You have to decide what kind of artist you want to be, since anyone involved in this professions knows there is no such thing as just “an artist.” So if you choose to be a sculptor you have to develop a different skill set then if you chose to be a painter. You have to decide which learning process will give you the best results in the direction you wish to pursue, whether you learn to weld or to mix paints. Then, unless you are a freak bless with unnatural talent, you have to train your ability in order for it to improve. This usually involves going to a school and seeking out those who possess the skills you would like to learn. Once you have received this guidance, you have to invest your own time to draw, carve, paint or weld, until your skills become proficient enough for you to make what you want. Thus dragonscale armor is the Mona Lisa of leatherworkers. It takes a lot of time invested into the skills until you can produce the results with the most reward. With the same consideration, if you develop multiple skills you can learn to make more complex works of art and to achieve your goals with more precision. Instead of asking someone to catch a fish for you, you know how to fish for yourself. (Yes, it is an old proverb, but it fits this particular setting.)
This comparison is loose but I am trying to keep it short. I think we get the general point. If you want to become something, you must invest the time and energy to gain it, as well as seek others who have walked the path you seek. In a corporate setting this would assist people in figuring out how to achieve personal goals by breaking down what they need to know and realizing what they need to do to gain this knowledge.
You will notice IRL that patience is a thing lacking in many young professionals in today’s society. The current hypothesis is that our young adults are part of the Entitlement Generation. Many young graduates enter the business world expecting to gain the same respect, salary, and benefits that a person that has been there 20 years should receive. They have not develop a sense of personal achievement and investment and I think that a stint of role playing would help then realize that they have to achieve these abilities.
I know that through role playing, I have learned to focus on my own life by looking at the different paths I need to take to achieve my goals and then breaking down what I have to develop in order to achieve what I want. Instead of trying to leap from mountain top to mountain top, I look for the path and I see my steps as I should take them. If you leap blindly, then you tumble down to the valley, and when you look up you do not know which mountain you can from, and which you where going to. If you visualize the next mountain in your mind, and then watch each step as you take it, you know your path as it has been taken and use those experiences to propel you down into the valley of uncertainty that is present with attempting any new task, as well as to draw yourself out with earned and valid confidence as you ascend the slope to the peak of your desire. Sometimes you fall, sometimes you have to back track, but as long as you keep your orientation you eventually reach the peak you strove for. Once you reach your destination then you can look back to the mountain you can from in a different perspective, as well as look around for the next mountain to conquer. It is simply a matter of knowing how long your legs are…
Role playing develops these assessment skills if it is preformed in a proper setting and success is a balance of activities directed towards a certain goal. Personal development is only part of the experience, since few great things are achieved alone. This is where my next point comes in…
2. Personal Relationships –
In real life to be successful in the grand scheme of things you eventually come to rely on people who have the same interest, goals or skills that you have, as well as those who have differences that are advantageous to you. Usually you find people who are either in the same field as you, or who share the same goals as you, or you find a company that does what you would like to do. Regardless of the profession or goal, a good company usually consists of people with various different skills but the same objective. This is where the second aspect of WOW comes in; while role playing develops personal achievement, strategy develops how you coordinate the individual achievements of people in order to achieve an objective that the individuals could not achieve if each where to attempt it on their own.
Even though there are many people with the same skill sets available it eventually comes down to whom you would prefer to work with. You may find a few people or a company you like, or you may join one and then leave because it does not accommodate the way you like to go about things. This is equivalent to guilds, as you and a few friends who know each other might from your own guild (like forming an independent company), or you may try out a few guilds till you find the one you like. You might even join a guild, find a few people who you like to play with, and then all defect to form your own guild. You may even just join guild for the benefits and not really for the people. Whatever the situation you usually try find what fits you the best and if you don’t, you look for something else.
Once you gain this situation then you have balance out what skills are need where, and thus who will perform which task. If you have a group of only hunters then you can do a lot of damage, but it sure would help to have a priest to heal you, or a rogue to unlock those chests. IRL if you have a company that is a computer game developer and you have all graphic designers, it really is no good if you don’t have a few programmers to actually bring your concepts to fruition. The same goes for if you try to do all the skills yourself; it takes a lot more time to learn the skills and a lot longer to complete the tasks. Teamwork is something that has to be developed in the game as well as in IRL and people have to appreciate and coordinate each other’s skills in order to be truly successful. Through these efforts, you are provided the opportunity to focus on you particular skills and develop them as well as allowing others to develop along side with you and eventually you achieve larger goals quicker and more successfully.
