This thread should is a discussion about design choices in World of Warcraft. It is about the feeling, the epicnes, about whether skills or gear or weapons fit in their place, about NPCs and their actions and interactions with players.

Often when we play this game we see things that just don't fit, stuff lacks life, interaction, logic and feeling. This ranges from rogues using gigantic crossbows for stats instead of thowing knives, Paladins, the heroes of the battle field running around pillars in the arena or mobs in instances that seem to have no purpose except from standing and waiting to get slaugthered.

Did you ever notice that every boss mob in world of warcraft except very few examples seems to have the same personality ? Always the "I will crush you puny mortals" speech. Why on earth doesn't any of them feel a bit frightened after a horde of fighters killed everyone around him and now standing in his last edge of the dungeon ? These design flaws take away a lot of the epicness instances should evoke. Think about Blackwing Lair. Why would Nefarian put all the dragons eggs in the very first and not really well guarded room instead behind his doorman Lashlayer ?

The same problem occurs once the balancing forces to give up a lot options. Take the rogue combat tree. Daggers, the class defining weapon does the least damage and throwing weapons, the second class defining weapon have worse stats than other ranged weapons, which costs rogues often their ranged snare and potential interrupt.

Another thing that came to my mind is NPCs like in Stormwind. Did you see the teacher and the children take the same tour about 20 times a day even at 4 am ? Or all the Instance NPCs that are too stupid too see when 20 meters next to them their friends get killed.

This thread should be about finding these things that just don't fit in well and to identify what the problem is. We can also compare what is done well and what doesn't work out. Maybe we can even add some ideas for better design here and there.


Design Analysis of Magister's Terrace

For this I made a little analysis of the latest 5 man instance the Magister's Terrace. The start seems quite ok and we see some guards, which are attacked when the patrol is far away. Then we see the same groups three times. They stand close together and don't react at all if their friends get killed. We take a look to the right and could come to the idea of jumping down but an invisible wall prevents this. Why ? Why not just have the area below guarded heavy enough to make this an option for skilled players ? A clear road block that doesn't really increase the depth of the instance.

The next room is great. The mana junkies feeding of the crystals. This fits very nice and the same goes with the boss that is easy to fight, which is ok for the first boss in an instance. The voice is made well and it works out. The way to Vexallus is just as great or even better. A nice change with many small enemys that fit perfectly there and some lovely details like these mana wyrms following the boxes. Vexallus is also a nice fight with a not so intuitiv mechanic. You actually have to DPS slow for most of the fight and show some basic coordination.

Then we enter the Terrace and take a look at the cut scene, which is a beautiful idea. Kalecgos is landing and gives us a well made briefing before we enter the lower area. Two patrolling robots makes sense and even though the die a bit to easily it fits. Then designers didn't have really too much ideas left until the next bosses. Endless groups standing there and wait to get slaugthered. Repetition and only the first group is challenging. Yawn - the same stupid grind again.

Then we see the arena team. The whole place would have worked so much better if the area was empty except for the arena team, which is just standing there. Why not take the time to add some nice dialogue. The "we will crush you" speech would really, really fit here once. The fight on the other hand is designed exceptional and in my humble opinion the best fight in any 5 man instance up until now. It even has random team members and so it is a lot of fun to do the fight more than once. Very good.

Before Kael'Thas a group is standing, but why don't they look like his personal bodyguards ? Why do they turn their faces towards each other instead of noticing that danger is on its way ? A lot of guards lined up like in Silvermoon would have been a much better choice. The fight is done well and is a good ending to this instance. As a little bonus there is an exit and we don't have to use portals to leave the place or walk the whole way back.

Overall a good experience except for the invisible wall and the groups before the arena team.

In terms of effective touches for "feel", I've always loved the section of Living Stratholme where you're invading the Scarlet Cathedral. The groups of Scourge that arrive to seemingly take advantage of your slaughter of the Scarlet Crusade guards just feels excellent. This would have even been more effective if there were a more substantial and active Scourge/Scarlet Crusade battle going on in the square outside (like the tiny fight outside of the Shadow Labyrinth, only moreso). More notions of that sort - that the player's actions are representative of a larger event - would be fantastic.

