Traditionally MMORPG boards discuss hard, quantifiable facts regarding game mechanics. This board is certainly an extreme (and also good) example of this prevalent tendency within the gaming community, but on a lower level you will also find it in "less sophisticated" communities like the WoW General Forums. I find it intriguing, because obviously a lot of players base their decision making to a large degree not only on "theory craftable" factors but also on the less tangible effects like aesthetics and their respective cultural background.

While it is understandable to prioritize the discussion on quantifiable factors, as they are more open to analysis and therefore allow to reach a rationale common ground, ignorance of the aforementioned soft factors may as much lead to bad design desicions as balancing issues in gameplay.

Let's examine now the influence of soft factors on two major WoW issues. Faction and race imbalance as well as reception of raid content (and dungeon popularity in general).



Faction and Race imbalance:
It is obvious that Alliance outnumbers Horde on most servers to some significant degree. Infact the disparity is so large that it leads to several unpleasant balancing issues: small raiding community on Horde side, BG queues for Alliance, difficulties in implementing open PvP content, more limited economy on Horde side.

The reasons for this have almost nothing to do with hard facts on conscious and rationale race and therefore faction choices. The forum whining over WoTF alone should imply that at least half of the WoW player population should chose Undead as the race of their choice. There are other underlying issues at work: perceived physical attractiveness and "tolkienization". The Alliance has not only received all the sexy or cute races but is designed with the "Tolkien Fantasy Standard" in mind. Humans, Elves, Dwarfs. The only exception are the Gnomes and their "steampunk" culture. Interestingly enough this steampunk element received quite a much of critisism from the more conservative fantasy players during beta and after release. The same thing that happens now with TBC and the Sci-Fi elements of the Netherstorm area. "Tolkien Fantasy Standard" is a strong and imho unfortunate force in the western hemisphere when it comes to game design. My own desicion for chosing Horde has been greatly influenced by my idiosyncrasy for the tolkienization of the fantasy genre.

The physical attractivness of the Alliance races makes things only worse. Everything about NE females screams of sexual innuendo and Horde had nothing to compete with this.

In short Sex and Tolkien define the faction imbalance. Blizzard basically admitted to it by designing Bloodelfs with this in mind. Horde now gets a Tolkien Race (Elves) with more than their share of sexuality. Expect Horde/Alliance imbalance be thing of the past in a few months.



Recepetion of Raid and Dungeon Content:
While the faction and race imbalance has received quite some coverage in forum discussions, the popularity of instances is almost never discussed in aesthetic terms, yet I would blame the "AQ sucks" sentiment on this very element.

A quick summary raid instance aesthetics:

MC: After the very first impression of sheer size and dimension when you first enter it ("omg, this place is huge") you realize that is basically a blown up version of Ragefire Chasm. You get aesthetically sick of it after your third run or so.

BWL: Huge aesthtical improvement. The rotating blood cylinders, the dragons chained to the roof, the nef balcony. A very nicely designed instance. Everyone I know loves BWL design.

ZG: Also big hit with the players. Incerdibly detailed instance that transports the vodoo flavor of the whole place very well. Has best "feel" of all the raiding instances, imho.

AQ20 and AQ40: Both are a step backwards from ZG and BWL. AQ20 isn't that bad designed but it can't hold a candle to ZG when ist comes to the little details and AQ40 is an aesthically on almost the same level as MC. Basically just a string of caves.

Naxx: Great work as every wings feels different and so the designs doesn't get boring. Together with ZG the best designed raiding instance (Since I haven't made much progression inside Naxx, I'm a bit careful on evaluating this place).


Let's concentrate on AQ40:
Most people dislike the place. Why? It has quite interesting encounters, trash is annoying yes, but this is also the case with MC, BWL and Naxx, itemization is partly to blame, but only when you are a primary healer or tank. For DPS it has very nice upgrades and yet also a lot of DPS players dislike the instance.

