If you could ask God one question what would it be? Would you ask a deep question such as what is the meaning of life or would you waste your question on something trivial like how to remove bubble gum from a sole of a running shoe?
If you happen to be a disciple of World of Warcraft and can make the pilgrimage to BlizzCon, you actually can ask the virtual gods of Azeroth a question. This was the case at BlizzCon 2011 held this past weekend in Anaheim where thousands of true believers assembled before the thrones of the gods of Azeroth. In fact one player actually praised Greg Street Lead WoW Designer and outright called him “a god”.
What did I think of BlizzCon 2011 and the Mists of Pandaria preview and what does this mean for WoW?
BlizzCon 2011 General Impressions
This year was the first year I watched BlizzCon pay per view event without having an active subscription to World of Warcraft or any other Blizzard products. So I had no skin in the game as a player.
As a game designer and MMO commentator, BlizzCon is compelling on many different levels. As a designer, I appreciate the behind the scenes “under the hood” look at the creative process of making MMOs. As a commentator, I enjoy watching and evaluating the interactions between the fans and the developers. Finally, as regular person, I enjoyed the spectacle that is BlizzCon from a purely entertainment perspective: this includes the rousing introduction by Chris Metzen, the wacky costumes, the Blizzard panels, the dev interviews and other related activities.
Blizzard’s Proud Attitude
I was hoping for some indication that Blizzard has become humble after losing 2 million subscribers — I was disappointed to say the least. There was no hint of “we screwed up” on the faces of the lead devs like Tom Chilton was as cocky and smug as ever. Even J. Allen Brack brought his usual snarky, self-satisfied smirk with him. You’d think that after releasing an expansion that lost 2 million subscribers someone would have been fired but the same people were sitting on the stage this year with the exception of Alex “Furor” Afrasiabi who has joined Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan to work on World of Star…I mean Titan.
Blizzard is in trouble with WoW but you’d never know it even though Star Wars the Old Republic MMO looms in the horizon like a menacing Death Star. The only possible hint that Blizzard is acknowledging this threat is the fact that they are now bribing players with a free copy of Diablo 3, an amazing flying mount, and a WoW beta test invite if they will commit to 12 months of a WoW subscription. This is what desperation smells like.
By leveraging the assured popularity of Diablo 3, they can prop up their declining subscriber numbers to continue to fool investors that WoW is still a viable MMO.
The WoW Community Taking Sycophancy to a New Level
Probably the worst thing about the entire weekend other than Jay Mohr’s predictable slacker comedy routine was the banality of the WoW fans that ambled to the microphone to ask questions in the Open WoW Q&A Panel. The caliber of the questions was abysmally low.
Most of the questioners seemed to be selfishly concerned about the personal power of their own characters and classes. When they weren’t complaining about their own class they were heaping praise upon their virtual benefactors.
There were almost no tough or thoughtful questions posed to the Blizzard “B Team” devs who have presided over a MMO in decline with 2 million subscribers who have vanished like prime rib at an all you can eat buffet. Naturally when you consider the cost of a BlizzCon ticket, the airfare, the accommodations, the meals it’s easy to see why someone who was critical of Blizzard would not spend thousands of dollars for that privilege of confronting the virtual gods of Azeroth.
One thing I did notice was that the questions coming from the players attending the Open WoW Lore Panel were of a higher quality. Role-players and lore junkies make me proud!
Still, it’s regrettable that again BlizzCon attendees missed a great opportunity to knock the Blizzard panel from their ivory pedestals by failing to demand some form of accountability from them. It seems as long as the spice is flowing in the form of new content all is forgiven.
Missteps of Pandaria
After taking a hard look at the feature set of the new expansion Mists of Pandaria I see some good things, bad things and some ugly things that will affect the future of this MMO.
The Good: Talent Revamp, Outdoor Bosses and PVE Scenarios
The talent revamp is brilliant and would make Steve Jobs proud. They have taken an overly complex talent system and reduced it to a masterpiece of elegance and simplicity with a choice of one key talent offered every 15 levels. Whoever is responsible — possibly Greg Street — should be commended for this. I used to get so tired of having to spend hours researching talent builds on forums after every patch just so I can play my class effectively.
Outdoor raids are back with random boss mobs roaming the outdoors! Finally Blizzard is realizing that there is indeed a “world” in the World of Warcraft that exists outside the artificial contrivance of instanced content. Outdoor bosses means there will be competition for mobs; competition for limited resources breeds conflict, drama and cooperation — these are elements that are sorely missing from today’s overly scripted amusement park ride MMOs.
Blizzard is introducing a new class called the monk. Thankfully it’s not a hero class! Thank you to Tesh and Longasc for reminding me on Twitter that I predicted this and even the race of the new class back in 2009 in an article entitled “Predicting the Next Hero Class“. I think the monk will be a breath of fresh air for WoW and Blizzard has even decided to take a bold risk by eliminating auto attack to make the class feel more unique.
PVE scenarios which will involve smaller groups of players could end up being a great idea that helps to evolve quests from the “kill 10 rats” formula to more meaningful highly scripted content that is more relevant to the situation of the NPCs in the world around them.