I'd add in one that was recently commented on by Shamus 'Twenty Sided Tales' Young in his blog, which is the idea that you can't eat a pie or drink a glass of milk because you're too low level. When you step outside your gamer persona and actually look for a second you realise how weird it is.

Would much rather see them try for the same mechanic they use for buffs. If you eat a high level piece of food you just get the regen of the equivalent lower level item instead.

On the upside, a tip of the hat for the way the Caverns of Time : Durnholde instance changed out races for ones that would fit with the timeline back then. It was a lovely little touch.

I've seen raid groups that have just stood around while the boss finishes up with one section of the raid then moves onto the next, I think if this still happens when you have a human yelling at you, then getting NPCs to do it is going to be a huge step.

The problem with micro-managing the design of dungeons is that how do you get a cohesive progression through the dungeon? The fact that packs of mobs do not sight aggro on a group of characters, as their friends are killed by said characters is hard to explain, but when you consider the alternatives, room by room progression or a continued gauntlet, you can start to see why the designers opt for the former.

Adding a room per pack would either lead to a very repetitive dungeon, room after room of the same; or an intensive QA procedure, where each different room is examined and fixed for Line of Sight issues, or pathing problems etc.

I like the idea of varied boss fights and I think this has been played out, cf. Ragnaros with Kil'Jaeden. Realistically the major story effort, voice actor effort is going to be made on this top end raid content.

At some point a sacrifice has to be made, where you choose the mentality of 'Get it out of the door' as opposed to the AI methodology you suggest.

Nice User Title Maniq.

*smile*

I agree that we have to sacrifice a lot of logic, like the bagspace because realism would hurt the mechanics too much. This not being able to do certain things is also something like this. Why on earth can't a rogue hold an axe ? I can see that he won't be able to use it for an sinister strike or to reach the maximum weapon skill. This is always tricky because it is a way to show players the mechanic. Ok I am a paladin and a dagger doesn't really look like a good weapon for me, but maybe there could be more subtle ways to introduce this.

It seems to me like some semi-random group makeups (like the arena team, but to a lesser extent) would make the repetition and grind of these groups slightly more palatable. In the cases where you have class-based caster mobs, it wouldn't be entirely ridiculous to have the specs randomly generated.

In an example like this, if every Sunfury Warlock spawned with a random pet (Imp, Succubus, VW, etc.) and each Sunfury Magister was spawned with a random spec (Fire w/ Molten Armor, Frost w/ Ice Armor, etc.) it would make grinding this instance at least slightly less ridiculous. Seeing as the basic mob AI is consistent through each, it can't really be that hard to set up the mix-and-match.

Several years ago I watched an interview with one of the developers of Thief. He was asked, "how do you decide between two choices when one is more realistic and the other is more fun". His answer?

If reality was so much fun, people wouldn't need to play games.

That really sums it up for me. I know it's not realistic that monsters can't see anyone further than 15 yards away, just like it's unrealistic that ten level 1 humans have no chance of killing a single level 70 orc. These are sacrifices of realism that make the game more fun.

I also remember a quote from the designers of counter strike that said people don't really want realism when they ask for it. They want a hyper-focused realism on the parts they care about and no attention to the parts they don't. If you've ever played a first person shooter game where your gun can jam and you have to clean it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. True realism isn't fun.

Specifically with that last group before Kael in MGT, I think that hallway could have been better used with the whole waves mechanic they built into Mechanar. I always felt that was an awesome design (barring the elevator reset). It also would have made a lot more sense considering it's, you know, Kael.

Personally, I have no problems with gauntlet style designs. I think the Eagle Boss in ZA's gauntlet is exceptional, and they should use this kind of thing more often.

As to the overall theme of braindead mob groups, I think they addressed a lot of this with the troll guards in ZA. That mechanic made a lot of sense to me, and while it was a bit annoying and shouldn't be quite as binary as it was, I thought it held a lot of promise.

The fact is, there are so many possibilities when it comes to dealing with large rooms in terms of delaying the onslaught, that it really shouldn't be as hard as it is to fix the AI problems.