Flame me, but I would blame the AQ failure mostly on the bland graphical design of this place. Would it be on par with say BWL (not to speak about Naxx or ZG), I guess it would be much more popular than it is now.





So here we are: soft factors decide about major balancing issues as well as the reception of major PvE content, yet are seemingly absent in the discussion.

With TBC on the horizon, what would you guess are the next instances that will be a hit like ZG or failures like AQ? Has Blizzard learnt from it's mistakes or are there still dull and uninspring dungeons out there (on raid and 5 man level)? Are there other "soft" concerns you may haver regarding future gaming experience ?

And most important of all: Will you reroll for a sexy BE female? C'mon you can admit to it ;) (In fact I know quite a few players who will reroll their old class on a BE char).

The population issues are already well documented and have been discussed ad infinitum. IMHO, it is the largest thing that has held back Horde raiding progression, and has exacerbated the "Paladins vs. Shaman" debate (for the record, I think it's blatantly obvious that paladins are better than shaman in a raid setting, but I think that population is a much larger handicap).

As for the "aesthetics = general opinion of a raid instance" argument...I don't think it holds much water. For one, hardcore raiders generally seem to only care about the quality of the instance itself (difficulty/challenge, fight mechanics, duration required to clear the zone, etc. etc. etc.), not how it looks. Another is that people don't like AQ40 because the fights aren't much fun, the drops are generally not worth the time investment required, and the zone is just too...freaking...long. When they have to implement a teleporter, you know it's too big. It's about three times as big as it needs to be, and has twice the trash that needs to be there. Not to mention the fact that the last two trash zones are more difficult than all the previous boss encounters inside the instance itself, yet give absolutely no reward to the raid for getting through them except access to the last two bosses.

And you might find Naxx to be interesting, but for Horde who have been looking at Undercity for two years, it brings absolutely nothing new in terms of aesthetics. Blizzard seems to have learned their lesson in Naxx. With the exception of idiotic ideas like not allowing Frogger to despawn after you kill Grobbulus and the huge PITA that is the Heigan tunnel (once again an obvious attempt by Blizzard to mask a weak, poorly designed boss with a trash zone that manages to be annoyingly long and frustrating, yet completely boring and unchallenging all at the same time).

I'd agree that its usually not the aesthetics of an instance that make them unpopular, but more the gameplay - especially the trash. I think 15-20 mins of clearing for an experienced group, and 30-40 for an inexperienced is doable. That crap after Twin Emps was almost twice that long, and reclearing the 5 guys before the Emps each night when you were learning them wasn't much fun either.

MC has a ton of very boring 1-2 pulls where you tank and spank and try not to fall asleep. AQ just has way too damn much trash.

Conversely, I always liked BWL. 2 bosses right up front, and larger trash groups that still required actually paying attention, at least in the early days. And ZG has no more than 15 mins between boss encounters, with the Spider room being the worst offender, but even that is short compared to some of the 40man stuff.

Respawns are an issue that I hope they pay attention to. Having 1-2 gauntlet style encounters is alright, but any other time I want stuff to stay dead. Rekilling trash the next night is just boring and frustrating.

Once people have run a zone a few times I think they cease to pay much attention at all to what it looks like. It will always be about how the 'fun' in the instance is parcelled out vs. the 'work', and how those factors are balanced.

I love the first hour of AQ40. You can clear up to and including Huhuran in a pretty straightforward and speedy manner once you know the encounters. Things start to go wrong from that point on though. The trash between Huhuran and Emps is annoying but with sufficient practice you can normally get through it quickly and without too many problems. The real problem comes after the Emps. Every single person in our guild hates the Emps -> C'Thun trash clear with a passion. There just doesn't seem to be a way to speed things up - how fast you can clear it entirely depends on how the packs have been put together. If you end up getting several quad mindslayer packs you can say goodbye to a quick clear.

Sure there are some areas of AQ40 where the aesthetics of the zone are a bit poor but there are a couple of areas that I really like - the series of shallow pools just before Huhuran for example. The main problem I think most people have with the zone is the annoying trash...

