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Community => Random => Topic started by: SirFranc on April 06, 2011, 01:34:20 am
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Hi! being subscribed to the Q&A WoW dev group pays, since i get at times interesting things from the Devs of WoW that answers the user question, and much stuff that usually isn't said, now is!
I'll post here the most notable answers I read at times, and i want you to have your say :D
Q: Is it possible to let the players create/edit their own looks? - Zed Loft (Taiwan), Vysha (NA/ANZ), Ráchel (EU|German)
A: As we said in an earlier Q&A, we definitely hear loud and clear from players that they want more customization for their character. This is something we want to provide, but we want to do it in the right way. Consider the Barber Shop feature. It lets you change your character's hair, but there’s not a lot of gameplay to it. We're not sure that feature really added a lot to the game in retrospect. Is WoW more fun for you now that you have a Barber Shop? Are you more likely to keep playing because of it? Maybe, but it wasn’t a cheap feature to add in terms of development time. Dumping a bunch of dyes on the game might have a similar effect, where some players might have fun playing around with the system for a bit, but a lot of players might change their colors once or twice and then forget about the feature after that. Now, not every aspect of the game needs a ton of depth and a lot of interesting decisions, but we tend to attract more players to a feature the more robust the feature is.
We also think it's fair to argue that the game just needs more armor and weapon art. As we said above, we deliver a lot of art these days, but we also produce an enormous number of new items every expansion or patch and it’s understandably disappointing whenever items use the same art. It would be really cool if not every mage or priest converged on the same look after a given expansion or patch.
This particular answer made me frown, honestly, Aesthetic is a big part of a MMO since you're playing your avatar and you want it to be as close as possible to what you like it to be, this is the basic principle of even creating a character.
According to blizzard, they clearly stated that whatever thing does not require grind and won't be the reason for 500 hours of farming is not actually worthing to be done, and that says also why WoW is going to get only worse, because the mental approach is that, "let's do stuff to make people grind"
Everyone has been asking for new character models/ more customization, starting from asymmetrical faces, passing through more decent hairstiles (some of them are just bad looking, and some new haircut have a really poor UV mapping also) not to mention the never underrated human male (which is horrible, and almost everyone agrees on that)
I don't want to make it a hater thread, but really while i smiled on some answers, this one made me really disappointed, why saying that no one really used the barber shop? people actually did use it, you use it once, or twice, that's what the barbershop is for, you don't HAVE to do it, but you CAN do it.
It's not about what players HAVE TO do, it's giving more possibilities to players, and in this particular case, BASIC ones, since WoW has a quite poor customization (not as poor as most MMOs around, but still sucks utterly compared to other games like RoM - which is a good game, has potential, good graphic, but they tried to make another clone of wow and failed - or Perfect World - that is sadly another stupid Korean MMO Grind-grind-grind), so I really think here Blizz would take a step backward and ask themselves WHAT is a MMO, apart from a money machine.
Q: Would it be possible for city quartermasters to sell the same equipment that guards wear? Stats wouldn't matter. - Pokemonmasta (EU|English), Tajit (NA/ANZ)
A: Cool idea. We'll talk about it.
I smiled, because the amount of work to do that is so ridicolous that nearly every private server has guard armor and npc armor unlocked, because people actually LOVE some npcs armors, and way to implement them are more than thousands. Happy to see that after only 6 years they are finally getting that.
Q: Any chance we can start heading away from WWE-esque belts? - Catriona (NA/ANZ)
A: Azeroth is stricken by a terrible plague that inflates the size of shoulders and belts over time. Our artists like the belts because they have more room for detail when they’re larger. That said, your concern is duly noted.
I laughed at this, WWE-esque belts are actually getting annoying on Cata, and way overused, Blizz may consider hiring a third artist? (can't believe they actually have more than two artists drawing the armors) Also shoulderpads are getting just ridicolous, being the only part with the helm that you can actually model doesn't mean that the shoulderpad alone must compensate for all the set's flatness.
