WoW forums depress me

[DeeBye]

Charis, your first instanced dungeon will be the Wailing Caverns.  You should be able to go for it with a party of 5 level 18'ers, IF they play expertly.

I haven't tried the Wailing Caverns yet.

Do you think it would at all be possible to do the WC quests solo? If so, what lvl do you think you'd need to be? I'd like to attempt them solo at some point (lvl 21 now), so I can get a feel for it before partying up.

Plus, I'm a lousy party player and I don't want to piss anyone off :)

[Bolty]

WC? Solo? Oh, around level 30 maybe, and if you're very patient.

See, all the monsters there are plus (+) monsters, which means they have a TON of hit points.

-Bolty

[Tal]

(Nachos and tomato salsa)

[--Pete]

Hi,

This is a great place, where even a brain dead rant like mine can bring out some great analysis and discussion :)

Thank you, all, for the wonderful discussions on the game. But, note that I wasn't really talking about the game (which is nowhere near finished and which I am not anywhere near up to speed on the finished parts). I was talking about the official game fora, and the prevalent opinions there.

But the interesting posts my rant generated (through no credit on my part) were a great "welcome back from Atlanta" present :)

--Pete

[Jarulf]

[OT: how did you get into the beta Jarulf? You're not American?]

Blizzard asked if I wanted to be in it. I can think of several reasons. MVP status would be one. By the way, I know of a bunch of other people from Sweden in the beta as well. They are in there from the fan site program I think.

[TaMeOlta]

Great :huh: Now the going price on Jarulf mercs in D2 are going to skyrocket ..... thanks ! ;) :P

[Iolair]

This makes me wonder why on earth they then say 'only people from NA can participate', when clearly some people from Europe are in the beta.
And it also makes me wonder why they put that limitation up. Why not just open it for all countries and then sort the people they want?

And why does Korean need it's own beta? Is that only a sales-trick?

*goes back to a corner, grumbles and feels very European for some bizarre reason*

[Brother Laz]

This makes me wonder why on earth they then say 'only people from NA can participate', when clearly some people from Europe are in the beta. And it also makes me wonder why they put that limitation up.

Easy. They are American, so they have a natural dislike of all other rich countries and especially those that handle thier social and environmental issues better than their own Most Civilized Christian Nation On Earth.

Just count the number of 'Europe sux', 'we shoudl nuke eurpoe' and similar threads on the B.net forums, and find the post by Gfraizer of all people about how Europeans should keep their mouth shut because of WW2. Newsflash: the USA almost started WW3 in '62.

[DarkCrown]

It's amusing to see someone demonstrate in two sentences both that some Americans are ignorant and predjudiced and that this condition is not uniquely American.

-DarkCrown

[--Pete]

Hi,

No. It's because they've run into Europeans like you and figured "Why bother?". Your type spoiled it for the other 99%. Congratulations, you have just made it into the "sewage that makes all the wine bad" category.

--Pete

[Brother Laz]

It's amusing to see someone demonstrate in two sentences both that some Americans are ignorant and predjudiced and  that this condition is not uniquely American.

-DarkCrown

Nah, actually I think we can coexist peacefully, unless a certain someone at Blizzard withholds the best game since sliced bread from us, and/or they beat us at soccer, at which point they deserve a tsunami like the one that sunk Atlantis. :D

......

Actually, the real reason is that US people slobber over Blizzard games, and so do the Koreans and even the Chinese, but their sales comparatively suck in Europe. There is only 1 Euro server in D2, compared to 2 US ones and 3 Asian ones. Thusly...

[TriggerHappy]

Actually, the real reason is that US people slobber over Blizzard games, and so do the Koreans and even the Chinese, but their sales comparatively suck in Europe.

Is that your opinion, or do you have some data to back up your claim?

[Nystul]

Is that your opinion, or do you have some data to back up your claim?

Isn't it self-evident? Korea and North America get a simultaneous release, because Blizzard needs to sell well in both of these regions. Europe is an afterthought by comparison. In the 15-25 demographic, the number of Koreans who play MMOGs is something like 80%...

[NuurAbSaal]

hmmm, so all I need are a couple (read 50,000) of fellow Europeans who pre-order WoW and we'll get our own Beta running in two days, release date of the final localized product-> Oct 2004.

Right, so I got myself. One. My brother. Two...

...


