Ghostcrawler's Cataclysm Post Mortem

[Peli]

Not sure if you all got a chance to see it...

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4519250/Cataclysm_Post_Mortem_--_Greg_%E2%80%9CGhostcrawler%E2%80%9D_Street-3_7_2012

Personally, I liked just about everything that Ghostcrawler had to say here. Personally, I love the fact that they recognized the issues associated with this:

In addition, while we liked that each zone has a story, questing ended up being too linear. It didn’t feel like you could fly into a zone, find some quest givers, and explore. Instead, you kind of had to start at the beginning and follow all the quests to the end, and if you didn’t like a quest, well, you had to stick with it to get to the next one. We want zones to have an identity, flavor and a story, but we don’t want to railroad players through a zone either.

Lets hope that we're able to finally progress past those incredibly annoying "Go collect 10 of xyz that have a 5% drop rate from those mobs over there" quests, which are annoying while single-boxing and rage-inducing as a multiboxer.

I'm still parsing my way through it, but I'm still liking what I'm reading. Any further thoughts on the content here?

[JohnGabriel]

I almost wish they'd stop this game here and just make WoW2.

[luxlunae]

I've actually been very impressed with his communications skills lately. I think he must have hired a journalism intern or something to help him.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I read acknowledgement of a few problems, which was nice:

• railroaded questing (actually got this one spot on, IMO)
• lack of options for gear progression (right but for the wrong reasons; see below)
• lame talent rework

I also read what seems to be a disappointing misunderstanding of why certain things were disliked:

• The Justice / Honor badge system in Cataclysm cleaned up the crazy system from Lich King. Uh, everyone I talked to loved the badge gear availability in WotLK and disliked having to grind the more difficult heroics in Cataclysm or LFR to progress. I suspect his characterization of this as awesomesauce had more to do with Squeaky Wheel Syndrome combined with "cleaned up" meaning "easier for limited devs to maintain." Granted, LFR was pretty universally liked but that did NOT resolve the complaints about the changes to the badge gear system.
• Heroic "difficulty" changes != more challenge. From everything I read and experienced, this "challenge" was primarily just them adding gratuitous amounts of AoE stuff you don't want to stand in. That didn't feel like challenge to me -- just abuse. I'm sure 5 individuals probably didn't notice it as much but as a boxer I sure did.

But what do I know -- I'm just an armchair wow design guru.

[Ualaa]

I almost wish they'd stop this game here and just make WoW2.

They could make a wow2, but if they didn't continue the existing wow, I don't see it going too far.

Basically, they would be saying everything you did up to now counts for nothing.
And "x" years from now, we'll make a wow3 and discontinue wow2... meaning everything you did in wow2 was also a waste of time.




Ignoring that playing a game doesn't really get you much outside of the game, and enjoyment of the game is the only real purpose...
IE, playing wow or watching tv or reading a book are equal wastes/good uses of time.

The continuity of the game, or the improvement of your character over time.
The gaining of achievements, titles, or just beating encounters that were too hard at one point but doable later.
That's the benefit of the game.
Over time those add up.

Canceling the game, say its over and you won or lost, that defeats the whole purpose of an ongoing RPG.




I'm not saying make wow2 is a good idea or a bad idea.
Just that canceling wow1 would likely kill wow2 before it started.

[kate]

They could make a wow2, but if they didn't continue the existing wow, I don't see it going too far.

Basically, they would be saying everything you did up to now counts for nothing.
And "x" years from now, we'll make a wow3 and discontinue wow2... meaning everything you did in wow2 was also a waste of time.




Ignoring that playing a game doesn't really get you much outside of the game, and enjoyment of the game is the only real purpose...
IE, playing wow or watching tv or reading a book are equal wastes/good uses of time.

The continuity of the game, or the improvement of your character over time.
The gaining of achievements, titles, or just beating encounters that were too hard at one point but doable later.
That's the benefit of the game.
Over time those add up.

Canceling the game, say its over and you won or lost, that defeats the whole purpose of an ongoing RPG.




I'm not saying make wow2 is a good idea or a bad idea.
Just that canceling wow1 would likely kill wow2 before it started.

I don't even know what WoW 2 would mean, but I agree that they can't just launch a new game, call it WoW 2, and end this one.

And I don't even know what the benefit to a WoW 2 that was independent of WoW 1 would be - a better engine, graphics updates, cleaning up old messes, adding new features are all things they have done to the original WoW over time, so why not just keep going that route? If they wanted to start completely from scratch with the engine/client/server they could do it behind the scenes and then just roll people to it as part of an expansion or something.

With non-persistent world games sequels make sense, but with MMOs they don't make as much sense when incremental upgrades over time essentially yield an entirely different game.

[Lyonheart]

This game will be here many years from now. Look at EQ1 its still going strong,,started in 1999?

[thefunk]

excellent summary of the issues in cata - I strongly agree on

- lack of travel and people in non capitals
- linear quests (the key reason I only boost)
- scattered zones


Also a key issue I see are flying mounts. Get rid of them in my opinion, the game was far more interesting before.

Wow2 would be a serious challenge if wow1 was switched off. The only way they could successfully transfer everyone across is by doing the old wizardry thing and import your characters over (not necessarily by floppy disk). IT would be better to continue the evolution of WoW graphically, and they also may want to upgrade the entire combat system (as it is getting old).

Personally I want more customisation, many more choices in the style of combat my team can play - when they railroaded the talent trees, it was indeed a sad day as there was no more SL/SL locks for example.

What I would like to see is an expansion the size of azeroth. If content is the priority, I would like to see a significant growth in land space.

And more elite mobs in outdoor world. I feel normal outdoor questing is just too too easy.

and I'd like free transfers, paid RAF, a cake (chocolate preferably) and a new job.

[Ualaa]

Brand new code, rather than adapting existing code... which doesn't always work as easily as you'd like...

Adding the features you like.
Removing the features you dislike.

Trying something new, that is an innovation which none of your competitors offer...

There is definitely something to be said for a new version of the same game.
Or for a totally different game, but still the same genre (MMORPG), by the same company.

Blizzard would have to seriously alienate their current player base in general (it was several years of progressively worsening customer support in EQ1 that caused me to switch to Wow).
Or decide boxing was no longer allowed.
To get me to look at another game; sure I take breaks, as long as half a year at times, but I've always returned to wow.

[candlebox]

Something about having the same character for 6 years and it will never be completely worthless is why i like this game. Yes you level, but you are never really starting at zero (this is different for boxing, but the ideology is there still)

It's all about investments. Yes we dislike a lot of things, but we invest time in this game, and essentially it becomes ours in a way.