10-08-2004, 02:30 PM
I posted this to the Beta forums:
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I feel that there are three main areas that should be improved to retain people for this game.
1) Death. This has been a big issue in this post, and rightfully so. I'm OK with leaving it as is, maybe that will appeal to more people. However, for people coming from other MMOs, they expect to mean something. Usually, it's XP,cash, or both. I'm in favor of making it an XP penalty to have the spirit healer fix you, a cash penalty (in the form of missing stamina that can be healed for a cost by an NPC) for a ghost run back, and no penalty (except rez sickness) for a ressurection. This would also make ressers more in demand and keep groups together instead of everyone waiting for people to run back.
2) Risk/Reward. I find that there is a lack of this in game. Part of it has to do with death, but a lot of it has to do with challenge. the crux of it is this: If I take down a mob 5 levels over my level I get minimally more than if I kill a mob 5 levels below my level. If I pull a camp and 2 monters come at me (joined, or call for help) I get no bonus for getting both of them. Usually MMOs have rewarded overcoming challanges of this nature for compensating for increased risk of death or increased down time. In WoW, there is little risk and little reward.
3) Forced Servers. Esablished guilds cannot afford to choose WoW even if they can swallow the first two pills because it will fragment their player base. Sure, many guilds aren't global, and within the US at elast we can choose East/West, but if this doesn't change the big boys won't be playing.
In conclusion, I'm sad, I wanted to love this game (and part of me really did), but I cannot play it seriously because of the reasosn stated above. I'm sure many people will say we like a game with low risk/low reward. WoW then has found it's casual playerbase then, but I'll say this ... Diablo 2 had more risk/reward, more in depth systems, and no server restrictions. It was also free to play after the initial game purchase.
WoW doesn't have enough to hold me if it doesn't change.
-MB
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I feel that there are three main areas that should be improved to retain people for this game.
1) Death. This has been a big issue in this post, and rightfully so. I'm OK with leaving it as is, maybe that will appeal to more people. However, for people coming from other MMOs, they expect to mean something. Usually, it's XP,cash, or both. I'm in favor of making it an XP penalty to have the spirit healer fix you, a cash penalty (in the form of missing stamina that can be healed for a cost by an NPC) for a ghost run back, and no penalty (except rez sickness) for a ressurection. This would also make ressers more in demand and keep groups together instead of everyone waiting for people to run back.
2) Risk/Reward. I find that there is a lack of this in game. Part of it has to do with death, but a lot of it has to do with challenge. the crux of it is this: If I take down a mob 5 levels over my level I get minimally more than if I kill a mob 5 levels below my level. If I pull a camp and 2 monters come at me (joined, or call for help) I get no bonus for getting both of them. Usually MMOs have rewarded overcoming challanges of this nature for compensating for increased risk of death or increased down time. In WoW, there is little risk and little reward.
3) Forced Servers. Esablished guilds cannot afford to choose WoW even if they can swallow the first two pills because it will fragment their player base. Sure, many guilds aren't global, and within the US at elast we can choose East/West, but if this doesn't change the big boys won't be playing.
In conclusion, I'm sad, I wanted to love this game (and part of me really did), but I cannot play it seriously because of the reasosn stated above. I'm sure many people will say we like a game with low risk/low reward. WoW then has found it's casual playerbase then, but I'll say this ... Diablo 2 had more risk/reward, more in depth systems, and no server restrictions. It was also free to play after the initial game purchase.
WoW doesn't have enough to hold me if it doesn't change.
-MB
-< You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever >-