So I gotta say even I was fairly surprised at this announcement. And of course both the twittersphere and the blogsphere have exploded over the news. Some of my favorite bloggers have expressed their concerns, and a few as well whom are long time LOTRO subscribers whom don’t think it’s a problem at all. So what’s my take?
So you may have noticed somewhat of a turmoil over the blog sphere this past week on Blizzard’s latest virtual good offer – the Celestial Steed. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other about the horse (well I do, but that’s not the point), but it’s been fascinating reading some of the responses, and a few I must credit for spawning some insight of my own. And it’s that insight I wish to talk about this morning (when I should be coding).
Hopefully you recognize the tongue-in-cheek nature of the title, but if you don’t, don’t despair, it’s still early and it’s still Monday. But this was something that occurred to me over the weekend, and I stewed over it enough that I finally decided on Monday I’d have to put up at least a bit of a post.
The last tour of pre-cataclysm azeroth continues! This edition we’ll be leaving the wheat fields of the human heartlands and traveling to the shrouded forest glades of the night elves. But not without a brief stop at the capital city of the dwarves – Ironforge!
Crunch time at Windstorm also took me away from the Tour of Azeroth, and so we are off to a somewhat sporadic start. Hopefully, things will even out over the long run. I’ve also decided to start calling these chapters, instead of days, as who knows how many days will elapse between posts, or even how many days a single post will cover. When we left off, Delsenora was level 8, and still had some things to do in Elwynn Forest.
Delsenora - Our young tour guide
So the first thing one has to decide when touring Azeroth is where to begin. Will we be Horde or Alliance? Which race and class to choose for our journey? Well for me, World of Warcraft will always begin in Elwynn Forest. This was where I started when I set foot in Azeroth for the first time during the friends and family alpha, back in 2004, and it will always be an iconic zone for World of Warcraft.
I could have taken one of the other races and brought them over to Elwynn for the beginning, but I am trying, for no particular reason, to preserve the sort of classic beginning WoW experience. So human it would be. And for personal reasons, namely that I’ve had my fill recently of melee classes, and already have a 74 hunter, I’ve elected to go with a mage. So our guide for the tour of Azeroth will be a young female mage by the name of Delsenora. And yes, 100 geek points to anyone that recognizes the origin of the name. And though we, the player’s of WoW and the witnesses to her journey are long time veterens and know every inch of this land by memory, she gazes at the world with fresh young eyes full of wonder and eager for adventure.
Our journey begins in Northshire Abbey
For a long time now, the guards have been gone. All the time of my youth, the protectors of Elwynn Forest – the Guards of Stormwind Castle, had been a reassuring presence in our village. But now they have been called away, for reasons we know nothing of. All that we know is that all around us, evil and unrest has been growing in our once peaceful forest. And with no one from Stormwind left to defend us, the task falls to us – it’s citizens. I had heard that Northshire Abbey was besieged with difficulties, and so, armed with only the most rudimentary knowledge of magic, it is there I have decided to begin my journey.
Our first quest - take a few steps forward and get another quest
Upon arriving at Northshire Abbey, it was immediately obvious there was, in fact, plenty of trouble, and plenty of work for an aspiring sorceress such as myself. The first first thing I’m asked to do is to clear out some kobolds from a nearby mine. Kobolds are filthy, disgusting creatures that resemble nothing so much as an upright, bipedal, poorly dressed rat. Though my knowledge of my craft is still small, the kobolds are weak and unorganized, and I make a significant dent in their numbers. Besides the kobolds, there are wolves to clear, and a threat that is new to the abbey, one that is organized — the Defias Brotherhood.
Um.. there are a LOT of bad guys over there..
At Ensemble Studios, when we were working on the Halo MMO, we studied Elwynn Forest extensively. I remember having an argument with Jerome Jones, one of our designers there, about how early you get that first Defias quest. I felt sure that you didn’t get the quest until you were at least level 4. I was wrong though. You can get that quest as early as level 2, and if you were to immediately embark upon that quest, you would be extremely sad. The Defias are large in number, eager to aggro, and level 4. Despite this obvious misstep by Blizzard in their starting zone design, WoW has still managed to do okay. 
