May News/Discussions

[oldmandennis]

And if I transferred them, I'd (probably) be paying Blizzard $25 to lose the names I love so much. This was their response pre-TBC, too. How many added races / classes will it take before they add a character slot?

Honestly, IMO WotLK is probably the last major xpac. Conan is good. If they nail the endgame (too early to tell) then WoW will have a real competitor. I hear Warhammer is making great strides since they rebooted in December.

If WotLK runs nearly 2 years, WoW will be 6 years old, and really starting to show its age. Bliz has also been recruiting developers for a new MMO for some time - I would expect that to be announced soon. I don't think it's Blizzard's style to continue to milk an aging, declining platform until it becomes unprofitable. I think they will keep the servers on, and maybe release one small, content only xpac, but really focus on their new MMO (and the one after that). I don't feel like they will do all of the very hard work in models, animation, and especially design and balance that it will take to introduce an 11th class.

But thats all straight out of my butt.

So in other words, I think that 10 will be the final number of classes, and 10 will be the final number of character slots. Honestly, if you have more then 10 characters you play frequently enough to be attached to... you are playing enough that you could get a 2nd account.

[LochnarITB]

Honestly, if you have more then 10 characters you play frequently enough to be attached to... you are playing enough that you could get a 2nd account.

That is your opinion. In truth, Blizzard already allows 50(IIRC) toons per account. They have put an arbitrary limit on toons of 10 per server. There should be no technical reason why 50 on one server takes any more resources than 10 on 5 servers or 1 on 50 servers. In fact, it is more likely it would be just the opposite. Blizzard also created 3 trees for each class. In many cases, each tree can require a different play style, almost as if they are different classes. Therefore it is easy to understand how people can have all slots filled with toons they have invested large amounts of time on, time they don't want to throw away. With as long as WoW has been out, it wouldn't even have required ridiculous amounts of time to do so. Unless they are idiots or believed WoW would not last anywhere near this long, they had to see this coming given their class and talent design. If Blizzard had decided on 2 per account and 2 per server or 200 per account and 200 per server, there would be no argument. With the way it has been handled, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Blizzard is trying to extract more money from their user base. I doubt there are many players who actually decide that Blizzard is correct and they should have to pay for a second account to play as they wish.

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . They have put an arbitrary limit on toons of 10 per server. . . .

There was a good technical reason why this was done. The day they were programing the toon selection interface, the only person who knew how to do scrolling was out sick. Since they could only show ten names without scrolling, they gave us (as they always do) what little they could do. Be thankful the person who knew how to set up a list was there on that day, or we'd a'had one toon per account. :whistling:

Sarcasm aside, it never ceases to amaze me that Blizzard can generate such great games with such poor programmers. Look at D1 -- an amazing game put together by a group who couldn't figure out how to do a linear declining cost on mana shield. Maybe enough monkeys at enough keyboards can reproduce Shakespeare. :lol:

--Pete

[Mirajj]

May 21 News
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For those of us who are unlikely to ever actually see Ol KJ ourselves (Any US Alliance guilds looking for a BM hunter? <.< >.>) things like VANQUISH's Kil'Jaeden Sneak Peek video is great stuff. From what I've seen on the video, it looks like an incredible fight, and I am very much put into mind of the first time I saw Ragnaros, and just stared dumbly at the monitor at the awesomeness I was seeing. At any rate, check out the video if you'd like a look. It's a decent quality, and runs about 5:30.

[oldmandennis]

That is your opinion. They have put an arbitrary limit on toons of 10 per server. Blizzard also created 3 trees for each class. In many cases, each tree can require a different play style, almost as if they are different classes. Therefore it is easy to understand how people can have all slots filled with toons they have invested large amounts of time on, time they don't want to throw away. With as long as WoW has been out, it wouldn't even have required ridiculous amounts of time to do so.

I agree that 10 is somewhat arbitrary at this point. If a significant number of players felt the way you do, I'm sure they could take the database hit and expand it. However with respec costs down to basically being a speed bump, I dispute the need from a game play perspective to have more then one character of a class. In fact it would probably be a detriment - it would be far far easier to delete your fire mage and respec your frost one if you wanted to try out fire for a while. Especially for mages, where your frost gear would pretty much transfer over comepletly. I'm not sure leveling to 46 counts as large amounts of time.

I like alts as much as the next guy. I've played every class to 30. I can't see many people having the motivation to make more then 9 (soon 10).