The biggest problem contributing to the faction imbalance on PvE servers is that Blizzard ignored it for so long. Coupling that with server that cannot handle sufficient populations (on many servers indeed Horde has little or no viable raiding community simply because 30% of the present queue cap is not a viable population given random seeding) and you have a recipe for exactly what we see now. Now make that worse by allowing relatively easy re-rolls and it avalanches into a serious issue on many, many servers. After all, why stay Horde on a heavily imbalanced server when all that gives you is a small pool of players to draw from, insane relative competition from the other faction for resources and world bosses and a constant ass-kicking in world PvP? Only irrational stubborn people stay and although we are an interesting crowd, I know many, many smart and competant players that re-rolled a hell of a long time ago.

I do think it was all avoidable and it's a shame it wasn't. Bye the bye, the female squid/demon-people are still more 'sexy' than the BE version. In fact, they seem to be going out the way to make BE females less appealing with things like mini-weapons and the like. I won't even touch the priest racial ongoing issue.

Meh, perhaps Horde is intended to be perceived as 'hard mode'. I don't exactly think it's true for certain but so be it I guess.

AQ40's look was something of a let down, as I remember it being described as a temple. Most of it is under a temple, and this building dedicated to an old god is actually small and unimpressive. I kinda like the feeling of climbing up a building, or working to the center. Why would they close off C'thun but leave that long, winding tunnel open to allow a back door to him? The encounters, and most of the trash are fine. Huhuran was stupid when there was no craftable NR gear. Mindslayers are retarded, and I'd tank Vek'lor without SR gear if it meant they wouldn't spawn. C'thun, Ouro, and the Twin Emperors are still fun to me 9 bosses into Naxx.

As for the Blood Elves and their appearance, find a model viewer and look at the Draenei. I'm more impressed with Draenei females than Blood Elf females. Blood Elf females faces look like they are repainted versions of Undead females. So do their bodies, just without the bones poking out.

If you compare the two most "dull" instances MC and AQ40, you'll see one big difference in terms of trash. In MC, when you first got there, you were clearing everything, or close to. As time went by tho, you found the most efficient path, dodging quite a few pulls(pulling shaz into garr's room with a hunter's pet to avoid 2more fire packs, dodging all those giants around gehenas and fighting him in a smaller zone etc...). Also since you're going faster, you avoid killing patrols more than once.

With AQ, even as you progress, you still have to pull the same amount of mobs, which are virtually still just as annoying as they were the first time(4mindflayers pull because people are bored to hell with AQ already and usually stop paying attention). Another big issue compared to MC is, even in not so great gear, you can clear MC trash with just one button on every class pretty much(need more than one to hold aggro on giants once your rogues get geared I guess, and taunt helps after knockbacks ^^). You don't need to focus your attention much, it's a bit slower but it works. You have to focus entirely on what you're doing for pre emp and post emp trash(everything before huhuran is just crap tho, you can probably 5-10man all of it). The big anubisath come with the random abilities(good idea), but some combinations highly favors ranged dps which can hurt badly when your raid is made of 8rogues and 8 wars, especially when they're immune to fire and all your mages were speced for rolling ignites. I'm sure some people encountered those, it's just bad luck and even if you manage to kill it, you'll usually end up with lots of deaths, and as such high repairs.

Repairs is another factor. In AQ, you die a lot if your healers are semi sleeping, especially as rogues, but I guess everyone dies equally, and non sleeping healers usually aggro the mobs who fears/stuns/knockback and die swiftly too. At this point of the game tho, your gear is good, so repairs are expensive. Yet AQ is one of the worst instance when it comes to gold gains. Everyone knows that, mobs only loot crappy grey vendor crap, so it's usually the same 3-4melees who get all the loot, you can share it but it's a pain in the ass. Bosses drop an insane low amount of money too. As time goes by, when you perform good in MC, you get decent money out of it, and you can sell those core leathers and fiery/lava cores to other guilds, and T1 BoP, and sulfuron ingots if you're done with that. In AQ you only get those goddamn inventory hogging statues and scarabs that everyone gets anyway.