The Bad: Pandaren, Pandaria, Pokemon and the Music
Allowing players to play panda humanoids “Pandaren” is a terrible mistake that will make Blizzard the laughing stock of the MMO world and will haunt them for years to come. The inclusion of these walking, dancing bears makes WoW look like a children’s MMO. It makes a complete mockery of the fundamental premise of WoW: a serious world that in a state of perpetual war.
What were they thinking? They were probably thinking “we are Blizzard, we can do anything and our fans will lap it all up…”. That is precisely the kind of hubris that can cause a company to crumble.
What is even more disturbing is that the art direction of Pandaren monk seems to be an outright copy of the character in the 2008 movie Kung Fu Panda starring Jack Black. There is even a MMO called KungFu Panda World by Dreamworks.
I believe that this expansion is going to huge turn off for many of the teenage males in search of mature content that saw this movie as boys. It’s hard to imagine what demographic that Blizzard was appealing to by offering the Pandaren as a playable race.
I also have to wonder what the Chinese government will think of a race of Panda humanoids that can be killed by NPCs and other players. This is a risky move for a company that seems to have a particular talent of pandering to Chinese sensibilities (apparently skeletons are taboo in their culture and Chinese versions of WoW have no skeletons as PCs or NPCs).
Pandaria
Even worse is the garish and highly derivative land of Pandaria itself. The art direction and design sensibilities of Pandaria are a combination of every oriental stereotype taken from martial arts and Hollywood films. The oriental alphabet is plainly visible on art assets and the architecture has been directly lifted from decorative Chinese temples. In the past Blizzard have been masters at synthesizing new architecture for their races but in this case they have utterly failed to infuse the Pandaren structures with enough originality and have taken the easy way out in their outright copying of oriental structures.
Even the landscapes seem to exude and embody a Disneyesque and Epcot Center contrived cheeriness. Take a look at pictures of the real China and for the most part you see a harsh, desolate and denatured land not the bucolic paradise that Blizzard seems to have created for the blissful, erect and peaceful Pandaren.
Even the Pandaren starting zone which is built on the back of a giant swimming turtle (that conveniently never submerges itself) challenges the limits of incredulity. Just when you thought Blizzard has jumped the shark they find a bigger shark to jump.
The Music
The faux oriental music is dreadful in its attempt to encapsulate almost every oriental musical cliche. It is grating and nauseating with the endless whine of a Chinese violin. Having to suffer entire leveling experience and expansion with this music may prove to be unbearable for some.
The Ugly: Pokemon Pets
It’s hard to believe that WoW has turned into Nintendo’s Pokemon because this is exactly what the vanity pet turn-based combat feature sounds like. Vanity pets will be collectible and tradable just like Pokemon pets. Players will also be able to level up pets as well. It’s hard to believe that the very same Blizzard lead devs that continually nix player housing and still haven’t found the time to improve character art/animations could have approved of something as outright childish and silly as this feature.
It’s another example of poor judgment and generational disconnect of the WoW “B Team” that has taken over the reins of this once respectable MMO.
Conclusion
After watching BlizzCon 2011, I still have a tremendous amount of respect for the people that work at Blizzard. They are incredibly talented and passionate. But something is terribly amiss that even the Red Shirt Guy could not save. The folks in charge at Alton Parkway have lost their mojo.
Mists of Pandaria is a fatal miscalculation on Blizzard’s part. We all knew the day would come when WoW would start its eventual decline. If it wasn’t clear after the release of Cataclysm then it’s certainly clear now with the news of the Mists of Pandaria — an April Fool’s joke come to life like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Look at the number of negative votes in the official YouTube video of Mists of Pandaria and you can see the shocking depths of player dissatisfaction out there. No other official YouTube Blizzard expansion video has every received this kind of negative rating.
While there are some good and interesting features coming in Mists of Pandaria the poorly designed and highly derivative features such as Pandaren, Pandaria and pet combat will negate them to a degree that is unimaginable for a Blizzard product. Blizzard has forgotten what the spirit of WoW was all about and has decided to insult the intelligence of its players with this infantile, farcical and self-indulgent expansion.
If I wanted to kill a serious MMO, I don’t think I could find a better way than introducing a playable race of goofy looking walking bears. Any credibility that Blizzard had in the MMO realm has vanished with this horrible decision. What we are witnessing is the unprecedented transformation of an adult MMO into a children’s MMO right before our very eyes.
In the weeks and months ahead, I predict there will be a major backlash and uprising on part of the WoW players to save their MMO. Who knows there might even by a kind of #OccupyAzeroth movement started by concerned players to drive out the money-changers from the temples of Azeroth. There is only one solution: this expansion should be cancelled immediately and taken back to the drawing board.
If Blizzard fails to heed the growing player discontent with this expansion and does nothing, WoW will die an early death. Combine that with the upcoming release of SWTOR MMO, I predict a tipping point will be reached causing a mass exodus from WoW of biblical proportions. After that, all that will remain are virtual gods without virtual followers.
-Wolfshead
I’m sure they realise that no matter what kind of expansion they put out, because WoW has peaked and is on the decline, nothing they do can reverse the trend.