Q: Is there any chance we could have caster weapons involved in casting animations? It would look cool to be holding a staff and casting a spell through it, at least as a customization option. - Dromanthis (NA/ANZ)
A: This is something we would dearly love to do. We agree that melee specs get to see their weapons a lot more often in combat while it's easy for casters to forget about them. It's definitely on the list, but understand that we have so many races now (and two sexes for all existing races) that the animations take more time to do right/well.
Uhm i wonder if WE can actually do this.... i want to know Jack's opinion about this!!
Last Q&A
Q: Will enchanters be getting back the ability to make wands? - Trustybee (Taiwan)
A: We have been discussing what role in the game wands are supposed to fill. We generally consider it a failure these days if a caster ever wants to wand for dps instead of using their spells. Working the wand into the cast animation (as in the question above) is one idea. In any event, we want to figure out what we want wands to do before we give them any more prominence.
Nostalgy... so much nostalgy.... when wands were actually used in Vanilla...
Here i want to know your ideas, for me they should be a source of spell power + spell eanchement (like Librams for paladins) that would make them useful and senseful, oh, also a spell on use would be cool!
That's all for now folks!
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A wand/staff could have many cool features. Not to big in power but :)
- Spell on it that works like a potion. YOu can isntant cast during combat.
- Give + power to learnd spells in one category. Staff of arcan power.
- Give you a special spell if you equip it.
In my opinion weapons should get more personal. Instead of collection on wand after another and throw it away if you find one with better stats. It would be nice if you find or better create your own master weapon step by step. Means that professions create it for you. First you have receipts for special weapons but you need much stuff for them. These weapons MUST be better then everything you can find through drops.
Then you have to raid to get the materials. After the weapon is made you can upgrade it the same way from the different professions. And for this you also need materials. So you do not raid for new weapons but for the stuff to make them. It will also give the professions more weight.
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Ye i totally agree,but so that can be for ALL wepps,like googles in engineering,u can ugrade it,but mats shoud be rly hard to get,like u said raid farming,i like it.
Or even another option that u do Qs to get and upgrade wepp,so whit any proff u can get it,still to do Qs u need items that r hard to get.
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You clearly have to make "good" quests to get access to the areas where you have to collect the matts. Also the professions should not get billd but honerd for quest work.
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I agree for farming areas but i think it woud be better if u level proffesions normally,like how it is in wow now,but u have to do hard Qs to get good recepies
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I dont meen the leveling part. You have to enhance your leveling skill with training. But you cant just buy new skills for profession but get it through Questline. Like an apprenticeship in a profession. You have to do work for the smith guild to prove you for new apprenticeship in your handicraft.
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Ye,tats what i tght to,but not all recepies,just(but not few) better ones
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Thing is: there are so many ways to improve MMORPG gaming experience and there are no strict rules of how to do everything, yet most MMOs are completely the same - because they are greedy for money.
The way these MMOs work right now are simply focused on addicting players and pumping the most money out of each player they can - see monthly fees etc. In my opinion anybody who pays on a monthly fee for games is a very stupid person. Maybe that's because I grew up with no-monthly-fees-games (also MMOs, not in the too long gone past) but it still stands valid, I will not once pay a monthly fee for a game.
The recent developments (especially in WoW) are seriously ridiculous. Over at our all-time favourite site MMOwned there was a discussion about this latest patch that re-uses old content and it was written on a more against-it kind of view - I totally had to agree with it.
The funny thing were the comments. Nearly ALL of the comments were defending the way Blizzard creates their new stuff lately (HURR DURR COLOR CHANGE + NAME CHANGE or HURR DURR MODELSWAP). I mean god damnit think about it! They are paying MONTHLY FEEs for this shit. They are paying lots of money each month to be able to play and -if it was me- I would be expecting new content updates, but not ones with fucking shit I have seen tons of times before!
(For all you MMO-noobs out there -and I know out of experience that WoW gamers are in fact the most MMO-noobs (probably this is why they dont complain about it as much or stopped playing years ago...) at the time WoW came live I was playing a MMO with most of the features WoW had until BC, no monthly fees and yet free of charge content updates, new content - I must add.)