That's why imo, a lot of people dislike AQ, the risk/reward factor is not so great, because the loot is so specific, trying to fill alternative niches which isn't great for most raiders. Graphically, I wouldn't say AQ is displeasing, I actually like the look, it felt like an alien based SF movie, the caverns are huge and use different color hues, and you have older architecture in like Chtun or Twin Emps rooms. Chtun room specifically, and the fight as a whole are awesome ideas. But no one wants to clear trash for 3hours with an average 2deaths per clear for everyone in the raid if they don't get money/loot for it.

I don't think the aesthetics of the races have much to do with the faction imbalance. Rather, I think it's down to the perception of Alliance as "the good guys" and Horde as "the bad guys". Now, in Warcraft lore it's clear this is not the case, but the Tolkienisation of the human/orc conflict is an almost insuperable barrier.

What we need is *not* the clearly evil Blood Elves. We need a good and honourable race on the Horde side, and a clearly evil one on Alliance side, to break through the current Manichean perceptions of the factions. Blizzard however are straying further and further from that. Once the initial surge of 14-year-olds get bored of tossing off over Belf females, the faction imbalance is going to get worse, not better.

What I would find extremely cool is if one of the races decided to swap factions - not a cat in hell's chance of that happening though. And you can't get round the problem by giving faction transfers (e.g. if you could grind Horde rep as a human and "swap sides") - in fact, that would only exacerbate things. But imagine the reprecussions if the Undead decided to defect from the Horde and force an uneasy alliance with the, er.. Alliance based on the shared enemy in the Lich King. You'd have a breakaway human faction that refused to work with the Undead and instead come to terms with the noble Tauren and the recovering Orcs - give all human players a one-time-only chance to swap, or some such. Never gonna happen though...

Faction and Race imbalance:

I'll totally agree on all the points you made here, however do you really think that the population imbalance will be made up significantly due to blood elves? I have my doubt's that the number of people that will reroll/buy the game and roll, horde will be enough to cover the massive population imbalance on some servers.


Recepetion of Raid and Dungeon Content:

I agree totally. well, I friggen hate ZG... mostly because I got very very tired of killing trolls, holy crap we kill alot of trolls in this game. But oh man Naxxarama is so well designed. When I zoned in the first time I fell in love, and then was instantly crushed as a realized that my guild had zero chance of beating it. : (

Similarly AQ40 blew me away when I zone in... I had taken about 3 months off and my guild was on the emps when I came back, so I got to see the entire instance very quickly, and really liked it, its quite colorful and interesting... At first. Then all of the tunnels and passages kinda blend to one. I think the problems with the design are:

A) Zero lore. I zoning into BWL, I knew all about Nef and his zany hijinks.. and was actually moved when I saw what he did to Vael, jerk face black dragon flight. It really made me want to kill that mother fucker. in AQ40? some bugs? what the hell were those even doing there? C'thun was interesting.. and the Emps would have been more cool if they didnt look retarded.

B) None of the eye candy does anything or means anything. Even worse than MC where you could at least play in lava. In BWL you have crazy blood things and forboding dead dragons. thats -awesome-

C) Trash. As Pyros mentioned. Its long, and unrewarding.. and in the case of Emps and C'thun trash really hard and annoying.

D) Monies. Why the hell are those bugs so poor. Once BWL is on farm you run through, get some loots have a fun time and make enough to pay repair bills for the next raid or so. AQ40 is just kinda disapointing. You run through it and come out behind in gold despite a good quick clear. its lame.

E) Huhu. Don't. Do. Resistance. Fights. holy crap.

Blah, even thinking of AQ makes me sad. And I'm a feral druid! It really is a pitty that C'thun a fight that I consider one of the best designed and fun in the game (keeping in mine I only got 5 bosses killed in naxx) is at the end of such a boring dredge of an instance.