What I’m saying is, they could put out a ‘safe’ expansion that tries to get back to vanilla’s roots, but at best it would only plug some of the holes in a leaky boat. So they took a gamble on a wacky, zany expansion instead, I’m sure it seemed like a good idea in team meetings, but I’m still stunned that something that reads just like Blizzard’s yearly elaborate April fools joke is actually real.
A balanced post. Thank you.
“Nothing fails like success”.
Blizzard has gotten arrogant and totally over-confident over the hold of WoW as a concept, so they have been stretching their luck over the Cataclysm. Now they are really poking the ice with Pandaria. They seem to have forgotten the generic player of Warcraft, who were their main audience to begin with.
My son made a good note on the Mists of Pandaria video. There is no big monstrous villain in the video, only peaceful lush landscapes. Is this really World of Warcraft?
C out
It makes a complete mockery of the fundamental premise of WoW: a serious world that in a state of perpetual war.
That would be Warhammer 40K, not Warcraft. WoW is built on the contrast between war and peace, between seriousness and humor, between epic tales and popular culture references. With that in mind, including Pandaren into an expansion about war between the Alliance and the Horde makes perfect sense.
Besides, the last time they tried to make a serious grimdark expansion about the horrors of war, they ended up losing 2 million subscribers.
Cataclysm didn’t lose 2 million subs b/c it was about the horrors of war or too hard. The sad part is that Blizzard actually thinks that. It shows you how out of touch they are.
Cata lost 2 million subs b/c the raids suck, LFD killed the community and changed dungeons from epic instances you did with friends into painful grinds you did with idiots, blizz simplified content but then tried to keep it challenging by making it twitchy and require memorization of dances instead of knowing how to play your class, and many PVP’ers got sick of weekly buffs and nerfs that changed everything about how you can play your class and itemize gear. And then they changed Azeroth from an amazing open world into a bunch of disjointed and boring single player zones.
MoP is just bad humor. The wow dev’s have absolutely no clue what they’re doing anymore.
20+, 30+ male – that’s the audience they just crapped on with Kung Fu Panda Land. WoW was always quite suited for children, but it didn’t piss off everyone else. That’s what they do right now, they reduce their legendary MMO to a kiddie crap MMO.
The kid target group is IMO the reason behind the further simplification of the talent system. Its highly controversial as the 3 choices every 15 levels not always offer valid alternatives with one talent sticking out. There are lots of bloggers and players commenting on the system, so I will leave it at that.
Pandaria is a once funny brainfart by Metzen turned into a real nightmare. They indeed got used to success. Maybe they are just desperate and know they can’t counter SWTOR and GW2.
It’s about time you focus some more on SWTOR and GW2. Blizzard might still have the most subscribers, but they are no longer the driving force in MMO design they once were. The Monk Dark/Light energy point system seems like an refinement of their Rogue energy and the LOTRO Champion fervour system to me. That’s the known Blizzard style! But anything else? Crappy minigames tacked on top, that’s what Cryptic did and does in STO right now… but Blizzard, too? Oh noes.
Take a look at SWTOR, WoW is a dead horse by now. I am by far more excited for GW2, I fear even adapted for MMO purposes that that the Bioware storytelling approach, the 4th pillar etc. etc. is more likely to bore and scare people away once they heard/read it all. Just like Alistair’s whining got on my nerves in Dragon Age after talking to him for 30 mins in the camp.
I think you will have to re-focus your blog more on MMOs in general, WoW-watching is taking a look at the vanishing once driving force of the genre. The turtle started diving towards Pandaria, nothing to see there, at least not the future of the genre.
But driving off the more hardcore 20/30+ male crowd might be the most positive thing they could possibly do for their community!
I seriously doubt that. When all that is left is what, kids and mums and girly men the community and game magically become better?
From that perspective it is very hard to find someone not falling in the 20/30 more hardcore crowd.
When all that is left is what, kids and mums and girly men the community and game magically become better?
Any community with less people like you in it is automatically better. Take that attitude back to your Xbox.
I don’t have a console and no heart for Pandas and WoW and didn’t play World of Warcraft since December 2008. I am just too sexy for this crowd.
Honestly I’m not too fussed about Pandaren. Lore-wise they’re as much a hard-drinking, ass kicking badass race as the Dwarves. One of the few we know about hung around with Rexxar for crying out loud. Certainly, the Pandaren were an entity in WoW long before Kung Fu Panda were around, and indeed the Brewmaster always felt like it was an expy of Drunken Master fighting, and in all their appearances they were always influenced by ancient China.
But you’re right with the stereotypes and the rather uninspired architecture. The art design does leave something to be desired, just a little twist here and there would have been nice.
As for Wow-Pokémon (Wokemon? Orcémon?) I spent the best part of my childhood avoiding that crap like the plague, and introducing it into WoW isn’t going to bring me back.
What I’m worried about is what kind of lore they’re going to be pulling out of their arses for Pandaren, who have little or no back-story. Coming after Deathwing there has to be a huge temptation to make the Pandaren story either a) bigger than Deathwing as a threat or b) be about healing the world and bringing peace.
