BlizzCon 2010: Cataclysm and the Future of WoW

[Tom Phoenix]

"GS: I think the quest designers have gotten really, really clever in doing that. In the new Undead leveling experience in Silverpine, you're still really low level but Sylvanas has selected you - you're obviously someone that's going to do a lot in life (or death, or whatever). She takes you under her wing, and you're running missions for her and fighting alongside her at points and it's a pretty epic experience."

This is my problem with the concept revamp, their stealing Age of Conan's concept of YOU are the ONE chosen one. Yet so is the guy next to you. And the next guy and ad infinum. This isnt an 'epic' experience its a bad one because I cant feel like any of it is areally happening to my character. So its just making me act out someone elses story and try to come up with what my character has been doing all along.

The new Worgen and Goblin areas are awful with this sort of thing. I dont need Thrall to be my character's bestest buddy to like him. because it really hurts flow when later he cant remember who I am because it wasnt scripted that way.

Wow is sinking into a dark age of storytelling where their telling their story and we are being forced to go along instead of being able to tell ours in their world.

To be fair, there is at least one example in WoW where Blizzard handled your acquaintance with a famous person rather well. In the Northrend zone Dragonblight, there is a quest called "An End and A Beginning", where you fight alongside Highlord Bolvar Fordragon. For newer players, this quest did not include anything special. But for certain older players, Fordragon had an additional line or two:

Good to see you still alive and kicking, . Don't think that I'd forgotten what you did for me in Stormwind, oh so long ago.

Now, be free and join the battle! Let us end this together!

Why is this, you ask? Well, the lines only appeared for players who completed the quest "The Great Masquerade", which was part of the Onyxia quest chain, a requirement for Onyxia's Lair back when it was still a level 60 raid. Essentially, you escorted Marhsall Windsor through Stormwind and to the throne room, where you unmasked Katrana Prestor and revealed her to be Onyxia, thus breaking hold of the spell she had over Fordragon.

While I am sure a lot of people will say "so what? It's just a few lines of dialogue". But for me, it was a really nice touch, since it reminded me of when I completed that quest. It also made me feel like my character was an important hero rather than just a random nameless person.

This isn't to say that I disagree that making the player an aquaintance of a famous person can go horribly wrong, when not properly handled. That said, as Ghostcrawler noted in this interview, it is important to make players feel like they are heroes. And generally, it's kind of hard being a hero if you are not acknowledged as such by famous characters and if you never work alongside them. Afterall, story-wise, if you are doing important things, chances are that you will cross paths with notable people sooner or later.

 

[Ingolf Olsen]

Of course WoW won't die, there are 7 billion people on the planet, and it's impossible that they all have an IQ over 120 (smart enough to know that WoW is worse now than it was before). BW must be doing a good job on their latest project, for it to be compared to WoW. Like I said in the forum there. The game will not Replace WoW no matter how they try and that's not their plan. Their plan is to give people that love Star Wars an epic game to play, thats all. I'm actually one of those people that liked classic WoW the best. Alliance had Paladin & Horde had Shaman. You could really see the difference between the 2 factions. With the introduction of Burning Crusade, they destroyed that part completely and utterly, there was no difference in rolling horde or alliance and now, in cata, there won't be any difference in what race you pick either, every race will have every class (almost), look up the word oversimplify in the dictionary. So the only thing you pick (90% of the time), is what race you wanna play, as in, which starting area do I wanna play, how boring is that?

every Alliance race has priest & warrior class now, I don't know how it is with the horde & every race thats not 10 feet tall (Tauren & Draenei excluded that is) can play rogue.

it seems to me, that every other expansion is gonna be a let down. Here's to hoping the next one will be better, hopefully introducing something like the demon hunter or something. I'm thinking: Elf only class and not every race and their mother like it is now (in Cata), and like the Death knight, they should start at 55 of course. I'll leave the rest to you.

Quote from oathblade: "When they were talking about aldor and Scryer and joining sides in the outlands away from azeroth in the BG I loved the whole concept .. it was a way to grow away from the 'I hate you just cause' line. Theres too much of that in the real world. Id like to escape endless armed conflicts fueled by generations of hatred - not be pushed face down into it."

AMEN! Your choices should matter, hell, you should have choices, as it is, you don't. What race you pick decides what faction you are and you are stuck with that. You can be a complete bastard and they would love you anyway, if you had choices, you could choose to be evil and they would dislike you, but since you don't, you cannot choose to be a nice orc or a mean nightelf, it's all planned out for you beforehand, how boring!!

 

[OriginalityImpaired]

Oh gawd, they redid almost everything,
I'm going to be playing this fucking game till the end of time

 

[oathblade]

While I am sure a lot of people will say "so what? It's just a few lines of dialogue". But for me, it was a really nice touch, since it reminded me of when I completed that quest. It also made me feel like my character was an important hero rather than just a random nameless person.

This isn't to say that I disagree that making the player an aquaintance of a famous person can go horribly wrong, when not properly handled. That said, as Ghostcrawler noted in this interview, it is important to make players feel like they are heroes. And generally, it's kind of hard being a hero if you are not acknowledged as such by famous characters and if you never work alongside them. Afterall, story-wise, if you are doing important things, chances are that you will cross paths with notable people sooner or later.

I liked that line, i also loved what they had Garrosh say if you had helped him in Nagrand. not many people even noticed it, and it showed depth to his character that their revealing now.

"Do not think that I have forgotten what you did for my people in Nagrand, . Hellscream never forgets.
For that I am indebted to you and it is why I give you this chance now: run. Leave this place and never look back.
Return to your home and say a prayer for the dying."

Its small but potent and also gives a good roleplay reason for why hes treating you like any scrub, he doesn't want you here.

I dont mind being 'A' hero its just right now your 'THE ONE' hero dealing with all the problems of the world. I cant roleplay that, and such a game wont hold my interest nearly as long as the old wow did...why I didnt play AoC long and came back to WoW.

 

[oathblade]

AMEN! Your choices should matter, hell, you should have choices, as it is, you don't. What race you pick decides what faction you are and you are stuck with that. You can be a complete bastard and they would love you anyway, if you had choices, you could choose to be evil and they would dislike you, but since you don't, you cannot choose to be a nice orc or a mean nightelf, it's all planned out for you beforehand, how boring!!

EQ2 had this wonderful little betrayal quest chain that took dedication and luck and was pretty cool. You could only do it once so you swapped sides and were now a 'good' blueberry, etc, and it was great you could chose. They didnt need to balance races because if you wanted to be a sneaky rat they could expect you to go and get one.

A while back I read a post I loved it was (roughly) a quest 15 rep a turn in (on par with the wintersabers at the time) to grind enemy faction (and imagine how you would fry if you turned in a quest and got 500 faction rep), at exalted you wouldnt be hostile unless flagged to the opposing guards (meant for rp servers not pvp) and if you completed a quest you would lose your other faction language and learn the common for the other.

There were little fun things in there like a night elf of the horde coudl still tak to other night elves and the like. Overall I loved the rough concept, though I dont think the Bliz guys read it.

 

[Ferisar]

Snip

I'm a failure of reading comprehension.

 

[Blackbird71]

"We used to say change for the sake of change is a bad thing, but I think for an expansion - to an extent - that's what the players are looking for. The players want to see something different that they have to understand and learn and master."

I know I can't speak for everyone, but for me, this is a big mistake. My biggest frustration with every major patch is taking a finely-crafted character that I have spent a lot of time getting to work the way I like, and then having to completely redo the talent tree, and having to relearn how to play. I don't want to log into a level 80 and feel like I'm back at level 5 trying to figure out what everything does! Change the world, change the quests, whatever, but stop messing with the characters that we put so much effort into!

I suppose though it doesn't really matter, as I haven't played WoW in some time, and I won't be returning as long as RealID and battlenet are requirements. Since that's never going to be rolled back, I guess that means "never."

 

[JerrytheBullfrog]

"We used to say change for the sake of change is a bad thing, but I think for an expansion - to an extent - that's what the players are looking for. The players want to see something different that they have to understand and learn and master."

I know I can't speak for everyone, but for me, this is a big mistake. My biggest frustration with every major patch is taking a finely-crafted character that I have spent a lot of time getting to work the way I like, and then having to completely redo the talent tree, and having to relearn how to play. I don't want to log into a level 80 and feel like I'm back at level 5 trying to figure out what everything does! Change the world, change the quests, whatever, but stop messing with the characters that we put so much effort into!

I suppose though it doesn't really matter, as I haven't played WoW in some time, and I won't be returning as long as RealID and battlenet are requirements. Since that's never going to be rolled back, I guess that means "never."

Um, you know that RealID and Battlenet AREN'T requirements, right? Other than the creation of a Bnet account (which is pretty convenient, like creating a Steam account) you never have to add a single person to RealID if you don't want.

Your comment is just the sort of difficulty they face. They have 12 million people playing their game. A lot of them want change for the sake of change. A lot don't. Who do they go with?

 

[Diadaladh]

Am I the only one applauding Blizzard for pulling a "World of Warcraft 2" card over our asses without abandoning the old game and it's fanbase.
We don't have to start over, and we still get a entirely new enviroment that i guess would have been the same if they made a 2nd. Everything we have worked for is still there, but i am curious about alot of the achevements now that they remove the old world to replace it with "tadaa" the same world ripped apart.

Extremely innovative and cunning. They gave us a new game and we love them for it while reminissing about the obvious nostalgic values that we suddenly care about, although we couldn't get a new expansion fast enough back then.

Where was I going with this...?

Oh yeah, nice job. I sincerely mean it!

 

[LitleWaffle]

cat·a·clysm   
[kat-uh-kliz-uhm]
?noun
1.
any violent upheaval, esp. one of a social or political nature.
2.
Physical Geography . a sudden and violent physical action producing changes in the earth's surface.

I will not be surprised of the outcome.