Yah, opinion on this differs dramatically. My understanding is that this is exactly how "EVE Online" works -- the players really provide almost all of the actual activity. But as a result, there are a lot of people (including me) that the game simply doesn't appeal to.

Yeah, I want to feel like I'm having an impact, but not at any cost. It totally ruins it for me if a major figure is named "Lolhuntard" or is cracking Chuck Norris jokes. Other players cannot be trusted to provide me with an experience I enjoy, and so I pretty much insist on access to professionally-written content. Yes, that is going to limit the actual impact I can have on the game world, but it's a trade-off about which I feel I have no practical choice, even theoretically. I do not want a wide-open sandbox where everyone, even amoral sophomoric idiots, has freedom to shape things, I want a high-quality, crafted experience.

(Ties back into something I've been saying for years now. I play WoW in spite of it being an MMO, not because it's an MMO.)

I think LoTR did a good job of creating quest experiences. They used private instancing and phasing to a large extent. You could go back to help your friends by using a reflecting pool or talking to the quest NPC. Obviously there was reading, but many of the quests put you in your own instance to experience the quests. While some were glorified cutscenes, it is a better use of the medium than just text.

All of these mechanisms do required a suspension of disbelief in an MMO. Yes, millions of other people have done the same quest. But in terms of your characters own timeline, nobody else has done the quest, and you really have made a difference. With more phasing you can actually see the difference, instead of just being told by the NPC. This would increase immersion. Say a quest had you kill so many bandits, well not the town can now sell you food/water/reagents and there are not random attacks on the town. These types of smaller phasing would help. Wrathgate is a good example of this, and that should be the direction they take. However, I think there should be an increase of private instances for quests, because it is a good way to avoid the "Hey, that guy just killed the named mob, and now his corpse is still there with the respawn".

But there can only be so much game impact in PVE, for others to experience it you can't have mobs permanently killed etc. I think an increase in the PVP game effect could be interesting. However, WoW might not be able to change drastically, thus it might take future games to truly tap into the medium.

I do agree though that there should be a shut up and go button on a lot of the boss dialogue and for things like CoS. Having to go through those many times is just annoying.

I agree, and that's something I felt was always enjoyable about the original Everquest. When stuff happened it made a visible impact on the playerbase. People got reputations as individuals, and in some cases, like the Planes of Power expansion and ones that used a progressive attunement system later like Omens of War and Depths of Darkhallow, it felt like you were progressing through a storyline. Even as far back as Shadows of Luclin, the class specific Vah Shir quests felt like personal character development(Your character going through a rite of passage and working their way up the ranks of your respective classes).

Honestly one thing that I always thought was fun about EQ classic, although maybe I was alone in this, was the way they handled dialogue. You actually had to talk to the npcs. If you didn't want to bother sifting through their dialogue you could read a walkthrough, but if you did want to, then you could sit there and work through the conversation figuring out what to do next.

Unfortunately, in a game like WoW where quests are a means to an end(leveling) instead of an end unto itself(the acquisition of gear once you level up high enough to accomplish the quest to get it), you can't really do that. It only worked in EQ because the game was so grind-heavy(something that I have mixed feelings about the game getting away from, but that's another topic entirely).

As much as people complain about it, the blackrock spire/blackrock depths quest chains were some of the most enjoyable I found in vanilla WoW, because it felt like you were actually doing something and were a part of the events, not just some random grunt collecting "10 bear ass" as a previous poster put it. I'm ecstatic that WotLK has brought this sense of personal stake back into the game now.

Comparing EVE to WoW is comparing extremes, I think. There's no real reason - other than "more work for Blizzard" - why you can't have handcrafted professionally written content that still lets you have an impact on the game world. Off the top of my head, we could compare implementations of player housing. In SWG you could build and name cities. Undoubtedly, some of the names that would then appear on the map would fall into the category that you'd consider immersion breaking. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that you couldn't implement player housing in WoW in a way that'd let you change, say, the skyline of Stormwind by having your guild HQ come in a few different - but still appropriate - styles. More impact on the gameworld, no noticeable change on the lore immersion. There is a lot of little things that are unchangeable in WoW that could be made changeable without Chuck Norries jokes (Player made road signs are, however, probably unworkable.).