Either way, it’s not going to sit well. Either pandas are concealing a bigger threat than Deathwing, or Pandas are about to take the War out of Warcraft.
Then we’ll just be left with Craft… which, lets face it, is pretty crap in WoW.
A balanced post.
“Fair and balanced,” amirite?
Pandas only “crap on” insecure 20-30+ males who think pink-hair gnome warriors, metro belf males with super saiyan hair, space goats in sentient wind chime-powered spaceships, murloc suits, leper gnomes, and cow paladins are srs bsns. Did the “super-serious” nature of Wrath and Cata save any subs? Doubt it.
Much like the iPad (remember when that was announced for the first time?), it will come down to the actual mechanics and internal bits whether subs grow, are retained, or continue dropping off. All this superficial panda-entrail soothsaying is pretty histrionic – I especially enjoy when you said Blizzard’s “credibility” in the MMO sphere is in any way diminished by the chosen race of their next expansion.
Perhaps the market should be looking towards Mythic or Funcom as examples of reputable tone and sensibility?
” it will come down to the actual mechanics and internal bits whether subs grow, are retained, or continue dropping off”
Do you genuinely expect this will change with MoP? WoW’s shining core has always been its incredibly responsive combat system (and, in hindsight, it’s probably that core which kept me playing for so long.) Each new expansion changes *nothing* in terms of underlying mechanics, it only changes the sensory theme and content focus of the game (and, in recent years, how many pop culture references can be shunted in); so, whether this expansion’s alienation of almost the entirety of WoW’s original playerbase is offset by new people coming in really does depend on how big of a draw Kung Fu Panda is to people.
I agree with you in many ways. I think Blizzard should have said “this is what we did wrong in Cataclysm and how we’re going to address it”. It’s a shame, because I’m beginning to feel that Wrath was the high-water mark for Warcraft.
I’m expecting that the pet battle system will get cut, just like the dance studio, flying combat and so on. Their ideas may be fairly evolved, but when resources are tight it’ll get canned.
And finally, you’re right. They need to have a filter for all the bad questions. I repeatedly saw the same idiots at the front of the queue time after time just so they could either be on TV or idolise the developers. They really need to implement a ‘one question per con’ rule to stop idiocy like this.
Great point! Blizzard has reneged on many promised expansion features. They made a number of lofty promises for Cataclysm expansion features and ended up shelving a significant number of them.
Based on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yutECWu2OFg
I look down the list of features and they delivered on all but one (Path of the Titans which was scrapped because it didn’t fit). Everything else listed there made it in.
“It’s hard to believe that the very same Blizzard lead devs that continually nix player housing and still haven’t found the time to improve character art/animations could have approved of something as outright childish and silly as this feature.”
Oh god. So spot on. Nerd chills.
Considering vast mountain range of cash Blizzard has accumulated with WoW and the talent that’s out there, they could have done everything. In example, 2 different graphic engines for WoW and update them regularly (one for low end, one for high end). As sophisticated profession/item system design as EVE has (or even as good as D3 has). Improved combat system, the AI, the questing mechanic to be what the PvE scenarios look like, etc.
Yet, none of that is being developed. They only work on these marketing schemes to target the “non gamers” audience more and more. Kung Fu Panda seems to target the Pixar/Movie folk, and the Pet Combat System seems to be reasoned with the Pokemon appeal.
Why is there no balance? Is it just disgustingly blatant greed or do the developers hate their own game? Whatever it is, it seems such a waste.
I can remember EQ2 and EQ releasing Frogluks as a playable race. Pandas have to be cooler than frogmen, right?
My sub runs out Nov. 3rd and I’m not going to bother renewing. I found the last expansion to be too short and not enough (entertaining) things to do at the end game. Raid content was good, I enjoyed most of the fights, but outside of that there was little reason to log on (for me). Dailies? Bleh. Heroics? Not so heroic when you’re wearing gear two tiers ahead of the targeted iLvl.
Hey Frogloks have a great art direction, and lore (almost an accidental race). They don’t feel like they were added to the game because they are going to be cute cuddly and popular.
On the expansion though, I’m surprised at the dislike of it as for me Cataclysm looks worse then it (just 6 new dungeons on launch really was grindy).
I’m not keen on the look of Pandaren in EQ2 (they were all thankfully NPC’s, and they did sort of grow on me a bit). I guess these are more “in your face” both with the art design and the fact that they’ll be everywhere. I’m not keen on the artwork but I personally dislike oriental stuff (the second expansion for GW sucked due to this).
The idea of no central bad guy though I applaud, simply because its a fresh idea, it will be interesting to see what do instead.
So overall while I’m not liking the new race and oriental artwork I’m not sure how many others personally don’t like this too – that youtube video is surprising to me.
Good point on Frogloks. Frogloks were always part of the EQ lore and they played a big role in one of the main dungeons: lower Guk. Frogloks look like they belong in Norrath, their features and color palette makes sense. Contrast that with the clownish Pandaren that don’t look like they belong.
It’s all a matter of degree and taking things to far. The artists have just taken things too far and stretched the bounds of acceptability. The result is that people have lost the sense if believability and immersion.