The simplest mechanic is a "call for backup" item. If someone's going to expect you to get through a room with 50 mobs in it with a group of 5 people, they should give you some sort of backup. Click the item and there's an aerial bombardment, or a group of NPCs comes to help you, or you summon in a dragon, or a cannon to shoot them down with.

Other options include killing large groups (blown up bridge, bringing down roof, destroying the floor, etc) or slowing their progress (effectively metering their entrance, having a group spawn every minute or something).

There's distraction setups, there's incapacitation scenarios, there's costumes, there's invisibility items, there's ... lots.

There are a ton of options. The least interesting or suitable for me is the "Send 5 guys into an army base and expect success due to mob stupidity" option.

There's also simply lowering the damage/health of the mobs to allow them all to attack you at once. Sure, you've got a room full of guys rushing you, but you're level 80 heros, and they're level 60 or something. Everything doesn't have to fit the cookie-cutter "Some guys. They hurt. You might need some CC" schtick.

I like how they did the beginning of Shattered Halls: the mobs run up and form a defensive line in response to your sieging their dungeon. There's still a leap of faith ("suspension of disbelief") as to why one line isn't providing supporting fire for the next, but at least the mobs are acting as if they know you're there, instead of just standing around. The warlock boss that mocks his trash while you kill it also provides some explanation as to why he just watches them die, unlike normal bosses which do so with no explanation.

Mobs in a dungeon should have some purpose other than just standing around. Chilling at a bar, sleeping in a bunk, mining, and training are all valid explanations. In some instances, especially ones with active sentries, you could pass off the explanation of why they don't react to flamestrikes and meteors on the other side of the door is that the alarm didn't go off so it must be normal or under constrol. And mind you, this only applies to humanoid instances--undead and elementals are allowed to be as uncaring as they want.


Don't be complaining about errant schoolchildren at four in the morning. If you're horde, walk around Orgrimarr sometime. Then wander around Undercity. Notice the difference? There are no NPCs in Orgrimarr except quest dudes, unnamed guards, and vendors (where by vendors I include AH, bank, etc). They also don't do anything except give quests, guard or vendor. In UC, there are random NPCs with names that have no purpose other than to walk around and talk to each other. There are humans in cages that beg for their lives, there's some random warlock that shows off his mindslave to his friends, there are people that walk in circles that have names for no reason. If you look to close they're not that deep, but there's goddamn activity going on. UC, ironically, is far more alive than ORG or TB. Silvermoon has a similar sort of treatment, including a drunk hobo outside a hotel, and rabble-rousing speaches being given (and quashed), and some diplomats that allude to strange tensions as they walk around. I'd really like to see Org and TB enlivened like that.

I completly agree that it's not so much about realism alone. But once it feels life-less because something is missing - be it realistic or not - this argument doesn't really count anymore. I agree on the groups in instances but there should be a bit more life than just a patrol walking back and forth. There are many good examples in the game. Compare the Mechanar to the Deadmines or the Blackrock Depths.

You have to remember there is a fine line between making a pacing patrolman better and just exacerbating the lack of realism. Sometimes it is easier to ignore something when it is really bad.

I would have to agree with some of that. What I just asked for was exactly what you said, mobs acting more responsive, yet I'm still shooting shadow energy out of my hands.

However, I would still argue that everything isn't simply fun or realistic. It can be both or it can be neither. A hallway of mobs that ignore you attacking anyone in front of them with the boss not doing or saying anything till you engage him doesn't make much sense if you think about it, but it isn't fun either. Making the mobs more responsive and active makes it more realistic, sure. But it also makes it more fun.

I guess the main point is that developer was asked when you had to choose between something realistic and fun, which would you do. Yet when designing something, you don't always have to choose, it's OK to have both.

With your FPS example, I agree that having a gun jam isn't very fun, despite being more realistic. But having bullet holes appear in a wall when you shoot it is more real, yet doesn't make the game less fun. Obviously were playing a game, it will never be truely and entirely realistic. But I say adding more realism isn't always such a bad thing.