I see you also have a bank toon. I'd much rather see Bliz spend their time working out a rational means of account wide storage then spending it expanding the character slots for the few edge cases such as yourself.

[LochnarITB]

I agree that 10 is somewhat arbitrary at this point. If a significant number of players felt the way you do, I'm sure they could take the database hit and expand it. However with respec costs down to basically being a speed bump, I dispute the need from a game play perspective to have more then one character of a class. In fact it would probably be a detriment - it would be far far easier to delete your fire mage and respec your frost one if you wanted to try out fire for a while. Especially for mages, where your frost gear would pretty much transfer over comepletly. I'm not sure leveling to 46 counts as large amounts of time.

I like alts as much as the next guy. I've played every class to 30. I can't see many people having the motivation to make more then 9 (soon 10).

I see you also have a bank toon. I'd much rather see Bliz spend their time working out a rational means of account wide storage then spending it expanding the character slots for the few edge cases such as yourself.

Edge case? Hardly. I did not say I had spent the same amount of time on my alts as if they were all 70's. It doesn't matter. I spent time on them. I do not want to delete them. I do not want to respec them. I have also spent gold on recipes and patterns and designs. I have spent time fishing and cooking and mining. All of my toons are intertwined. They provide for each other. The level number attached to a toon is only a relative indication of time spent. It is not for you to declare them insignificant to my game play. As I said, if Blizzard had a valid technical reason for doing so (there has to be a bigger database hit to maintain accounts across servers than there is for the toons on a single server), there would be no argument. Also remember that, if you stop paying for your account, they promise that they will keep any toons you have at the time you stop paying so they will be there if you do come back and start paying them again. If this is a database problem, shouldn't they trim those toons out so they don't have that hit? There is no valid reason for the way they have it set up. I would really love to see a survey of how many of their customers would appreciate more than 10 slots, preferably equal to the account limit. I believe it would be a large portion of their current user base.

[Taelas]

On what basis do you claim that there is a greater database load for toons on multiple servers compared to toons on one?

There's a completely different reason for the hard limit per server. Overpopulation. With a hard limit, they can know how roughly how many unique accounts there are on a server without going into details.

[Mordekhuul]

On what basis do you claim that there is a greater database load for toons on multiple servers compared to toons on one?

There's a completely different reason for the hard limit per server. Overpopulation. With a hard limit, they can know how roughly how many unique accounts there are on a server without going into details.

I'm pretty sure they can know that anyway with a simple database query, regardless of having a limit or not. Perhaps they just want a cap on the number of bank toons folks will create. I know I still have one, with completely full bank and bag slots, and am thinking of deleting an alt or two for another 1-2 bank toons.

[Tal]

There's a completely different reason for the hard limit per server. Overpopulation. With a hard limit, they can know how roughly how many unique accounts there are on a server without going into details.

Thats a very basic database search query that they could do without any limits whatsoever. Hell my mySQL set up at work tracks a similar statistic (just not on the scale of Blizzard's server farms).

[Delc]

I'm pretty sure they can know that anyway with a simple database query, regardless of having a limit or not. Perhaps they just want a cap on the number of bank toons folks will create. I know I still have one, with completely full bank and bag slots, and am thinking of deleting an alt or two for another 1-2 bank toons.

Just use your alts as bankers. My bank alt is 67 now:P

As for the cap of 10. It makes me sad that I will either have to delete a character, or not roll a death knight.

[Monkey]

I'm pretty sure they can know that anyway with a simple database query, regardless of having a limit or not. Perhaps they just want a cap on the number of bank toons folks will create. I know I still have one, with completely full bank and bag slots, and am thinking of deleting an alt or two for another 1-2 bank toons.

Tangential question--Have you looked into forming a bank-guild? I've been considering it for my bank alt, 110g to open up a big chunk of inventory space seems worth it, but maybe there are hidden drawbacks?

[Mirajj]

I guess the main question is...what in the world are you storing so much of? Each toon can have 168 individual items banked for them (24 bank slots, and 7 20 slotter bags bought). So your 10 toons on that server can hold 1680 things between them. If that's not enough, you can make a guild for a toon, giving it access to a guild bank for 588 more slots (98/tab x 6 tabs)

You have now, across a single server, on your account, been able to store 2268 things.

What are you storing in which this is not enough space?

[Mirajj]

May 23 News
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You have likely noticed a lack of a link or a mention of the WotLK Alpha notes here on the front page. That is on purpose. Blizzard, if you have missed it, is unhappy with sites that have that info hosted or links to it. It is available in a lot of places, and easily google-able, so I am not providing links to it here.