Blizzard screwed up.
Well I’ve tried several times to put my thoughts into words and for the life of me, I cannot adequately express my shock and dismay. Short of hoping that some type of universal justice is wrought down up their collective heads, I… well hell – I hope the earth opens up and swallows them up. F*** em.
Beautifully written. Thank you. I have nothing to add.
While the number of unhappy players does speak for itself, I’m surprised by such harsh negative reaction. Yes, Pandaria looks very China-style, but Thunder Bluff looks very Native American… and Uldum looks Egyptian… so this isn’t the first time WoW has copied architecture and influence from real cultures. Yes, Pandas are kinda silly and childish, but how bout the Tauren and our goofy goblins and gnomes? I still can’t take them seriously! And druids turn into dancing bears and trees already. I tend to dislike animal races but MMOs love adding them to expansions in particular… but although Pandaren aren’t my first choice by any means, I’m still more intrigued by this expansion than Cataclysm.
I’m interested in a few of the new features such as scenarios and challenge dungeons, these seem like decent additionas to the games that will provide longevity. However, overall this expansion content and style is disappointing and more to the point juvenile. If I wanted to play a childrens MMO I would go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure, though HKIA at this stage has more credibility and more importantly matches its player base
Re the talent trees, i’m not necessarily against the changes, but as a balance druid i’m seriously concerned about the direction they are taking Boomkin.
This seems like Blizzards Jar Jar Binks moment.
“The art direction and design sensibilities of Pandaria are a combination of every oriental stereotype taken from martial arts and Hollywood films.”
As I’ve said on other blogs, how is this any worse than the appalling native american “noble savage” walking stereotype that is the Tauren?
For that matter, how is a dancing bear any less silly than a dancing cow?
You make a good point about the “noble savage” native american Tauren precedent. Stylistically I think the Tauren were executed far better than the Pandaren and seem to be a better fit with the environments. It just seems to work better for me.
Perhaps I just don’t like Asian culture and the gaudy colors that go with it. I find it repugnant for some reason and I’m being brutally honest. Part of me feels that Blizzard is only too happy to pander to oriental cultures given the fact that half of their player base is located in Asia.
I just wish they would have tried a bit harder to make the Pandarian culture more unique.
Might be worth noting that Pandaren were in WarCraft 3, years before Kung Fu Panda. Maybe Dreamworks beat Blizzard to the punch taking it mainstream, but I get a distinct Antz/Bug’s Life parallel plagiarism vibe from the whole thing.
Just sayin’… Blizzard has had pandas in the docket for a long time. When they ask for incoming artists to basically become little new Samwises (their guidelines for art position applicants are pretty stringent that they come with the “Blizzard style”), it’s almost inevitable that they would find their way into a big Blizzard game at some point.
I do wonder if more people would accept them if they were part of a third faction. I know I’d be more interested, and I’d take my Tauren to join them. Anthropomorphized beasties gotta stick together, yo. (Tauren don’t make sense in the Horde… and though they are my favorite race now, I thought they were DUMB when I saw them introduced in WC3.)
I also like the simplified talent system. I feel like the original style talent system was getting more bloated over time, and it had devolved into simply surfing to Elitist Jerks to get the “right” build.
I also don’t have a problem with Pandas or the pokemon thing.
What continues to surprise me is the utter failure to do anything to make their world, well, a world again. The open world bosses are nice, but that’s going to affect only a teeny, tiny niche of players.
The continued lack of player housing is mind boggling. This is possibly the most beloved feature across all MMOs. Players want to own a piece of the world, and yet WoW continues to deny them this.
Yet another level cap increase, and yet another 1000+ raid hours of gear upgrading is really nothing to be excited about either. The way new content in WoW makes old content utterly obsolete is still its biggest problem that has NEVER been addressed in even the tiniest way.
Player housing would have to be instanced and, if that is the case, it would pull people out of the world. This whole idea is just a nonstarter.
The big part of the announcement is the focus on providing content to the non-elite at level cap. Quests will be moved to lvl 90. Scenarios (which I think will be huge). VP from all sorts of nonstandard sources. Heroic 5 mans detuned to not be something that raiders will necessarily grind. This introduction of content is in contrast to what they COULD have done: detune normal raids back to a WotLK level. They did not do that, for which the hardcore raiders should thank them profusely.
What I missed was any announcement of what they are going to do to fix the guild system. Guild XP/leveling is widely regarded as a failure in Cataclysm. I suspect they’re going to scrap that, but will slip that change in rather than trumpet it.
Regarding player housing, instanced dungeon content as well as PVP battlegrounds also pulls people out of the world too. Instancing has done more to erode community than any other feature in WoW yet somehow Blizzard seems to justify it when it comes to the combat aspect of their MMO which accounts for 95% of what player do in WoW.
Let’s be consistent here: either instancing is good or it is bad. Which is it? It can’t be good when you agree with it in one application and then bad when you disagree with it in another application.
It can be when those two applications are completely different; battlegrounds and instances at least involve other people…player housing puts you alone in a room. Things do not have to be black and white.
Blizzard could easily allow home owners to allow other players such as friends list, guildies access to your virtual instanced home. Therefore player housing need not be a solo experience.
Let’s be honest, a significant part of WoW is a single-player experience. You can reach level 85 without ever having grouped or spoken to a fellow player. WoW is essentially a single-player game. For Blizzard to use this argument that player housing takes people out of the world is bewildering as the majority of gameplay is instanced anyways and solo player focused outside of instances.
On a personal note, I play MMOs often late at night and I rarely see other players. Even though I like seeing other players as it helps to bring the world to life and increases my immersion, I can still enjoy myself.
Do you guys only play WoW and not any other MMOs?
Look at housing in Ultima Online, Everquest 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Lord of the Rings Online, Threshold (www.thresholdrpg.com), and tons of other online RPGs.
Housing, even when instanced, often includes neighborhoods with tens or hundreds of other houses. So there is still tons of interaction with other people and it is still part of the world.
More importantly, it gives the player a sense of OWNERSHIP of a chunk of the world which right there immerses people far more into the world than any piece of loot.
Btw, by “you guys” I mean Paul and Clockwork.
Also, just about every housing system I’ve ever seen lets players visit each other’s houses, and sometimes even set their house to allow random guests as well.
This lets people show off all their trophy gathering, decorating, etc. It gives people a way to express themselves interestingly and creatively, which is far more interesting than showing off the latest weapon or tier armor set.
In Asheron Call housing was non instanced (well they added some instanced option later as well) and it was great. I firmly believe that if you want have virtual world you have to get rid of most instancing and zoning . There are a select few cases when it could still be appropriate but for most part I think it is largely way over used.
“Allowing players to play panda humanoids…” I’m sorry but when I first saw this paragraph being quoted by a comment on a blog I read, I was convinced it was a strawman. Are you talking about the same MMO world where the cute cartoonish Asian games have a significant share? And the same WoW which has always been full of references has been very serious business all the time?
I also wouldn’t worry that much about pandas being killed in the game and Chinese censorship board or whatever their name is as the board approved a game whose symbol was the grass mud horse in 2010 or 2011. WotLK delay was – in my opinion – caused mostly by a power struggle between government, the party, Blizzard and their Chinese partner.
I agree your article is well written but if you think Pandaren mean jumping the shark, then let me say WoW has always been a show about jumping over big hungry marine animals.
Frankenstein was never a doctor.
You are correct:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Frankenstein
I think more than anything, they picked the most odd-ball of all things to use in this new expansion. WoW has some great lore and they have SO much to work with. Why a Pandaren race? Why not the Naga? I honestly think it would have been way more interesting. In watching the trailer, I saw a stone with writing that very closely resembles (if it isn’t just flat out) chinese writing. Then you have a race of [Panda]ren who live on the island of [Panda]ria? Where the heck is the originality these days? Are they really that much out of ideas? Even if they are, they have no excuse at all, again, there is so much they can do with their existing lore.
I’ve also read that in defense of the Pandaren race that they were created by Blizzard in Warcraft III long before Kung Fu Panda, and this is true. But I’d like to argue that this does not matter in the slightest. Blizzard should have been smart enough to know that despite whether or not “they came up with it first”, I’m willing to bet a large majority of WoW players haven’t played Warcraft III and even if they have, it’s pretty much a guarantee that anyone who sees that trailer, the first thought that comes to mind is that movie. It was an enormously bad business move on their part to have their expansion be instantly associated with that kids movie, whether their players know it is or not. I’m willing to wager that this is why the trailer got so many dislike on YouTube – even if people wanted to, it’s incredibly difficult to take this expansion seriously. Everyone I know who has seen that trailer instantly thought it was a “joke” oh “haha, Blizzard is so funny”.
In fact, so much people thought this expansion was a joke that the developers had to actually outright come out and tell everyone, “No, this isn’t a joke, this is the real thing” (something to that effect) and another said that “people will come around to it”. It’s that kind of attitude, if it persists (which it has), will be the rapid decline of subscribers. “People will come around to it?” If people don’t like it now, what makes them think they’ll like it later? Oh I know, it’s because with time, players will learn to completely ignore their opinions and feedback and just sit there and take in Blizzard’s steady drip-feed of total nonsense all while the virtual daddies are hovering over their players like little children who are crying, “But why?” and replying back condescendingly, “Because I said so.”
In the end, I think the majority of people won’t care if the Pandaren lore is “legit” and truly a part of the WoW lore, because one look at that race/trailer will tell you just how utterly ridiculous the whole idea is. I read on the Blizzard forums that apparently players had been asking for this race since vanilla/TBC days. I really don’t know how much I believe that as this expansion will definitely shy away players 20+ years and up, which I believe makes up for most of WoW’s playerbase (I think, someone correct me on this).
I had a chunk of friends during TBC, 25% left during Wrath and when Cataclysm came out, only a measly 5% stayed behind. I’ve just spoken with them about what they think about the new expansion and all I heard was mouthfuls of laughter. They just can’t take WoW seriously anymore. They are all unsubscribed and are waiting to be scooped up by the new MMOs expected to come out soon or to get swept away by some other game.