I'd also like to reiterate and expand on a point in my previous, working from the article. Point nr 3 is called "medium envy". The exact, interesting, quote is "I feel like we need to deliver our story in a way that is uniquely video game". No harsness intended, but ultimately, the rigid system WoW uses for content delivery is never going to be anything other than a book. Or a movie. Or a picture. If you can't choose, it's not interactive entertainment. In which case it might as well be a book. They need interaction to make the delivery system "uniquely videogame", because aside from the chat and the somewhat more complex 'pause' and 'play' buttons, that's their one big advantage over the other forms of medium. If you take away the ability to say "Wait, I don't want that to happen" you're giving up that advantage. I don't think that's a good plan from either a design nor financial point of view.


And the main reason why I believe strongly in player generated content is a cynical one: The first stop towards making interactive entertainment truly interactive is choices. Choices require alternatives. Alternatives translates to content. Content translates into development time. No matter how you slice this equation, if you don't involve players in the direct creation of content - again, PvP is an excellent dispenser for this kind of repeatable content that's horrendously underused in WoW - the production costs will run away from you. I'll happily say that some things playermade shouldn't be let into the game without screening. But screening rather than creating, due to it's cost effeciency, is something I have a hard time seeing next-gen MMOs getting by without. (Look at what it for UI development.) Player-controlled content operating of "hardpoints" ("You can have a building for your guild, BUT you can't have it anywhere you want...") is the easiest form of interactive content to create and maintain.


(I think the main reason why this game attracts so many people with no interest in MMOs - not just no previous experience of the genre, but genuinely no interest in it -is market growth pains. There are a growing number of people out there who are perfectly willing to pay 10 bucks a month for a good gaming experience. The MMO market is excellently predisposed to tap that market segment, but that doesn't mean that it's capable of providing them with the best possible individual gaming experience. You don't want to play an MMO, but an MMO is the only gaming entity that has the financial muscle to create this kind of world. It's really a bit of a catch 22, because no other game is going to get that financial muscle while MMOs are hogging the clients.)

I think you hit the nail on the head: interacting with the content, and interacting with people, are objectives that are at odds with each other. If you're interacting with someone else, they need to be interacting with the same content you are, or else you have two games with a common chat room. Connecting the worlds requires a persistent world that limits the impact one player can have on another's experience. This, in turn, limits the impact a player can have on their own experience.

Personally I think one of the ways to do this is to make it more normal for players to have multiple characters. The standard in WoW is that you have a main, and that your other characters are less developed (remember, we are not a normal population sample, but you're still likely to only have one character that collects the achievements). The consequence of this, is that all content has to be accessible by the same character. If you encourage the norm to be 3, 5, a dozen characters per account, you can have more leeway for individual characters making more permanent decisions. They still can't effect the game world so much, but they can at least effect themselves.

So, can such a system be made to work? I think so. Take a look at LoL. Your account is linked to a game identity (summoner), who summons in-game characters (champions) to play as for a single round. By providing a meta-identity to associate with, it's easier to create sub-identities. In LoL's system the sub-identites have no persistence, which is what you would need to do what I'm talking about, but I still think you could do it. It's cheating a little bit: you're still getting away with permanent decisions by limiting their scope, but at least within that limited scope those decisions are allowed to be honestly permanent.

Progressive drop rates are not actually ingame, in case anyone got that impression. They have just increased the base drop rate from their old 35% to 45%.

Most of them aren't too bad (the worst exception I can think of is turning in the quest for that big guy in Silithus). I think they are really only disruptive when they stand in the way of what you are doing (ie: can't turn in the quest because the npc needs to wander around waving their hands for a couple minutes). When they are viewing optional I think they can add a lot to the game for those people that want to see it. I have returned Thrall to Nagrand 4 times now and I think I stopped to watch for most of those just because I find it cool. But I don't have to stand around and if I did it would probably drive me nuts.

The "world pvp" Blizzard tries to include but never succeeds if they continue the way till now.
There's couple simple points that makes it truly lacking, it's faction only and clearly separate areas.