On another note, here's something to mull over. Most of us here have had our time spent with turn-based games such as the various Final Fantasy games, Dragon Warrior, etc. But...could a turn-based MMO work? It's an interesting thought.

[LochnarITB]

On what basis do you claim that there is a greater database load for toons on multiple servers compared to toons on one?

There's a completely different reason for the hard limit per server. Overpopulation. With a hard limit, they can know how roughly how many unique accounts there are on a server without going into details.

The database hit is not in load but in size. Having one account spread across servers means information is required to tie the one account to multiple servers. In fact, I believe this is handled by another server (what is often referred to as the world server?), an added expense and possible failure point. And, as has already been pointed out, the limit has nothing to do with knowing how many accounts there are on a server. If an account has 1 or 1000 toons, it is not only easy to find that they are one account, but it has nothing to do with overpopulation. Overpopulation is having too many toons that can be played at one time. Unless you have some kind of unknown hack, only one toon per account can be played so overpopulation is too many accounts.

[Monkey]

I guess the main question is...what in the world are you storing so much of?

Must...resist...urge to make Underpants Gnome joke. :P

Edit: Seriously--I think it's important to avoid the temptation to make value judgements about why anyone might have 10 characters and not want to delete one. In the end, Blizzard's refusal to add a character slots as they add classes is most punishing to loyal long-time players who are invested in their existing characters.

[Chesspiece_face]

The database hit is not in load but in size. Having one account spread across servers means information is required to tie the one account to multiple servers. In fact, I believe this is handled by another server (what is often referred to as the world server?), an added expense and possible failure point. And, as has already been pointed out, the limit has nothing to do with knowing how many accounts there are on a server. If an account has 1 or 1000 toons, it is not only easy to find that they are one account, but it has nothing to do with overpopulation. Overpopulation is having too many toons that can be played at one time. Unless you have some kind of unknown hack, only one toon per account can be played so overpopulation is too many accounts.

Chances are that information and log-ins are trickled from the "world server" as you refer to it (or the log-in server). What this means is that no matter how many people log into Stormrage at the exact same time the data going to the Stormrage server will never exceed a certain amount. This limits the chances of particular servers going down and it means that they can centralize their expenses on one focal point - the log-in server(s).

The limit cap on characters per server is artificial in such a way that blizzard has created a cap on how much they want to invest in each individual server and it allows them to know exactly how much each server can handle, when to create new servers, when to offer transfers and to which servers. By doing this they can create a controlable system so that the resources dedicated to Stormrage are the same as any other server and the central areas they need to focus on fast scalability are the log-in servers. If they did not have this in place than at any given time they would have to worry about scalability issues on any of the individual game servers.

[oldmandennis]

It is a bit silly to sit here and without any idea of their database structure try to guess what would be more difficult to do.

The fact of the matter is that it would take some amount of time to add the slots - time they have said they don't feel like spending. Even the person who has multiple mages still has a character slot free... unless you are going to claim you have spent so much time on your bank alt that you are attached to them. Personally I have one of each class, and will have no problems deleting my bank alt when wrath comes out. Hopefully they will have some sort of account wide storage solution by then, but if not I'll buy a couple more tabs in my bank guild.

Could they open it up more? Sure and I wouldn't complain. If they add an 11th class and don't open an 11th slot you have a major issue, but I find that unlikely.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Tangential question--Have you looked into forming a bank-guild? I've been considering it for my bank alt, 110g to open up a big chunk of inventory space seems worth it, but maybe there are hidden drawbacks?

I did that for Magi and I on Stormrage, Terenas, and The Venture Company (though I shut that one down when I moved the only toon I cared about there to Stormrage last week). It took an afternoon to set up all three guilds by buying signatures for 1g each. Built the alliance ones in Goldshire and the Horde one in Crossroads. Works fine, and gives us an easy way to auction stuff without having to keep a 'real' toon in a city.

Right now, banking gives me something to do in WoW that is low impact on my eyes. I don't know if I'll want to spend the time on it when I can actually play. Other than the time, I've seen no drawbacks to banking.

--Pete

[LochnarITB]

The fact of the matter is that it would take some amount of time to add the slots - time they have said they don't feel like spending...
...Hopefully they will have some sort of account wide storage solution by then, but if not I'll buy a couple more tabs in my bank guild.