The whole pet system idea is incredibly lame in my opinion and I believe it’s even worse than their usual gimmick in the past two expansions. There is a lot to be fixed and improved upon in WoW already, their forums is filled with these kinds of things from their players. Yet instead of fixing them, they decide to keep putting new coats of paint over their MMO in hopes that if they put enough, people won’t know a rotten corpse lies underneath.
I thought Cataclysm was bad, but I take it back. THIS… this is just beyond bad and inexplicably awful.
I think people are REALLY getting the wake up call now. It really is time to move on.
A well written analysis of Mists of Pandaria! I could not agree more.
Something is really wrong at Blizzard these days. There’s a real lack of leadership and judgment in the upper levels of management. How Blizzard can allow an atrocity like Pandarens and this Chinese version of Disneyland to ever get past their top people without even a veto (apparently any Blizzard top level person can veto an idea) is beyond me.
The only way to salvage Mists of Pandaria is to make the pandaren look less comical and more threatening. They also need to tone down all the blatant appropriation of Chinese culture that currently constitues Pandaria.
Another theory could be that not only is Blizzard becoming increasingly smug and arrogant, they are just plain lazy given the wholesale plagiarism of Asian themes in Pandaria.
The Blizzard art team has stooped to a new shameful low. I wonder how the artists can live with themselves. Where is their sense of integrity and dignity?
The sooner the fans put WoW out it’s misery the better. Perhaps Mists of Pandaria is a subconscious act of MMO suicide on the part of Blizzard making way for Titan which will appear to be a breath of fresh air compared to the farce that is WoW.
Blizzard is solely responsible for the state of WoW at this point. Some people have come to terms with this because they believe this has to happen in order to Titan to be WoW’s successor. I would like to ask, what will stop Blizzard from doing the exact same thing to Titan in its future?
Absolutely nothing.
If they are willing to let the state of the most popular MMORPG to date stoop down this low, then who is to say that years down the line the same perpetual cycle will happen to Titan? Are we all really buying into the idea that Titan will be everyone’s savior? Look at all the promises Blizzard has made about WoW in the past, I suspect that Titan will be the same, filled with tons of hype and lots of empty promises. Whether it’s WoW, Titan, or some other MMO they are working on, I don’t think one is better than the other or one’s success should rely on the failure of the other. It’s important to remember who is developing both these games here: Blizzard. The problem isn’t with the game, it’s with the company that makes them.
Working on Titan and saving up their revenue to fund this MMO is NO excuse to let WoW reach the state it has right now. I still play Guild Wars and ArenaNet has managed to very successfully manage and continually add content to GW while working on GW2.
Just a thought.
Just a thought, but I have a theory as to why they chose Mists of Pandaria.
Blizzard is going to preach Buddhist zen to the players by virtue of gameplay and quests.
Cata created an extreme nerd rage problem with its uber-difficulty. So extreme that it played a huge factor in the mass exodus of casual subscribers. Blizzard can’t survive on hard core players alone, so they know they’re going to have to address this problem if they want to retain a casual player base.
Anyway, that’s just my two-cents. Albeit months late.
I agree with most all of the sentiments expressed in this post. And yet I wonder if WoW will make more money appealing to a younger demographic with the pet battle system and the face-roll style leveling system with panda style cartoony races? And don’t forget all the money from people who pay for a class and/or race change. Many of my old guild mates purchased the little pets and sparkle mounts during Wrath. Shouldn’t these things be something you earn by playing the game?
Ultimately, I’ve got the sense that WoW has become more about making money than delivering a solid gaming experience. This evolution has been slow but I see it becoming more central to the overall design. I’m not saying, “WoW sucks now! Or Wow is no fun, I rage quit!” Instead, I’m just not hooked to the world or any of my avatars anymore like I use to be over the past years. My account is currently inactive and for the first time in the history of WoW, it will stay that way with the release of an expansion.
This is the natural and inevitable result of Bobby Kotick’s hiring.
He isn’t a gaming guy, he doesn’t like gaming, and he has outright said so. Remember his whole “I want to take the fun out of game design.” He runs Blizzard like a food packaging company – the industry he came from.
Watch some cartoons and see the marketing for kids snacks. Its startlingly similar to what WoW looks like these days. Pets and cute anthropomorphs.
That’s a brilliant point Michael! I never factored in the Kotick angle to all of this but come to think of it — it makes complete sense given his well known distaste for the video game industry.
If the so-called video game press had any integrity they’d be doing some investigative reporting on this but instead they behave like lackeys and sycophants. They don’t want to anger Activision/Blizzard lest they lose their “exclusive” stories and paid junkets to visit the Blizzard campus in Irvine. So it’s left to bloggers to fight the good fight.
As usual, here we are trying to speak truth to power! :).
The similarity between WoW’s design path and kids snacks/toys is glaringly obvious if you sit down in front of a tv and resist the urge to skip the commercials on a few kids cartoons.
My kids watch Pokemon, Martha Speaks, and Phineas and Ferb. The commercials almost look like ads for WoW with the color palette, the fact that almost every product has some kind of pet system, and the anthropomorphic animals that promote everything.