Of course this is assuming all goes right and I certainly am not saying that IRL things all go smoothly and in WOW not every raid is successful (if you could only RES IRL then things would be easier, eh?) If everyone tries to steer the boat you end up doing a lot of work and achieving nothing. This is where raiding comes in handy and illustrates my next point…
3. Management Techniques
Raids are the largest coordinated efforts in WOW that are used to take on the largest tasks impossible to achieve even in grouping situations. This usually results in the development of a chain of command that is used to make each individual perform his function to the greatest benefit of the whole.
IRL lets compare this to making a movie (I would use a war comparison but that is too literal and blatant.)
WOW - In a raid you usually have a raid leader and a set of group leaders that form a chain of command. The raid leader surveys the entire situation and makes decisions based on his observations. He should be (though definitely not al ways IS…) the most experience person who has filled some or all of the roles he is to govern. It this person does not have an intimate understanding of the function of other players, whether through personal play experience or observation as well as trail and error, then he does not have the capability to coordinate a victory and is probably subject to losses on the battlefield.
If he is a skilled player, he will communicate to his group leaders on what he would like to have achieved, and each of these players then controls smaller groups specifically design to attempt certain goals and to carry out designed tasks. Consider this as if it is Warcraft 3 and you have to control different types of troops. If you have all warriors then they do not stand a chance against archers and range fighters, but if you mix you groups to reinforce each other then you can take on stronger opponents with success. A new player might have all groups of singular entities, i.e. a hunter group, a healer group, etc., but a skilled leader will make mixed multitask forces that can take on different situation more readily. If the ranks of these groups are filled with skilled players, then the raid leader has to do less direct management, This means that once all the players are experience enough at raiding the leader does not have to tell each person what to do, but simply state an objective and the individual groups perform there task within the limit if their capabilities. If certain players do not perform, they are usually pushed out or they quit if they do not like their experience, but in a raid situation, if all players cooperate on individual, group and raid objectives, then all gain a higher measure of success.
IRL – In order to make a successful movie it takes a coordinated group of individuals performing multiple tasks in order to make a movie. This is usually done under the leadership of a director whose role it is to see what needs to be accomplished in order to get a shot, and then instruct others on what needs to be done to get it. He does not have to directly tell everyone what to do because he has a second tier of employees, like the assistant directors, the site managers, the art director, actors and so on to carry out each of their roles for him. They in turn have individuals that perform specific tasks in each of their specialties. When all of these individuals perform adequately, then the shot is made. If the gaffer forgets to turn on the lights then they are all in the dark. The responsibility does not fall solely on the individuals because it is the responsibility of the direct to understand each of these roles in order to instruct then properly. If the director asks the sound guy to run some light and this is not his “profession” then you might not really get the picture you are looking for. It all comes down to each individual know their strengths and their roles in order to make the best picture possible. Believe me in the movie business, if you don’t do your part you are out.
The way WOW fits into all this is that it trains you in the ABSTRACT MENTAL skills that are necessary for problem solving. If you do not evaluate the situation quickly, and shift the resources, people or responsibility to the right areas, then you fail. The comparison made to if you do a fighting game you learn to use weapons, or a race game make you a better driver is not a valid one because these are physical skills that are interpreted through external actions in real space. Strategy and Role playing are mental skills that are developed internally and deal with the process of abstract thought. Thus WOW trains these abstract processes by simulating personal, interpersonal and group management situations and allowing your decisions as well as the decisions of others to effect the outcome.
This is the body of my argument, even though I could certainly elaborate on the finer points and am open to discussion on the matter. To conclude this argument I will simply point you to a IRL situation in which this very argument was put to the test and was shown to have Real World results… Enjoy.
http://www.alteredlearning.com
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:23 pm
here are some more links on the matter.
http://nwn.bioware.com/players/profile_west_nottinghamshire_college.html
http://www.westnotts.ac.uk/mainnewsitemview.asp?did=618
if you want to find how deep this runs, simply Google “Neverwinter Nights West Nottinghamshire College”
while this is not a direct buisiness applicatyion it does shed light on the use of strategy and role playing games to improve real world skills
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:24 pm
of course it doesnt help you learn how to type apparently…
March 24th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
In regard to Altered Learning, I can’t deny that videogames can virtually reward people better than real life can. I think Altered Learning’s videogame endeavour is a great idea. I agree that videogames have a place as a viable tool for learning, but WoW is hardly Altered Learning.
I spent a good portion of my career building educational / training software so I’m a little versed in the power and importance of virtual training and learning. I’m still not sold on WoW as a business management tutor only because it’s not intentionally or specifically geared for that. Dealing with teams of people to achieve goals is an aspect inherent in all multi-player team/group based games; there’s nothing specific for practical business application.
Sure, WoW teaches some team-based management, but you won’t be seeing “40-man raids” listed on someone’s resume. The reason being is that a 14 year old (or 40 year old) playing WoW is a completely different concept than a person who is working as an employee for a company. The intricacies in organizing and executing raids only go so far to teach problem solving skills; something that ALL games teach. WoW is no different than Counter Strike, in this regard.