They could simply fix it by making outposts around Azeroth guild-owned. Only problem is that leveling is so tied to them. That itself isn't the problem, but realm population balance / guild ownage in certain areas (you can always level in another place). They could limit it to fewer outposts thought, like 2 outposts per 10 levels.

The system would enable guild rivalries inside same faction.

Also the fact that players are unable to affect their own faction standing negatively makes the game so uninteractive. Everyone's a hero no matter what they do.
It doesn't mean the evildoers would be able to affect negatively on others game experience.

I don't think it will ever be possible to cater the epic fantasy experience a singleplayer RPG might have through means of a MMO. Either other players will spoil it for you or the storytelling will become so restrictive in order to create the illusion of your actions actually having an impact that you could as well play a traditional RPG.
The only option where you can have a feeling of really playing your ingame-role is when you have a small community regulating itself, like on some Ultima Online freeshards.

The only options are to either just accept or maybe even try to dissolve the discrepance between the real character and habits and intention of the player and the ones that his ingame character is supposed to have. Fantasy games tend to have a medieval flair and articulation - no matter how hard you try, you won't establish that flair to a broad audience, though. Since all they see in a competitive game - and a game has to be competitive when there are many people involved - is how to succeed, is the system behind it.
A cutscene might be cool, but at the latest as soon as you are running the instance a second time, you already don't see yourself as a part of the world anymore, you just see the system of killing mobs for loot.

So I think, EVE is ultimately going in the right direction, though in Blizzards next-gen MMO it will probably be a bit more accessible. You have to let the players rule the world, even if it means you won't have your medieval fantasy flair anymore - you won't have it anyways. Because it's just not the dark age and people don't act like back then (aside from - I say it again - when you have a really small community regulating itself). What you are able to get instead, is something like this: http://propaganda.eve-razor.com/propaganda15.jpg (a player-made propaganda poster taken from EVE)

Well, I have a feeling like I mentioned the important aspects only in passing.

I'd rather like it if the quest log was just a bit more persistent, so you could read it after finishing quests. I think Warhammer tried to do this with a sort of Journal of everything your character has done, broken into chapters, but personally I found the interface a bit unwieldy.

I think this particular mistake is exemplified best by this alliance quest: Lonebrow's Journal - Quest - World of Warcraft. In case you're wondering, that quest's objective is "Read the book". Somewhere on page 10 of 12, there's the mention "word must be gotten to..." which tells you exactly where to do. But the intent of the quest is clearly to force the player to read the full lore around Agamaggan.

When you see that, and compare to LK, you realize how much they learned from their past mistakes.

One of the problems I have always had with the reading required with quests is that this game can be really unfriendly if you are just standing around (on a pvp server at least). For instance, there is a quest that has you listen to a story told by the fallen champion of the horde at the south side exit of Dustwallow. He probably has about 8 pages of speech. On every single character I have leveled, not once have I been able to make it through all 8 of those pages without being attacked by horde.

Granted, most of the time you are in a secure place when taking quests, but this isn't always the case.

I think too many of these suggestions go against what made WoW successful in the first place. Your average player is likely like Douglas; they play WoW in spite of it being an MMO, not because it is an MMO. Most are interested in a finely-tuned game with interesting things to do, not in an open-ended role-playing sandbox experience.

The problem with a player having a significant effect on the game world is that other players can have a significant effect on the game world, story and progression of other players. That's a serious downside to player generated content. Not everybody is a fan of fanfiction. Personally, I find them amateurish. Having the videogame version of fanfiction to me, would detract from gaming experience, not add to it.

Do yourself a favour (or, perhaps, it's best you don't) and hit up a youtube search for 'World of Warcraft video' or something of the sort.

I'll readily admit some true gems have been made, such as the Blind clip, but the vast majority is utter crap. Any player generated content will also have pretty much the same ratio of Awesome : Utter Crap. I'd much rather have a solid quality control with people who are paid to do that job, than have to pray I don't run into any new Roostermonster-meets-Illidan rubbish. I don't object to player generated stuff - as long as it's solidly out of the game. Fan fiction? Brilliant. Fan art? Fantastic. Fan movies? Bring it on. Just don't harass me with that stuff while I'm trying to enjoy myself. And, even if the original piece would be enjoyed by a large number of people, taste differs. I for one find Alamo nothing short of annoying and stupendous. Apparently a number of 'durids' had a blast.