When you put 2 and 2 together, Kotick’s influence is pretty clear and also pretty distressing.
I’ve been wondering about Cata and Kotick.
The hardcore emphasis in Cata strikes me as directly opposite what Kotick has been advocating. He’s infamous for his comment that game development shouldn’t be “fun”. By that he meant that devs should develop the games the players want, not what the devs want. Cata would seem to contradict this.
I have a scenario in my mind (not supported by any real evidence, mind you) that could make them consistent though. Suppose Morhaime had a certain amount of support on the board and could tell Kotick to stuff it. How does Kotick maneuver Morhaime out of the picture? Get Blizzard to screw up royally on their cash cow. So Kotick starts encouraging Blizzard to make Cata for the hardcores, knowing this is going to make a failed expansion. After that Morhaime’s political capital with the board is gone, and Kotick can put some of his own people into controlling slots.
I imagine the devs are operating with much shorter leashes these days. And it will be very interesting to see who leaves Blizzard in the next six months.
…cue the rumors that the lead Titan designer was canned…
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/07/rumor-senior-titan-designer-laid-off-by-blizzard/
(Wolfshead tweeted about this)
Very well put, balanced as Nil said.
Might want to check that ninja link you got for Star Wars: The old Republic though…
Pandaria is a continuation of a trend that came with TBC. This trend being orientation towards the masses…a larger player base and a bigger income. Why? In vanilla wow was “hard”. In TBC they made it easier and easiest in WOTLK…
Much was changed. Some for the better…a lot for the worst. Most things changed with the introduction of what was (perhaps still is) called a welfare epics. There was a demand from people that “have a life” to make them such a game so they to can enjoy it and make progress…
To go back in time (will try to be short yet hard to present a point in short):
In vanilla there were 40 man raids and doing Molten Core/BWL often required the cooperation of two guilds. Just bringing 40 people together…organizing, managing, leadership, roles… was “amazing” enough …and then going to MC where there was a wipe on the first two Molten Giants 🙂 Many in vanilla did not understand tank, heal, dps roles…healing rotations, aggro, etc.. The mechanics were unfamiliar, players did not know what and how to do things and even when familiar it took effort to do it right….out of which there were this funny things such as the “3 sunder armor rule” Yet even in vanilla there were nerfs. Instances got nerfed MC did so did BWL… As it used to be “inhumane”. Despite the nerf the challenge remained. Raiding MC, not on farm status, could take 5+
Talents and talent specialization was a “secret” There was no inspection option. Talents talk was a “nerdy thing” to most, so most had wrong or bad talent specialization = bad performance when they played The web was not as information rich as it is now. No one told you what is the best way to use your skills and how…each had to learn by itself…there was some mouth to mouth but each explored the skill use and what to use at what time…
Doing…amm lets say UBRS was hard despite the instance itself was not hard, but the players could just simply not do what the system mechanics required them to do (using proper skills, following the tactic). Most UBRS/scholo/strat runs ended poorly. But one could not enter MC or ZG with a vegetable (green items) so there was a lot of people that never experienced high end instancing and also at the time there was no such thing as resilience and pvp gear could not compare to pve gear. A T1 to T2 warlock simply put two (2) dots on an enemy player wearing vegetable and that player was dead. So this meant quite some players not having anything to do. To progress it took organization (guild) leadership, dkp loot distribution, managing everything…etc
Each epic was hard to get…there was a “linear” progression…. It took time, effort, sweeting…to get every single epic….
Classes in vanilla were poorly balanced and not all classes could do what they were meant to. For example, the druids were expected to heal (heal bot). If druid was anything else but resto it would simply be refused a spot in the raid. It was not efficient enough to be anything else as there was not even a proper equipment for other specs or it was hard to get and even then…
Grinding in vanilla was “horrible”…or not…depends on who you ask. But it did take a lot of time. Yet it also made a difference. Etc… It can be said that it took effort to be good yet not all had the time for this effort.
Blizz was aware of that. The vanilla system made some “hard core raiders” but that also meant the game player base can not expand…at least not as much as they wished to.
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So they made TBC…they destroyed years of effort for a lot of players by making all their items and profession skills, reputations…obsolete… TBC did retain some of the “challenge” in instances but it also showed it’s face of being “friendly” to the “casual players” and this intensified over time…
They could do an amazing job by correcting the vanilla mistakes and keep the same “level” of the game.
Vanilla was not as perfect as most describe it but nothing like it existed at the time so it was and is a “legend”. Despite the subscriber lose WoW is still the “main player”. Nothing else (atm) does not match it. Of course if they go out with pandas and Priston Tale like anime style gaming this can quickly change. OR not…i suspect they did some sort of market analysis before they made their choice.
I hope this is not written too chaotic or incoherent.
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By leveraging the assured popularity of Diablo 3, they can prop up their declining subscriber numbers to continue to fool investors that WoW is still a viable MMO.
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It’s a pretty good deception; despite WoW not being viable since 2011, it hit 10 million subscribers again in 2015.
Maybe the developers will looked humbled and broken at BlizzCon 2015. Hope springs eternal!