In relation to the new races I won't be playing either of them anytime soon. Maybe a BE to level 20 or so.. just to see the starting areas. The new alliance race however... First off I won't even try and type their name, its impossible hard, and doesn't even have a handy abbrevation. Not to mention the whole "space shaman" thing. I really dislike them, man.


Edit: Fuck emoticons.

Very strong post, I love this type of stuff :)

Brief note guys – this isn’t a “Best practice: AQ 40 sucks olol” thread :P

I think there are a couple of other factors;

There is also the Horde factor of being the “underdog” faction. Being the “underdog” can work both ways; it can be a deterrent for a social raider who wants a lot of guild options, but it can be an attractive measure for someone who enjoys a challenge and being a little more unique.

One the note of factors not exerting a uniform influence, I find the ‘sexy’ appeal of alliance is actually a deterrent for me – and although I even consider it immature to think this way, I can’t help but think of Alliance as the “kiddy” faction. Well-built male model human priests, dragon-slayers who can’t resist the urge to flip on the spot, and Kel’thuzad geared mages who wear pink hair in a cute little bun. But I guess it works both ways: My Alliance playing friends can’t help but resist making “No shoes” comments (I'm Troll) :’(

Also, I’ve always thought that a lot of class population imbalances can be explained by aesthetics. In order to play a Druid, for example, you have to like elves or tauren – yet to play a Warrior, you can like any race. Aesthetic preferences, therefore, can partially explain the Warrior population. I’ve often asked; Do people decide race, or class, first? Does one trump the other or do they have different weightings in people’s minds? Even my present character (Troll Hunter) involved choosing my favourite race but only my second favourite class (although in the long run I found I prefer hunters anyway). Some combinations also lock in better; Orc Warriors are more popular than Undead Warriors, yet Orc Warlocks are less popular than Undead Warlocks.

It’d also be interested to see how different servers differ in their A:H balance. I’m lucky to be on Frostmourne which is an extremely well-balanced server. The community is different to a lot of servers in that it’s largely Australian and Singaporean, with a decent number of New Zealanders and Late-night Americans/Canadians. Maybe Singaporeans are less fascinated with the Tolkein-image, and hence less inclined to choose Alliance; Australia also has a “pro underdog” mentality that might encourage Horde. Maybe there are other dimensions that makes our server more balanced than most.

Good topic.

Personally, I like almost every boss encounter in AQ. Viscidus is a bit poorly tuned, but the only fight I specifically dislike doing is Ouro. Because of the randomness and our brute-force strategy, it feels like we've never actually learned the encounter. We just kill him slightly faster than he kills us. If we're lucky, 3-5 people survive the scarabs too!

Skeram, Sartura, Huhuran, Viscidus and especially Emps and C'thun are all great fights in my book. Well designed and difficulty-wise where they should be (Viscidus being the stupid exception, although I'm Horde, so I don't have any direct issues with the fight).

Apart from the trashaton after Emps which has already been covered, the only thing I can put my finger on as a negative is the psychological effect of the instance on people. I think the actual dungeon looks cool, but consider the concept for a second: You're going deep down inside a bug's hole. Molten Core had a lot of the same concept, and people say a lot of the same things about MC and AQ. BWL and Naxx on the other hand, people usually prefer spending an evening in either of these. My theory is that it's, unlike MC/AQ, because of their structural design and conceptual locations. Of course they're on some instance server seperated from the world. But once you're inside, you're ascending a spire (or a floating citadel) and continously going upwards (Vael->Suppresion room, Firemaw->Ebonroc, or in Naxx: Lower tier bosses->Saph/Kel). I think these are two things that, while not always mentioned directly, often have a subconcious impact of people's impression of the zone.

TL;DR version: In MC/AQ you move downwards in naturally designed caves. Bad. :angry: In BWL/Naxx you move upwards in building-like hallways and corridors. Good :woop: