Comments on: The Changing Face of WoW Customer Relations

By: The Tempting “DELETE” Button!? « No re-rolls in real life

The Tempting “DELETE” Button!? « No re-rolls in real life — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:01:21 +0000

[...] on. This causes multiple problems for average users pve/pvpers. Not the die hard Arena fanboi. Spinks has an article that talks about Arenas how they are the worst mistake Blizzard has implemente…. I don’t want to go into too much detail about Arenas and that facet of PvP. I like world pvp [...]

By: The Tempting “DELETE” button! « Im Talkin Games

The Tempting “DELETE” button! « Im Talkin Games — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:57:09 +0000

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:50:50 +0000

They won’t remove arenas now.

What I wonder is whether it’s BECAUSE the game wasn’t balanced for PvP that PvP in WoW has been so fun for people (well, among people who like it at least). I remember in WAR (even though I enjoyed it) the classes could seem a bit bland because they were designed to be balanced.

Sometimes the unbalanced class design is actually more fun and lively to play.

By: Dugrik

Dugrik — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:09:23 +0000

They don’t need to remove arenas, they just need to firmly announce that arenas will no longer be a factor in class balancing decisions — and all the QQ in the world won’t change that. If rated BGs are attractive enough, arenas may die by attrition.

On Fenris (a regular server), we see “For the Alliance/Horde” raids almost weekly. If the other side catches wind a “City Defense” raid will be organized to meet them. It’s more fun than even BGs IMO.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:54:35 +0000

Heartily seconded. Oddly for a PvE carebear like me, I even agree on open world PvP, so long as it’s somehow consensual. Ganking stinks, but the “open world at war” is far more interesting PvP than going to a fight club somewhere in my mind.

(And yes, that sentence is ambiguous on purpose…)

By: Longasc

Longasc — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:33:37 +0000

There you have it, from the Master himself. What made WoW great: “we had directed quest gameplay from beginning to end, you could solo”.

“The level curve actually matches the content”. Still, this leads to the “on rails” guided bus tour experience. But he is right, LOTRO especially makes it too easy to outlevel areas you have not even entered yet, but they still boost XP gain for some odd reason. I don’t know any MMO where mobs are too hard nowadays because players are under-levelled for the area.

“As for the biggest mistake? (…) “We really never designed WoW to be a competitive e-sports game”. Amen to that. +1 Sympathy achieved.

He likes to use the words “achieve” and “competition” a lot and in many variations – still, the “world 1st” competition raid style is odd. It caters to a very tiny part of the population, nobody else cares about it. Sure, there is some envy/e-peen contest if the “rival guild” (i.e. any other big guild on the server) downs the final boss of a raid faster, but he must not forget that most won’t ever be that hardcore or share this notion to that extent. Furthermore, I think some “back to the roots” thinking would not be bad. Open World PvP is ousted and frowned upon nowadays. But to me, it was always much more fun and more dynamic than small scale arenas (Guild Wars) or even the (IMO better) Battlegrounds.

I think the success of WoW in the end had not so much to do with “competition” and “achievements”. The initial 60 level world was really the “World” of Warcraft that enticed millions, before Raiding in big or small scale took over.

By: Veneretio

Veneretio — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:52:56 +0000

It really makes you wonder, what would WoW have been like had they gone the approach of rated BGs rather than Arenas? Arenas feel like they saved PvP, but then maybe rated BGs would have too. Certainly, balance would be significantly easier as it’s really not the end of the world if someone is great 3v3 when it’s 15v15.

Which begs the question, what if they removed Arenas? I know they won’t, but what if?