So you might think I've gotten a little off topic now but I'm not.
Recent trends in gaming have shown: don't expect a game which is running for a few years to be good, it will only get worse (because of the greed)
On the other hand, indie developers are most of the time players themselves and what to create a game that is fun, their drive is fun, not nescessarily money (of course money but fun is more important to most). Just wanting to mention Minecraft and Magicka here ;)
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Thing is: there are so many ways to improve MMORPG gaming experience and there are no strict rules of how to do everything, yet most MMOs are completely the same - because they are greedy for money.
The way these MMOs work right now are simply focused on addicting players and pumping the most money out of each player they can - see monthly fees etc. In my opinion anybody who pays on a monthly fee for games is a very stupid person. Maybe that's because I grew up with no-monthly-fees-games (also MMOs, not in the too long gone past) but it still stands valid, I will not once pay a monthly fee for a game.
The recent developments (especially in WoW) are seriously ridiculous. Over at our all-time favourite site MMOwned there was a discussion about this latest patch that re-uses old content and it was written on a more against-it kind of view - I totally had to agree with it.
The funny thing were the comments. Nearly ALL of the comments were defending the way Blizzard creates their new stuff lately (HURR DURR COLOR CHANGE + NAME CHANGE or HURR DURR MODELSWAP). I mean god damnit think about it! They are paying MONTHLY FEEs for this shit. They are paying lots of money each month to be able to play and -if it was me- I would be expecting new content updates, but not ones with fucking shit I have seen tons of times before!
(For all you MMO-noobs out there -and I know out of experience that WoW gamers are in fact the most MMO-noobs (probably this is why they dont complain about it as much or stopped playing years ago...) at the time WoW came live I was playing a MMO with most of the features WoW had until BC, no monthly fees and yet free of charge content updates, new content - I must add.)
So you might think I've gotten a little off topic now but I'm not.
Recent trends in gaming have shown: don't expect a game which is running for a few years to be good, it will only get worse (because of the greed)
On the other hand, indie developers are most of the time players themselves and what to create a game that is fun, their drive is fun, not nescessarily money (of course money but fun is more important to most). Just wanting to mention Minecraft and Magicka here ;)
He said truth.
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Yes,i totally agree,why woud u play on retail when u can easly let nabs do that and go to some private server,blizzard now does like some games did b4 to,relese more and more expansions just to get more money,anf for vanilla wow,every online game was free at beggining so it can get players first,even guild wars and runes of magic will get some monthly fees
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For me its ok to pay for a online game. 12 till 15 euros are not the problme. If i went to cinema also 15 pp are gone. A more flexible payment for weeks or days whould be better for casual gamer like me ;)
But i agree that they develop the game to much for the masses. And the mass is the 12 till 14 year old guy with no character in real life searching for honer in the virtual one. That blizzard walk this way is bad but if you have a non pay per month game you have most time the buy item stuff concept that also lead to guys you will not play with.
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I want to reiterate blizz's ideas about "caring about player appareance"... really, still frowning at that
WTF are you playing a MMO where you can't even look decent, and no matter how many pleas, you'll still won't do a shit because it's not going to make you earn more money? (apart from people that quits/discards wow because doesn't like the customization) you don't have to make grind-based everything on wow...
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yes you do :D because if you give people 200 ways of customizing their characters right at the start, they can create the person they want to play and then have fun for a few weeks and be through with it.
Acquiring the same stuff through grinding makes the player play for a few months to get what he wants.
More time playing = more time paying :D yaaay
I'd rather enjoy games based on RP as well (especially since the genre was once called MMORPG, but I don't agree on the RPG that much anymore, these times it's more like MMOGRIND) but I don't believe this will be happening anytime soon. Or maybe anytime at all.
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yes you do :D because if you give people 200 ways of customizing their characters right at the start, they can create the person they want to play and then have fun for a few weeks and be through with it.
Acquiring the same stuff through grinding makes the player play for a few months to get what he wants.