Your example argues that developers add cosmetic (non-gameplay impacting) changes which are a nod to realism. I agree and they are almost universally loved. Examples of this would be the NPCs wandering around Stormwind, or the half dozen different taverns there. But you'll also notice that Stormwind is the only city with this much detail. Orgrimmar and Ironforge just aren't the same. That's because Stormwind was the first city designed and the developers realized they didn't have the time to do that for all major cities and still get all the gameplay done too. Remember that whole entire zones were launched without any substantial number of quests in them: Hinterlands, Dustwallow, and Silithus all had passes in later patches. The more time blizzard spends designing the sprawling lore mass of Blackrock Depths that people enjoy only once (but very much), the less time there is to make the Scarlet Monasteries that people will run dozens of times.

There just isn't time to do all the cool cosmetic stuff. Oh, and I think everyone can agree that "realism" at the cost of gameplay is a universally bad idea. For example, women doing less damage than men in Age of Conan.

One little neat thing I like about WoW is how instances continue to mesh with the outside world, even when you're inside them. Remember looking out the balcony at Nefarian? Looking down through the glass in Naxxramas to see EPL beneath you?

Likewise, Ramparts even when you're inside gives you the same look over HFP that you'd get if you were just flying outside the instance. MgT and Sunwell can be seen from either instance. You can "see" inside of BT from outside the gate, where Supremus would be at the end of the path, and so on. It's little touches like that, that give a tangible sense of progress when you're inside the instance progressing your way through it.

Personally I really loved Nefarian's balcony. You could see that from below in Searing Gorge or Burning Steppes, and getting there and being rewarded with the exact opposite view was just really neat.

Building on that, there was also the balcony in Scholomance that connected to the outside, and if you weren't careful the boss would knock you right out of the instance into the lake. Although having your tank be knocked out of the instance on a hard hitting boss is probably a bit much it was still cool.

Likewise, jumping off Ramparts or SFK zones you out of the instance.

The one aspect of WoW that really bothers me from the design point of view is how level differences are handled.

That is, to be specific, the penalty associated with attacking a higher level mob. Why is this seen as a necessary part of the game? It really frustrates me because up until 60+, there is really no challenge in the game at all. None of the instances are even remotely difficult given a group of the correct level. But if you try to do it under-level, instead of being rewarded for doing something hard, you just hit a brick wall where beyond a certain point you just can't damage the mobs at all because of the arbitrary system that says you will miss or glancing blow 90% of the time against opponents of such a level.

I'd much rather the strength of the mob be determined by it's base abilities and hp and damage it puts out, rather than it becoming harder to kill because the designer arbitrarily decided to make it level X where X is 9 levels above your level.

A common criticism with my point of view is that it would trivialize encounters that are intended to be harder because of mob level. That isn't necessarily true. As an example, if a particular boss is intended to be fought when players are 3 levels below it, they could simply give that boss an ability that increases melee miss chance by 5% and spell miss chance by 8% or whatever is desired to make the encounter challenging, I just don't understand why it needs to be linked to character level. As a bonus, this would actually help the leveling dungeon bosses stay somewhat challenging longer than normal. For example Edwin VanCleef is a level 20 elite, probably intended to be a challange for level 17 characters who would have a 9% melee miss rate against him. But instead, your pug goes after him at level 19, and your miss chance is lower, and the fight is completely trivialized. If the increased miss chance was simply a boss power instead of being associated with level difference, you would still suffer that same miss chance at level 19, 20, 21, and 60 etc. The fight would still become trivially easy eventually just because of the base stats of Edwin VanCleef, but at least the change wouldn't be as drastic.

Consider the difficulty of "proper" itemization when you think about assigning stats to monsters and having those stats determine their level. Having levels provide a built-in "scale factor" makes it much, much easier to balance things out so that a mob n levels above you will wipe the floor with you, and a mob n levels below you is no challenge at all. Without that, the designers would have to do tons of individual testing—probably even more than is required to define appropriate stats for various levels of items. (And we all have experience with how difficult that is.)

The other way to think about things is this: Level is one of a character (PC or NPC)'s stats. A higher level creature hits harder and more often against a lower level creature. It has more experience. It's tougher. That's it. This is a stat like any other, and it's applied pretty uniformly across the game. I think the only reason people have difficulty with it is that they feel that "level" is a weird arbitrary stat to give things. But really... is "spirit" that much less wacky?