They also said they couldn't or didn't want to spend time on guild banks and cross server battlegrounds, yet they now exist. Another reason that was given for not having guild banks was so that every account didn't have their own guild to create storage, yet you have that. The facts are, an inactive toon is simply storage space. Server load is determined by how many toons are being played. Only one toon can be played per account. I believe that Blizzard made a mistake, either through bad design or the desire to get people to pay for multiple accounts. I will continue to advocate for its correction. If enough of us are heard, perhaps they will give in to us just as they did with other "QQ" from PvPers and hunters and rogues and...

Even the person who has multiple mages still has a character slot free... unless you are going to claim you have spent so much time on your bank alt that you are attached to them.

There you go again, telling me what toons I shouldn't be attached to. (BTW, love the use of multiple for two to demonstrate what a fanatic I am:blink:) For the record, I am attached to the space he provides. I am attached to my guild. If I am logged on, even for the short time I generally spend on Lochbox, I want to be "in guild". I do not even want my bank alt to be in another guild. You will notice, in my character list, there is no Shaman on Stormrage. I did make the choice to keep the bank. For the Death Knight, I will not be able to do that. They just look to be too much of a change to not experience one, on the server where I spend my game time.

[Chesspiece_face]

In response to a lot of the raid related stuff on the front page lately (from the dissolution of DnT, to the new information coming in WotLK) I thought i'd post this:

10 Man Raiders: Second Class?

David Sirlin's response to the new WotLK info as well as a follow up to his previous gamasutra article.

I tend to agree with his position on 10 man vs 25 man. As was noted in the DnT incident there is a lot of moaning about he casualization of WoW but if "raiders" really wanted a logistically difficult fight regardless of loot rewards than 10 man versions of raids, etc. wouldn't impact anything, they would still do the logistically difficult fights. If 10 man versions of the 25 man instances were introduced with equal rewards and nobody did 25 man instances anymore doesn't that just imply that people don't want to do those anyway and only put up with it because of the loot?

Thomas states the issue very well around comment 50:

Thomas Says:

May 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
It seems to me that the problem for the WoW designers is that here is that there are two separate and distinct aspects of the difficulty of large-scale raiding. On the one hand, there are the encounters, and on the other hand, there’s the social challenge of gathering together a group of unruly, selfish, and often very young people. A lot of people, including, I expect, the designers, would enjoy the challenge of completing 25 man encounters if it didn’t mean they have to build their lives around the game — which isn’t intrinsically more difficult than a smaller group, but is certainly a different experience. As a game design problem, the issue is how to take advantage of the design space having many players creates without allowing the social challenges to prevent anyone from raiding. The solution heretofore has been to bribe players to play in large groups with superior gear.

So if raids are fun, but raiding isn’t, what are the designers supposed to do? I tend to think it’s an insoluble problem. Encounter design, no matter its quality — and Blizzard’s quality has been very high — can’t eliminate the hassle of keeping a big guild running. Player matching systems, which have been only moderately successful for 5-man groups, won’t be able to scale up to those sizes, and player-matched groups couldn’t complete a 25 man raid anyway. As Sirlin has convincingly argued, bribing players to perform unfun tasks by offering stronger characters is a pernicious and terrible design that destroys fun and creates an unhappy, addicted player base. And raiders are the last people who would do something just because they enjoy it; they are the kind of powergamers who are really controlled by economic motives (minimizing risk and maximizing reward at all costs.) Raids are fun, but raiding isn’t: if designers can’t get people to raid without bribing them with gear, then raids shouldn’t exist...

...I do think playing in large raids is fun! Organizing them is hell. The problem is that WoW, which has succeeded by streamlining away the boring and unfun elements of other MMO’s and retaining their core interest, fundamentally can’t streamline away the social obligations of raiding, which can be fun at smaller sizes but are inevitably a headache in a large guild. It’s one of the few aspects of the game Blizzard can’t control, and in my opinion gear rewards in 25-mans are an attempt to design around it since they can’t fix it.

Try not to think of it as rewards for the difficulty of performing a certain task; that’s a canard. From a design perspective, the carrot on a stick is just one part of the package of a game event which is supposed to be fun when taken altogether; this social problem causes it to take on too much weight in raiding because it has to compensate for fundamentally unpleasant activities. I like the idea of vanity items as rewards for raids, but I assume the reason Blizzard moved away from them (according to interviews, they were in the initial design for 40-mans in WoW) is because they didn’t provide enough motivation to get people to raid. That’s a sign that the raiding experience is fundamentally broken.