Despite their organization, I manage to deal with a goodly number of the Defias bandits, and even manage to rescue the grape harvest of one of the locals at the Abbey. This seemed to especially please the clergy of the abbye, especially one Brother whom appears to spend a little too much time up in the bell tower, secluded from his fellow brethren, sampling the wines of the local orchards. The leader of the local Defias gang was a name named Garrick Padfoot. And though the task was a grisly one, after some work I delivered his head to the leader of the abbey militia.
Garrick and his henchman
Forty years from now, if I can still sit at a computer, I can assure you I will remember both the name of that bandit in Northshire Abbey, and can walk you unerringly to his location. These things we can never be rid of, lol.
Soon enough though, things were under control at the abbey, and I was asked to report to Marshal Dugan, in Goldshire. Once there, I found that they too, were understaffed and underarmed, and being beset by troubles from all sides. Another mine cleared of more kobolds, and a new menace I’d not encounted before (but oh, don’t we love them..), a race of fish-looking, angry creatures known as Murlocs. In fact, one of the things I discovered while assisting the militia of Goldshire is that the Murlocs are swimming up the river from Redridge, and are attacking in ever greater numbers. With the Murlocs pressing on one side, Kobolds on the other, and Defias roaming everywhere througough the forest, the folk of Goldshire are in great danger indeed.
Stormwind City!
Eventually my quests took me to the great city of Stormwind, and it does indeed live up to the grandeur of its name. Shops and stores of every variety, teeming with people, and home to some of the most learned wizards in the land, I could fill this entire journal up with descriptions of its wonders. But my hand grows tired, the hour late, and I shall only say that if you have not yet visited it, it is a wonder for any age.
After my duties were done in Stormwind, I returned to Goldshire, and resumed assisting the folk there. It would appear there’s a logging camp in great peril from the Murlocs that have taken up resident close by, and their guardsmen could use some assistance. It is there my journeys will continue.
At the end of the first night..
I finished up the night at level 8 (it was late.. 
), and about halfway through the Elwynn Forest content. I picked up a robe to replace the Apprentice Robes that make up my starter gear, and have taken Tailoring and Herbalism for my professions. The flowers will be sold, and the tailoring will give us something fun to do on the side, and to help with the character. I am, at least so far, intent upon not twinking the character with golds and items from high-level and well meaning alts. Of course, I reserve the right to discard all such nobel aspirations in the face of practicality at my whim. In the next post, we’ll wrap up Elwynn Forest, and set out to the heartland of the Eastern Kingdoms – Westfall.
One discussion that is as old as the genre itself when it comes to MMO’s is that of solo play vs. group play. Probably no other topic stirs as much contentiousness and strikes closer to the core of people’s playstyles than that of to what extent do you support, encourage, or even require players to play in groups versus playing solo. I personally, in true diplomatic fashion, am a fan of both. Some of the very best experiences I’ve had in MMO’s have come out of being in a group. Not just the social aspects of it — of accomplishing something amazing and having people there to share it with — but that incredible feeling of satisfaction that comes from being on a team where each member of the team has their role and each of you performed your role expertly, and in doing so, accomplished something really hard. These experiences are why I’m still a huge fan of class based systems (and always will be), and why I feel strongly about having group roles.
But on the other hand, easily over ninety-percent of the time I play in MMO’s these days I play solo. For all the reasons that just about every solo player lists, my lifestyle is completely in-conducive to most MMO’s requirements for group play. I have neither the time nor the patience to sit and do nothing while either attempting to form a group or to wait for one to be formed. If I’m in a group, it is entirely likely I could be called away at a moment’s notice to take care of some real life crisis of the moment. There is absolutely no block of time in my day that I can dedicate three hours to a single session. So I have argurably the most pathetically geared level 80 warrior in all of existence because I got to level 80, looked around, saw no real content for me as a solo player, and so promptly started working on an alt.
