06-26-2004, 02:59 PM
Hi,
While the rest state system is more forgiving this push, it is still flawed in that it is bieing used to 'force' the players to go do something that they have not 'desire' to do. They need to take a harder look at how to achieve this in the game and make it more of an immersion in a role playing world than tricks to force the players into doing this stuff with game mechanics that break the suspension of disbelief (like when was the last time a warrior or rouge stopped to drink water while other classes are having to guzzle the stuff constantly).
Excellent point and good food for thought. WoW is not a role playing game and Blizzard seems to have no clue as to how to make it one. The only "progress" is a character's level and the experience needed to get to the next level. But that experience comes almost entirely from killing critters and from the bonus from quests that are mostly about killing critters. Even the points used to learn skills like picking flowers or sewing linen come from killing critters.
So, Blizzard started with the concept of a game that is just a bigger dungeon crawl than all the dungeon crawls it has done in the past. They put it into the world from a strategy game. A world at war, no less. So that all the emphasis is on fighting. Then they put in a few "non essential" skills, but for the most part, make those skills pretty well useless by either having NPC vendors carry better products or by making it impossible to actually trade in the items generated by those skills. They build vast areas for fighting, and even encourage fighting (albeit, dueling and PvP) in the towns and cities. But they give us very little incentive to go to those cities.
If one were to turn one's imagination off, and look at WoW strictly from a competitive view, a few things become clear. There is no advantage to role playing, there is no advantage to visiting cities or interacting with NPCs at a level any higher than that of D1. Sell your finds, see if they have anything for you, buy the odd "book" (training).
Now, on this flawed foundation, Blizzard is trying to add content not by making it pertinent to the core game (which is getting to max level as fast as possible so that WoW can join the rest of the "beaten and finished" games on the top shelf) but by imposing penalties for *not* going through the motions of one "role playing" action.
The problem, at root, seems to be that Blizzard either has no fundamental concept of what they want this game to be, or has no idea of how to get there. Many of the stated goals (from their websites and from their posters) are in direct conflict with the actuality of the implementation of the game. The constant flux of skills, skill points, attributes, abilities, talents, and how these things are increased and developed indicates a poorly thought out concept of the position the avatar plays in this game. And since the avatar is central and fundamental to a role playing game (after all, "role playing" *is* nothing more than being your avatar for a while), it is no wonder that WoW fails as such.
When Blizzard stops thinking in terms of "how can we force players to do something other than level grind" and starts thinking in terms of "how can we make something other than a maxed out critter killer a valid game goal", then possibly they will be able to implement a rest state that will make sense. And such a rest state will *not* upset much of anyone.
--Pete
While the rest state system is more forgiving this push, it is still flawed in that it is bieing used to 'force' the players to go do something that they have not 'desire' to do. They need to take a harder look at how to achieve this in the game and make it more of an immersion in a role playing world than tricks to force the players into doing this stuff with game mechanics that break the suspension of disbelief (like when was the last time a warrior or rouge stopped to drink water while other classes are having to guzzle the stuff constantly).
Excellent point and good food for thought. WoW is not a role playing game and Blizzard seems to have no clue as to how to make it one. The only "progress" is a character's level and the experience needed to get to the next level. But that experience comes almost entirely from killing critters and from the bonus from quests that are mostly about killing critters. Even the points used to learn skills like picking flowers or sewing linen come from killing critters.
So, Blizzard started with the concept of a game that is just a bigger dungeon crawl than all the dungeon crawls it has done in the past. They put it into the world from a strategy game. A world at war, no less. So that all the emphasis is on fighting. Then they put in a few "non essential" skills, but for the most part, make those skills pretty well useless by either having NPC vendors carry better products or by making it impossible to actually trade in the items generated by those skills. They build vast areas for fighting, and even encourage fighting (albeit, dueling and PvP) in the towns and cities. But they give us very little incentive to go to those cities.
If one were to turn one's imagination off, and look at WoW strictly from a competitive view, a few things become clear. There is no advantage to role playing, there is no advantage to visiting cities or interacting with NPCs at a level any higher than that of D1. Sell your finds, see if they have anything for you, buy the odd "book" (training).
Now, on this flawed foundation, Blizzard is trying to add content not by making it pertinent to the core game (which is getting to max level as fast as possible so that WoW can join the rest of the "beaten and finished" games on the top shelf) but by imposing penalties for *not* going through the motions of one "role playing" action.
The problem, at root, seems to be that Blizzard either has no fundamental concept of what they want this game to be, or has no idea of how to get there. Many of the stated goals (from their websites and from their posters) are in direct conflict with the actuality of the implementation of the game. The constant flux of skills, skill points, attributes, abilities, talents, and how these things are increased and developed indicates a poorly thought out concept of the position the avatar plays in this game. And since the avatar is central and fundamental to a role playing game (after all, "role playing" *is* nothing more than being your avatar for a while), it is no wonder that WoW fails as such.
When Blizzard stops thinking in terms of "how can we force players to do something other than level grind" and starts thinking in terms of "how can we make something other than a maxed out critter killer a valid game goal", then possibly they will be able to implement a rest state that will make sense. And such a rest state will *not* upset much of anyone.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?