More time playing = more time paying :D yaaay
I'd rather enjoy games based on RP as well (especially since the genre was once called MMORPG, but I don't agree on the RPG that much anymore, these times it's more like MMOGRIND) but I don't believe this will be happening anytime soon. Or maybe anytime at all.
You always speak truth. RP is dead on MMOs : /
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Bit offtopic
Thats why there are fable and gothic for me xD
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RP meens interaction between players. So offline RPGs where never RPGs.
RPG system and world games but no RP.
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The technical sense of "RP" is not dead (in a sense). "RP" (Role Playing), is both determined consciously and subconsciously. You may be playing a character that is not like yourself, but you don't talk or act as they would (that is for example, you don't 'talk like dis mon' when playing a troll): this is subconscious RP. You are playing the role of the character, without actually "being" the character. Conscious RP is a different aspect, which many seem to think to be dead at present. Conscious RP is when you're typing out your character words as if you were in-fact that character. World of Warcraft is a very subjective matter in this case. Many believe it to be a troll-fest, but others will find to be happily playing alongside other mature players, role playing to their delight. It all depends on who you interact with in the game, and how.
[/wall of text] :P
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RP = Role Play, where YOU play your character IN Character in a determined setting (mostly fantasy) that evolves around you.
A RP game (for you all, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, Ghotic, Neverwinter Nights) it's a game where the story unfolds around your character/party and you live their adventures as part of the story.
A MMORPG WAS supposed to be similar (like it was Ultima Online) but more interactive having the other party members and fighters around the world as playing characters.
This failed when the software houses discovered that they could reskin a mob and make you kill it 40 times in 40 quests, making many hours of gameplay out of a single mob. And then the "grind" started to be increased savagely.
By the time passed, Lineage 2 (a milestone of grind) came out, and was like one of the first MMOs to be successful AND grind based.
And then WoW came, they made it on purpose to make player addicted, bombed you with advertisement, and dominated the market, woho.
MMOG is the right word, not MMORPG, because the RP part has been lost during the way
That's why for instance i had to redo all gameplay in Coa to make it RP friendly, because i had to remove the grind...
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Ok couse this thread has totally changed,i gotta ask u guyz what u think about this,and pls every1 comment this:
What if everything is made whit phases(i dont know how much posible is it,and if u do like that how many GBs will it need),so when u do all Qs about some mobs,like maby troggs in valley in south Loch Modan,they acually disappaper,so grind is imposible,only if some1 keep some Q for some time,but it will be rare,atleast not much like today.
And about dailys,well easy answer,make mobs for dailys drop nothing expect almoust no gold,or rly nothing.
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Ok couse this thread has totally changed,i gotta ask u guyz what u think about this,and pls every1 comment this:
What if everything is made whit phases(i dont know how much posible is it,and if u do like that how many GBs will it need),so when u do all Qs about some mobs,like maby troggs in valley in south Loch Modan,they acually disappaper,so grind is imposible,only if some1 keep some Q for some time,but it will be rare,atleast not much like today.
And about dailys,well easy answer,make mobs for dailys drop nothing expect almoust no gold,or rly nothing.
Ok with learning english, but some BASIC grammar... please
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RP = Role Play, where YOU play your character IN Character in a determined setting (mostly fantasy) that evolves around you.
A RP game (for you all, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, Ghotic, Neverwinter Nights) it's a game where the story unfolds around your character/party and you live their adventures as part of the story.
A MMORPG WAS supposed to be similar (like it was Ultima Online) but more interactive having the other party members and fighters around the world as playing characters.
This failed when the software houses discovered that they could reskin a mob and make you kill it 40 times in 40 quests, making many hours of gameplay out of a single mob. And then the "grind" started to be increased savagely.
By the time passed, Lineage 2 (a milestone of grind) came out, and was like one of the first MMOs to be successful AND grind based.
And then WoW came, they made it on purpose to make player addicted, bombed you with advertisement, and dominated the market, woho.