Excuse me, I got some phone calls to make

:lol:


Greetings

Nuur

Edit: Me no speak Teh English

[SoulEdge]

Right, so I got myself. One. My brother. Two...

...


Excuse me, I got some phone calls to make

Count me in...

...three

...

maybe I should start making phone calls too...

:lol:

[apandapion]

This makes me wonder why on earth they then say 'only people from NA can participate', when clearly some people from Europe are in the beta.

Just to keep things simple. "If you're not from north america and you haven't been invited, you're not getting in" would be more accurate, but simplifying it to "Only those from NA need apply" is perfectly reasonable. If you make it look like there's any slack in the nationality of those who get in, you just get more begging emails.

And it also makes me wonder why they put that limitation up. Why not just open it for all countries and then sort the people they want?

Can you really not think of a reason? I can think of several. They're probably paying attention to the ping times, and having people from across the world, especially when most of these people will be playing on a closer (local) server when the game launches. You want to beta the server under the condtions that it will be playing under, and those conditions are : most people play on the closest (or a rather close) server to them.

Having people from other countries can (does not always) raise communication barriers.

NDAs may be more complicated on a multi-country basis. Having a couple trusted non-americans might be ok here, but having lots of people from lots of different countries might be a legal fiasco. On a similar legal issue, they may have concerns about shipping the beta to countries where reverse-engineering laws and hacking laws are different. Wise hackers hack outside their own country to complicate legal issues - shipping the beta to remote locations with laxidasical law enforcement is simply not wise. Better safe than sorry would be my watchword - you'll find plenty of beta testers in the US. Instead of hiring a fleet of lawyers to explore the legal issues, why not just keep it close to home?

And why does Korean need it's own beta? Is that only a sales-trick?

Korea is both a very different market and a very large market. Testing specifically in korea is a good move.

[Brista]

/delurk

I've mainly been playing Star Wars: Galaxies over the last few months.

The forum experience has been interesting....

I can quite understand where the notion of listening to one's customers comes from, Sony has its roots in electronic goods and the needs of the average consumer are no doubt very different from the aspirations of the most technically adept engineer

Problem is it doesn't work in a competitive game environment

What do the customers want?

Well most of them want more damage, more invulnerability, more success for less effort and for everyone else to be nerfed

What's been fascinating to me about the SWG experience is that the developers seem to be taking such input on board and doing their best to satisfy it

I'd kind of always assumed that most game designers felt a very healthy disregard for the aspirations of gamers in much the same way as sports referees are disinclined to seek player opinion on whether a foul was or was not committed

It's a shame in some senses as the flawed development process results in a weaker product. The developers have simply given too much to the players and now everyone's stuck in the endgame and bored. Bit like D2 and the secret cow level

So what's this all got to do with WoW?

Well, it seems to me that posters like Pete and others on the official boards have a chance to wrestle control away from people who post stupidly but often to the posters who put some thought in. I probably won't take a great deal of interest until the game gets released since I'm not in the Beta and I strongly suspect that any such battle will have been won or lost by the time I'm playing

If you'll forgive me, I will now commit the triple sin of quoting myself, posting about an OT game and making an already lengthy post even longer :D

Here's part of a post I made yesterday on the Star Wars Galaxies forums in response to a thread wondering why the exact same threads with the exact same arguments get posted over and over, the precise subject being the nerfing of the Combat Medic class:

In response to the thread's question the reason people won't just listen is that most posters perceive that Developer reaction is shaped by post quantity not quality

In other words if I start a "Nerf Cm" thread and one of you posts an intelligent rebuttal, it's more effective to me to just start a new "Nerf Cm" thread than to address your points

The 9 consecutive nerf CM threads in the [PvP] forum that one of the posters here mentioned are probably more effective, even if they are "OMG I just got [instakilled]" type posts, than a single well-reasoned post would be

The recent reversal of the crafting experimentation changes due to popular outcry is a case in point. The Weaponsmiths (with gated resources) would have been adversely affected and successfully orchestrated a big forum reaction against the changes. Many of the ensuing protests came from professions like Architect and Artisan that actually benefitted from the changes

Very very few of the posts in the campaign were intelligent and yet it was successful

What I would like to see in general is more developer feedback in the forums. Thunderheart [player turned Community Liaison Officer] does a really great job but I get the feeling they hired him cos none of the other Devs want to talk to us

I think the Mods need to be a bit fiercer about enforcing constructive debate by simply deleting new threads about current topics. No way should a forum let 9 consecutive threads about the same issue be posted - just keep the first one and delete the other 8. This should help people develop their forum skills as well as improving the standards of these boards