I suppose my beef with the article is that it praises WoW as some glorified leap in business related skills… when it’s actually the multi-player, team-based genre that teaches those lessons; not WoW specifically. Just as Sirlin dragged WoW through the mud with his Gamasutra article (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml), I believe the damning lessons are with the genre of MMORPGs, and not WoW specifically.
Tell me something of importance that WoW teaches that no other team-based, multi-player game teaches and I’ll start singing a different tune. ;-)
March 25th, 2006 at 7:55 am
I am inclined to agree. I also believe that it has more to do with the genre then with WOW specifically. Different games teach different aspects, but genererally they are all a variation upon the same model.
I actually believe that Neverwinter Night has the most potential, since it comes with the ability to build your own modules, thus encourage people to explore the creativity involved in writing plots and creating characters for themselves.
I believe if RPG games advance to the state that the story lines are no longer static and actions havbe more dire consequences, then we will see more creative solutions to problems, else then killing what bothers you.
The biggest advantage in general i see is that people who play these games are preforming mental excercises more then the guy who rather watch TV.
March 26th, 2006 at 7:33 am
While not having read everything in this thread in detail, I must say I really liked Luke’s article. The task of running a 100+ members guild must not be underestimated and takes a great deal of responsibilty.
Looking at modern management, maybe the industry should hire accomplished, renowned guild leaders instead of the project managers we have crawling around noadays in a lot of places ^^
March 27th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Great discussion. With a nudge from David, I’ve summarized some of it in the Morning Eye blog under the category “Workers, bosses, paychecks.”
June 16th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
[…] Sirlin.net » World of Warcraft Also Teaches Good Things Discussion on World of Warcraft, Good and Bad. (tags: blizzard game culture WoW) […]
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February 24th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
<strong>Fly-Fishing Gears</strong>
Fly-fishing has been around for hundreds of years. In medieval times, anglers, naturally, fished for food, however as intensive methods increased the readiness and availability of fish to the masses; it then evolved more as a form of sport and leisure.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:08 am
[…] Und damit ich nicht alles zuweine, schaut mal bei Sirlin rein, ein Spieledesigner mit interessanten Artikeln, wie man spielt um zu gewinnen. Kennen wir ja auch von Spaniel auf Londes, diese Reihe, aber Sirlins Ansätze kommen ursprünglich nicht aus Magic, sondern aus Arcadespielen. Daher mag es auch weniger verblüffen, dass er auf Mouring Eye zitiert wird wegen des Ansatzes, dass die Raid-Führung aus WOW analog eines Führungskräfteseminars im Buissness Bereichs zu sehen ist. WoW somit das neue Golfen… […]
July 8th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Most people will not group because it’s fun, they group because the rewards are better.
It’s not that grouping isn’t fun, because it is, but simply that it requires coordination and effort that soloing does not. Therefore, given a choice with equal rewards, people will INEVITABLY choose the one which is less work, which is, all other things being equal, soloing.
So, groups and raids that require more people have better rewards, because oterwise people would have a hard time getting groups or raids together.
That’s why dungeons that have 10 man and 25 man versions ALWAYS reward the 25 man version better. Because it’s more work to set up a 25 man raid then a 10 man one. If the rewards were equal, almost no one would run the 25 man one. Greater work, and greater risk should mean greater reward.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Anther simple example.
Say the 10 and 25 man were equaly rewarded.
Lets say you had a guild of 50 level 70s.
You could do two 25 man raids, or 5 10 mand raids, and each raid would grant the same stuff. What would you choose? The choice that grants 2.5 times as many rewards. the 5 10 man raids, of course. That’s a no-brainer.
Honestly, you do hve many good insights, but you seem to miss some really BASIC stuff.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:59 am
“You could do two 25 man raids, or 5 10 mand raids, and each raid would grant the same stuff. What would you choose? The choice that grants 2.5 times as many rewards. the 5 10 man raids, of course. That’s a no-brainer.”
No, this is wrong. The assumption was that to make 10 and 25-man groups equal, that the 25-man raids would drop 2.5x more stuff, so that they really are equivalent in every way. You’re making invalid assumptions that have already been explained countless times.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:35 am
But there’s still the issue of the extra overhead of running a bigger group causing the “equally rewarded” large group to be unequal after all.
Also, the way the drops are handled in wow makes such a balancing as described impossible.
The problem is that the 25 man raid is the base raid, and not the 10 man. SO instead of having the 25 man drop 2.5 times as much, the 10 man has to drop 40% LESS! Which can translate to “no drop at all” if you are unlucky. Would anyone want to risk that? NO. They’d do two 25 man ones, and be guaranteed of the drops, instead of doing 5 10 man ones, and maybe not getting the drops at all.