That's a flawed analogy. You don't give players carte blanche in your world to generate content, or you get flying penises wherever you turn. Fan movies and fan fic are entirely different beasts than what we'll be seeing. There are a lot of shit videos out there on YouTube because the barrier to entry of making a video is.... zero. Any assclown with a cellphone and and an inflated self of self-worth can publish absolute crap on the internet.

So, in terms of player-made content what you need to do is mitigate the suck factor via a barrier to entry. LPMUDs did this way back in the day. You had to reach max level and maybe you might get promoted to Wizard. Then you could generate content. Content that had to be reviewed by old-timers. I think the market opportunity of such a game is huge. Think World of Sackboy. I'm sure there's lots of crap levels out there for that game, too. Not, again, an insurmountable problem.

Edit: Jesus, grammar.

Alternately you simply give limitations to the tools the group has available to prevent such things. City of Heroes has basically carte blanche on base creation, but I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find such childish displays in the base of any supergroup.

Everquest had a mechanic implemented after a period that basically functioned thus:

If you had X% of your raid(I think it was 75%?) attuned/keyed/whatever the hell for the instance you are in, then you may enter. Likewise, you may get attunement/key/whatever credit for whatever boss kills and such occur in said instance while there, but those will not be activated until you complete the prerequisites.

Using TBC progession for our example here.

You've completed TK and SSC up to Vashj and Kael, you join a guild in BT. You can raid in BT/hyjal provided at least X amount of the raid members have the attunement completed, even though you haven't killed vashj/kael for their vials yet. Now let's say you kill the Hyjal mob you need to kill for BT attunement. You're not BT attuned still, since you haven't completed the vials for hyjal attunement yet. However, say, a month later you get the vials. This attunes you for hyjal, and since you already killed the hyjal mob for the BT attune a month ago, you're now attuned for BT too without having to kill him again, and now have your Hand of Adal title to boot.

The advantage of this system is that instead of any new recruits for the guild needing to be attuned before applying, you can instead wait until you have a decent number of unattuned raiding members of your guild, then just go do a quick attune run on some old content in one fell swoop, getting them all covered all at once, without interrupting your normal raiding schedule every time you recruit someone who isn't attuned.

Also, it means if, say, you're halfway done with attuning your backlog, and get a new recruit, he can join you on your attunement runs and pick up the stuff you're doing, and go grab the 2 or 3 things he missed later without having to redo the whole mess because he missed a week or two of it.

I don't read quest text in the rush to level, since getting to the next max level is all that matters nowadays, but when I level alts I do take the time to read the text and enjoy the lore. The problem with wow is not everything IS lore, only a few chain quests here and there, the stormpeaks giant women one, the hodir quest line, a few other chain quests in scholazar basin. The majority of quests are stupid go kill x and kill y quests.

As for a better way of delievering lore, they could try in game voice for all quests Age of Conan tried this in their starting area which was great but the moment you left it all you had was mumbling npcs some of them only moving their lips. The game starts off lively but becomes a deadscape quite fast when you left the newbie area. Wows system actually works well they probably just need to add voices for important lore chain quests and leave the text for the kill x quests.

I think phasing has a lot of potential, but I do not think it worked well in connection with group quests. Many of the Icecrown quests were headaches to accomplish due to phasing, and I can imagine how it will be even worse for people attempting to do them later in the expansion phase, when the zone will be largely deserted.

The only solution to that problem I see is to allow a group leader to merge people into their phase temporarily. If you've completed all the quests in an area but want to help a friend they can invite you and pull you into their phase. I certainly don't know how hard that would be for them to do technically but it's about the best solution they have, I think.

If you aren't reading any of the quests to begin with, how would ever know which ones were lore anyways? (Assuming that you care to know)

It's easy to spot lore quests, because they tend to be chain quests. Maybe not intially for example the Brann Bronzebeard chain in Storm Peaks and eventually meeting Muradin and IF King in the end. Halfway through I realized it was related to lore but missed most of the quest text bc never bothered to read em.