For Correspondents [player advocates for each class - very useful idea] I would like them to be urged to bat for their own side a bit less and work out balanced solutions more. If all the correspondents could agree on solutions that solution would have a lot of weight with the wider community. For instance, the Combat Medic correspondent posting things like "sorry guys, we've wrangled out a CM balancing proposal and I had to give way on [X advantage]. What I gained for us was [Y advantage]

Alternatively the Devs could just stop listening to the players completely, a method which I'd prefer personally to the current whine-driven system

That's Star Wars Galaxies, that I gather is fairly typical of MMOs in general, and that I hope is not what WoW will become

I really do think it's in your hands

Cheers for now, I'll be back more once more Europeans are able to play :)

/re-lurk

[Guest]

Most long term players in DAoC(including me) think that Mythic pandered to the loudest complaints rather focused on making wise improvements.
Everyone thinks responsive developers are great, untill they find one.

The problem is volume of feedback does overwhelm quality feedback. Its the nature of feedback, and you really cant change it. If you look for quality over quanity you will naturally end up with biased imput. If you look for quanity over quality you end up with "make me better, nerf everyone else.".

What you really need is developers that use in depth automated tracking of whats happening in the game. If you stick true to your design principals this is the best way to see if your on track.

Player imput should come from designated serious players who are unknown to the public as testers. You dont change the game based on these testers imput, but rather you take there suggestions and compare them to your tracking data.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Well, it seems to me that posters like Pete and others on the official boards have a chance to wrestle control away from people who post stupidly but often to the posters who put some thought in. I probably won't take a great deal of interest until the game gets released since I'm not in the Beta and I strongly suspect that any such battle will have been won or lost by the time I'm playing

The forum structure does not encourage rational discussion. There is no search feature. There is no way to mark *posts* as read (threads are marked *read* until someone adds to them). There is no real way to keep track of what threads you've participated. There is no posting limit (I watched one evening as one poster posted a comment on every thread of the first two pages of the suggestion forum. Most of his posts consisted of a two or three word agreement or disagreement). There is no enforcement by the mods to keep posts in the appropriate forum, which leads to cross posting and most posts going into the general forum (the only forum where Blizz's presence is obvious).

So, the fora are little more than a mob yelling at each other.

However, even when there are rational posts, many of them are on the "opposite side". People give reasonable arguments in well written posts as to why this or that feature of the game is too hard, or too time consuming, or requires too much micro-management, or whatever. The problems there aren't poor communication skills or poor reasoning. The problem there is that these people see a game as something to buy, to "beat" as fast as possible, and to throw aside for their next plaything. They are concerned only with the "destination" (as if *completing* a game were some kind of praiseworthy goal) instead of the journey. And, unfortunately, they represent the majority of the buying public. However, when the game comes out that is tailored to their desires, they then gripe because there wasn't enough "gameplay" in it.

Those few rational posts are then buried in an avalanche of crap, which pushes them off the front pages. And since there seems to be an new-Internet culture that says looking on page 2 of a post list is somehow shameful, the process starts over every day.

So, the task is fruitless, pointless, and repetitive. Suitable for a Greek myth, but hardly fun for everyday life. And, given that I've yet to recognize another Lounge person posting on the official boards, it feels pretty lonely as well.

Indeed the battles will have been lost by the time the game is in retail. It may have been lost before the game was conceived. The game WoW could have been, like the war games, like the flight simulators, might be a victim to the "need" for a game to be mastered in an evening. The "need" for any jerk with no skill and no desire to work at developing any skill to still be able to "complete" the game. And, in that sense, I find myself agreeing with the PvPers. If Blizzard is going to make the game so easy that even a solo playing moron can "do it all", then perhaps the only challenge is other people. However, knowing from experience and report just how much PvP in RPGs is used solely for griefing, saying that PvP is the only good part of the game is saying the game sucks.


So, I'm still hopeful but pessimistic. There isn't a single Blizzard product, other than StarCraft that wasn't severely damaged by catering to the desires of the "buy, try, and toss" crowd. The original Diablo came close, but that was the work of a company Blizz acquired when the job was almost done. And all those people are gone.

I'll keep posting my suggestions and opinions on the "official" boards. Being who I am, I don't think I could avoid that and not have a coronary :) But I think that that is a lost game.

--Pete