Guernication

My thoughts on games and the issues around them.

Author: Guernica

I just got through with the Death Knight starting zone quests - at least on the Alliance side. My first DK was a Tauren - nostalgia for my Tauren hunter, currently stranded on the US servers (come on Blizz! Allow cross-zone servers!). A couple of days ago I decided to try rolling a Draenei though. I've hardly played Alliance at all so I figured I'd see how the other two-thirds live.

Not a big deal of difference to report about the two sides from those first two days of play. There was a lot more German and French chat going on - more than I've ever seen on a Horde toon. But I doubt that's significant. What was obvious though was that there were no Horde DK's in the starting area. Don't ask me how they do it but it seems that the same starting zone on the same realm can be configured to only show Horde or Alliance players. I'm guessing this is something like the effect you get in Outlands when phase-shifting but its a nice touch.

Another nice surprise was finding that once I had finished the DK questline I found I now have access to every Alliance flight point in the game. There has been a lot speculation and grinding of teeth over DK's starting at a disadvantage when it comes to professions. Well, we can at least take comfort from the knowledge DK's will be able to fly to any zone they need to if they have to level up a gathering prof.

But this freedom of movement has given me another opportunity - to see the Alliance cities (I visited all the starting areas during the Midsummer Fire Festvial bonfire desecration orgy). Today was my first visit to Ironforge and later on I'll be flying over to the other capitals. I have to say that although I am a diehard Horde player, I am impressed and, as I was during the bonfire tour/ordeal (did anyone else try desecrating all the opposite faction's bonfires with a level 22 toon?), amazed at how much content there is in the WoW that I have never seen before.

This is the thing that keeps me playing WoW where other games only get my money periodically - there always seems to be something new to see or do. I found the game totally changed when I switched to a melee class after years of being a hunter - the mobs blink and have pretty colours! And now I'm seeing all the cool stuff the allies have been seeing for years (Deeprun Tram has an underwater observation area!).

This does make we wonder though how new games can compete against WoW's massive amounts of content. We read last week that Blizzard noticed a significant number of players leaving the game to try AoC. A lot came back though and there has been coverage in the press of player's complaining that although AoC starts out well and is a well made game there is little end-game content it quickly gets boring.

'What did you expect?', replied the dedicated Conanists. Their point, and its one I can sympathise with, was that a new game will be more detailed at the lower end of the game than the endgame. One of the beauties of MMOs' is that they develop over time. They are launched with content for new players to do to get them into the game and invested in the world and their toons. But then the dev's can use the continuing subscriptions to pay for more content to be added in.

But players are very very good at playing the leveling game now. Anyone that's played an MMO for a while probably knows how to quest-stack and maximise the return for their time. Grind is unfashionable - who wants to stand in a field slaughtering wildlife for hours just to level once every few days? Plus there are so many guides on the netz there are next to no bottlenecks or obstacles to leveling.

So I have to wonder how any new game is going to compete with a game like WoW where there is such a vast quantity of things to do. Its like Joost - the p2p PC TV system that is struggling to launch at the moment. Its a great idea on paper - you choose the TV you want to watch and host enough small fragments of shows on your pc that everyone in the network can quickly acces whole files. Theoretically this would be paid for by advertisers who would in return be able to target their offerings to the individual viewer. The problem is there's nothing on Joost you would want to watch. A few episodes of Robot Chicken, some NHL, and a few swimsuit models. Bleurhg. I've watched Joost twice this year - when my TV aerial was down and I had watched all my DVD's too many times. New games can come out slick as spit - gorgeous graphics, smooth combat, interesting crafting, you name it. But their players will drift away once they reach the level cap and find no more challenges.

We learnt from the Blizzard podcast this week that the original WoW release had 2 hours of music included. Nowadays the client has 16 hours. Taking that as an indication of how much the game's content has grown, it is really hard to see how any new game is not only going to release to favourable comparisons but add in new interesting and challenging content quickly enough to keep its playerbase coming back for more and still saying 'wow', not choosing WoW.