The comment about Karazhan being almost perfect in the aspect of immersion is something I agree with - much of the trash and bosses look like they are "doing what they are supposed to do". A few tweaks, and I think they would ALL look like that - have the huntsman path between the stalls next to him, give prince a couple of small spell effects to do at the end of his little patrol route (stop, cast a small "scrying circle", path again - it would look like hes doing what he says he is doing), having Illhoof with active spell summoning effects/small imps showing up when you walk in his room. It helps that much of the instance is undead or constructs, so the trash/bosses standing around would be normal behavior.

But this level of detail was not maintained throughout BC. Mechanar is a good counter-example - most of the trash just stands there, waiting for you. Until the gauntlet at the end, the bosses are basically just twiddling their thumbs - no casting animations, no consoles they are "working" on, no patrols, etc. In most of these cases, it would not take much to make them seem more "alive", but each touch like that takes time and creativity.

Throughout the dungeons, pathing mobs wander around on a set path, but seem to have no reason to do so. This is fine for guards, but for so many of the other mobs it seems odd that they are doing that. Having the mobs just doing basic things, even if highly repetitive, would put a great deal of sense in the patrol routes. Even something as trivial as having them walk to a bookcase, face it, then walk back to a table and sit in a chair for 5 seconds.

For all of this you could get insanely detailed, but just having a few more bits of flavor would make it far more immersive.

This is a good thread idea, by the way. Thanks!

I really like the idea of making instances feel more immersive. However, I don't like the idea of making them more realistic.

One of the wonderful things about WoW (and many other games) is that it's possible to completely understand and predict many of the mobs' behavior. This lets the players feel powerful and in control of the situation. I wouldn't want to lose that.

Occasionally breaking that is also a good thing. The priestess fight in Magister's Terrace did this well. Threat tables were thrown out and it required relearning a small part of how PvE combat works. It required different strategies, and that's a good thing. Doing that frequently or in low level instances would probably be a bad idea. Doing it there worked well.

Adding behavior that doesn't affect combat can add a lot. People have already mentioned the legions shooting shadowbolts at Murmur. This added interest and excitement to the Murmur fight. It's clear that Murmur is a real bad ass if a room full of mobs can't kill him.

Gnomer had some of this, too. Alarm-o-bots (did I get the name right?) felt right at home. Mailboxes appeared in odd places. Some of it ended up being really annoying in the end, but it still feels different in there even though the combat mechanics are simple.

I really like the idea of interacting with a boss before you actually down him. Other than viewing the Priestess' henchmen at the beginning of MrT, I can't think of an instance that had that.

Well, pointing out the positives for me, I think Blizzard has great ideas all over the place. They just aren't all in the same place or used repetitively which would take away from how cool they are when we encounter them.

-The rear patrol in Deadmines was always fun to keep you on your toes your first few times through the instance.
-The way scout trolls run away and summon help in ZA is the same as the trolls in environment north of Light's Hope Chapel in the EPL (I can't remember the name of the area).
-Everyone loved chasing the engineer goblins in BWL, or mind controlling Krixix to learn how to smelt Elementium (I thought this was a great idea!).
-DM North Tribute Run
-Disguises / interaction via subterfuge in quests (loved Netherwing dialies)

At one time I thought Blizzard should do a better job connecting everything together in some grand tapestry of masterful design. Then I realized that would kind of suck because that would limit their scope and make the world feel less like... a world. I like regional quest hubs / story lines, even if they don't really culminate into something more epic. It doesn't really bother me that in my leveling path I didn't ultimately find out what exactly the Venture Company was really up to.

There are some lighting/sky transitions in the outside world that could be used more inside instances. Shadowmoon Valley, for example, has a general green/grey color scheme, but (if I recall correctly) when you enter the Eclipsion base the light changes to a sunset style and the sky takes on a deep red hue. There's an early WOTLK area that does this as well with a burning forest.

With a progressive lighting scheme you could really give a sense of the journey and time taken through a long instance rather than have the entire place feel the same.