“Equal rewards” isn’t. Because a larger raid is intrinsicly harder, due to the increase of coordination required, the reward SHOULD be greater. And it should be enough greater that people are willing to do it, when the easier option is available.
And people are suggesting solo and group be equally rewarded? If they were truly equally rewarded, no one would group at all, except for PVP purposes.
If the additional complexity of the group is taken into accout when deciding rewards, the rewards always have to be boosted beyond the increase in numbers as the size goes up to make them worthwhile.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:27 am
“The problem is that the 25 man raid is the base raid, and not the 10 man. SO instead of having the 25 man drop 2.5 times as much, the 10 man has to drop 40% LESS! Which can translate to “no drop at all” if you are unlucky. Would anyone want to risk that? NO. They’d do two 25 man ones, and be guaranteed of the drops, instead of doing 5 10 man ones, and maybe not getting the drops at all.”
Your math skills astound me. You have managed to declare that 60 = 0. Congratulations.
Honestly, this isn’t all that hard to understand. I believe the initial argument was that man-hours spent per reward has to be equivalent. So, if it takes people 1 hour of play to earn a piece of gear in a 25-man, then it should take 2.5 hours of play to earn the same piece of gear in a 10-man instance. Either way, a sum total of 25 hours has been spent playing the game split between all members. (Also note, this would work fine for solo play as well… it would just need to take a single player a full 25-hours to earn the gear).
The “outside the instance” overhead doesn’t need to be balanced. As was stated before, people should be running 25-mans because they want to run 25-mans, not because they were forced into it. It’s just a question of whether people enjoy spending time with large groups or small groups. If you actually like the social aspect of playing with a large group of people, then the organizational overhead can’t actually be considered a burden.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:26 am
I don’t play WoW (although I have worked on MMO level design) so my question might be pretty far off base but there is something that I would like clarified…
The argument seems to be that 10 and 25 man raids should yield equal rewards but the 10 man versions should be longer and more difficult as appropriate. My question is if this is even possible? I’d like to think that Blizzard has already pushed the 10 man raid difficulty/length as far as it can before it stops being fun. Of course you can always make it artificially longer (long repeating tunnel with no unique monsters) and more difficult (give all monsters 2x health) but that’s more likely to just annoy players than anything else. On the other hand if the 10 man version is extended with unique extra rooms, enemies, and events, now the 25 man raiders are missing out on the experience that the 10 man raiders get.
I like the idea from a policy standpoint but as a designer I have trouble envisioning the actual implementation.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
The issue isn’t that 10-mans should be harder. It’s that 10-man and 25-man should be equivalent in terms of difficulty and rewards. Don’t be fooled by my earlier “man-hours” argument… it makes more sense if you think of it in terms of Blizzard’s badges of justice gear than in terms of random drops. Rather than a boss actually taking longer to kill, you just get varying amounts of tokens. (i.e. at the moment killing a boss in black temple drops 75 badges… 3 per person present in the raid, so a 10-man boss would drop 30 badges, still 3 for each person in the raid). There’s many other ways to do it as well. The issue is merely that if you create a full line of ten 10-mans getting increasingly harder, and ten 25-mans getting increasingly harder, then the best players in each setting should progress from one difficulty tier to the next at roughly an equivalent rate. You’re really not giving Blizzard much credit at all if you think they’ve done everything possible with 10-mans… there are currently 2 10-man dungeons in all of WoW, compared to about ten high-end 5-mans and about eight 25-mans.
Once again, the point is that more 10-mans would be nice for creating “end-game” type content for people who simply don’t like large groups, from a “social choice” perspective. Blizzard is already biased towards 25-man groups. Is it really that hard to believe that they could support multiple group sizes, without automatically creating a new bias towards an alternate size?
July 9th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Wow, okay if there are only two 10 man dungeons it’s pretty clear that Blizzard has NOT pushed 10 man dungeons to their limit. The token idea is pretty cool too, I like it. The reward tokens can be appropriately scaled to account for hours, in game difficulty and “social difficulty” discrepancies so everything is fair.
The 5, 10, and 25 man dungeon numbers makes me wonder a bit though… Does 10 man really need to be fleshed out? If 25 is a little too chaotic for someone, they might be just fine in a 5 man raid. If 5 is too confining for someone, they’d probably do okay in a 25 man. Just a thought…
July 9th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Well, this is a case where it just happens the blizzard devs said that in the next expansion they would offer a 10-man version and 25-man version of the same dungeons, but were considering having different gear rewards between the two versions. (Like, different quality of reward, not just not the same items). So, the specific numbers used are just because that quote started the discussion.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Ahhh, gotcha.