So it’s a dilemma from a developer’s standpoint. We know that people that form ties and become a part of the community in your game will want to stay in your game, and that’s something you want. So you want to encourage group play. But at the same time, you have to, or you should, at least, recognize that the average age of your player is maturing, and if you want really broad appeal, you simply can’t require people to group up after they’ve reached some certain level to progress their character. One of the things that always has me shaking my head is when people talk about how “back in the day” how awesome it was when the MMO you were in simply required you to group to progress. It wasn’t even a question, so it was just inherently understood you had to group to progress, and so everyone did it. What those people fail to realize is that yes, the people they played with did know that. But the vast majorify of the people that got to whatever level the content decided you had to group to progress in the game simply left the game. Which is why those games never had more than about 200,000 subscribers. It wasn’t until WoW came along and said no matter what class you play, you can solo the entire game, that all those thousands and then millions of people that started the game stayed in the game. Because they didn’t have to leave their comfort zone. They could play the game they wanted to play.
So I have, in the past, already talked about systems that I think could encourage grouping, and teach players very early in their career that it’s okay to group, and how we as designers can go much further than we currently are in removing the barriers. But today I’m going to talk about going in the other direction. About doing more to support the solo player. I’m going to talk about the privateer.
So there probably isn’t any other MMO out there right now that I’ve been following more closely and waiting with such high hope for than Aion. Since I read the first announcements in 2007, and saw the first videos in 2008, I’ve loved everything I’ve seen about the look, the art style, and the prospects of adding something really new to the genre — flying PvP combat. And yes, before we go any further, I know flying and combat has been around for some time in MMO’s, but in both CoH and WoW, flying is an add-on. It’s not considered a cornerstone of the game. The first videos I saw of Aion promised that this game was about flying combat.
So when the first closed betas rolled around, I stayed by my guns of trying to avoid the hype and to play in the betas. But when the FilePlanet beta opened up, and all you needed was a FilePlanet subscription to get a key, well even I could stand it no longer, and so into the beta I went. But none of that matters to you. All you want to know.. and anyone that’s not actually in the beta really wants to know is — if I liked WoW, am I going to like this? Well you’ll have to read a bit more to get my answer.
So by now, most everyone knows that Ensemble Studios was at one time working on an MMO. The concept art was leaked out all over the net last year, and eventually we confirmed not only the MMO but all of our internal projects when we let the last guy from Gamasutra tour our offices. While I wasn’t one of the original four that started the prototype, I was one of the earliest programmers brought on to help ramp the project up. And for two years, from early 2005 to late 2007, I worked on that MMO, which was codenamed Titan. Interesting tidbit — the project was originally codenamed Orion. But news that we were working on an MMO called Orion was leaked to the internet. To help dissuay the leak, we changed the project’s codename from Orion to Titan. Though the project never saw the light of day, during the years we worked on it, we did an extraordinary amount of work. And out of those efforts everyone involved took away some important lessons. I plan to do a few of these types of posts, and share some of the things I learned while myself and a team of people worked to figure out how to build the perfect WoW killer.
There’s been quite a lot of discussion lately over the current state of WoW — most of it centered around how it has become too easy. Tobold recently posted a great commentary on its current state of failing to challenge people. And GameSpy posted a very similar article on not just twinking your character, but on the myriad of ways that are available to players to make the game easier to them. From extensive online databases (thottbot, wowhead) that answer every possible question for every quest, to mods and addons that point you directly to where you have to go at every conceivable moment. And you can’t hardly swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting another blog from someone who’s fed up with how easy the end-game content is screaming about moving on. Even Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler, has recently posted on the WoW forums that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if some of you that consume every bit of new content we can produce take a break and try something else for awhile. Now I worked with Greg for quite a long time over at Ensemble, and when I read this post, I can fairly hear the frustration in his voice at the throngs of forum posters standing beating down his virtual door waving pitchforks and shouting MORE MORE MORE! So what’s going on here? Hit the break to hear my thoughts..