MMOG is the right word, not MMORPG, because the RP part has been lost during the way
That's why for instance i had to redo all gameplay in Coa to make it RP friendly, because i had to remove the grind...
As I had explained in my previous post, gameplay and comparing RP is highly subjective. You may say that WoW is dead in the ways of RP but I may say it is still going strong. We may both be right. But saying "RP is dead" is very vague and out of context.
Also, as if a company is not out to make money? Blizzard has every right to create content for their own game, because it's theirs. You can complain about every little thing Blizzard does wrong, but what kind of irrational behavior is that if you know they won't change to your liking?
Blizzard pretty much got dibs on commercial status because of all the hype they created, and they did it well. People like to nitpick on every single thing WoW does wrong. Mostly because it's so huge of a game that it has literally outshone the spotlight itself, but what about the stuff it does right? There's too much negativity going on for people to think of the good stuff Blizzard makes. It's always a 'conspiracy' because "Blizzard is just trying to screw us in the ass with their money-sinks." WoW is also hardly a grind in its current state. You do quests from 1-85 without once having to kill mobs in between quests. It is impossible to remove "grind" from quests because essentially, there is no "grind".
Back in vanilla, quests had no train of thought, they just "were". Then TBC came along, it added some interest to people who thought vanilla's quests were boring and misplaced. Then Wrath came, and people were loving it, but again, the quests were still somewhat misplaced and random (mostly in the vanilla areas). Then everything changed in Cataclysm: quests actually had a memorable and intriguing storyline tied to them. You felt like you had a piece of the pie when you blew a crater into the Night Elf area of Stonetalon. Things started to matter. Just because a quest didn't get you from level 21 to 22 doesn't mean it's a grind. People take things for granted too easily, too quickly. But of course, that's just my opinion.
Ok couse this thread has totally changed,i gotta ask u guyz what u think about this,and pls every1 comment this:
What if everything is made whit phases(i dont know how much posible is it,and if u do like that how many GBs will it need),so when u do all Qs about some mobs,like maby troggs in valley in south Loch Modan,they acually disappaper,so grind is imposible,only if some1 keep some Q for some time,but it will be rare,atleast not much like today.
And about dailys,well easy answer,make mobs for dailys drop nothing expect almoust no gold,or rly nothing.
That is actually a very good idea. Too bad phasing isn't as advanced as it could be. It could very well be possible in the future. And I hope Blizzard does in fact do something like this (although, they kind of already started the process).
Ok with learning english, but some BASIC grammar... please
Quite irrelevant to the topic (though it has already kind of gone off-topic already; do you have to push it further?). As long as you understand (because I sure can), that's good enough. Also note that not everyone here has English as their mother language, myself included.
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Ok with learning english, but some BASIC grammar... please
Quite irrelevant to the topic (though it has already kind of gone off-topic already; do you have to push it further?). As long as you understand (because I sure can), that's good enough. Also note that not everyone here has English as their mother language, myself included.
Myself included, and i never even studied english at school (just on the field, and now living in UK i fare quite well), not asking for a master of english but i found hard to read what he meant and i didn't got the meaning, exactly because i'm not a mothertongue.
I was meaning the concept of RP applied on a game, talking about my topic as plain hate toward blizzard is just wrong, and means you didn't got really the meaning of what i wrote.
Blizzard has to earn money, but doesn't have to apply farming/grinding on every aspect of the game, like they said for customization "if we can't make it grindable it's not worthing the work" it's what pisses me off, it's a sign of blinded greed? Maybe.
WoW has no longer anything to do with RP, as RP environment it's just wrong and you would find it at times even "unfriendly" as RP environment, not that anybody cares to actually RP, mind, i know that the Roleplay era is almost over, and noboy gives anymore a damn to it.
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when we already talk about grinding,i wanted to say few words about something close to it
Whit new expansions they always add more and more quests where u have to kill 50 mobs or get some items that have 1% drop rate,if they continue like this for few years leveling whit doings quests will be same like u grind...
For your post about my grammar i have no comment...
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Thats why i do not play wow :)
Best chat was 58 :)