So this is the new place. Looks all clean and fresh and free for me to doodle all over it with whatever I so desire in the world of video games.
Lo and behold, I happen to have a topic of discussion for this first article!
Fresh Starts.
There's a certain appeal to a fresh start. You get the chance of a do-over, and get to re-imagine yourself. As someone who's moved cities 3 times, I know firsthand that this is very possible, and you get the chance to mould yourself into something new, or something old that you'd thought people had forgotten about.
What we're talking about here though specifically is Warlords of Draenor.
As many of you know, I quit playing World of Warcraft a fair few weeks ago due to IRL constraints (job, college, alcohol, etc) as I wasn't able to do what I loved most in WoW, which was Raiding. Raiding was my go-to for all 10 years that I was playing this game, and it had never failed to cheer me up when I was down. I'd just jump online, pour myself a drink and ask around and see who wanted to go and kill some bosses for the hell of it.
That was fun for me. I enjoyed putting my face to the grindstone and spitting blood and nails until a boss died. The rush of it was it's own reward, though new weapons were always accepted.
I wasn't able to get this rush any more and so I couldn't justify my subscription. I quit. I don't like quitting.
I realised earlier that Warlords is having a similar effect on a lot of people after reading this thread and understanding all of the points the OP put across. I'm more than willing to be a fanboy and defend Blizzard's game design until my last breath if I feel that it's good design, but honestly, I can't defend it any more, even though I want to.
As someone who's now studying Game Design in college, and learning how game mechanics are formed and applied, it's almost painful to watch the state of WoD at the moment. Where X or Y class is always brokenly OP and if it's not then A and B classes are. M, N, O and P abilities need tweaking and Q, R and S are just flat out useless. This situation often occurs in MMO games but the extent to which it's happened in WoD is actually disgusting.
I mean that. The way the game has been made for Warlords of Draenor is abysmal.
Now credit to the developers themselves, they've tried to make the game a great game. But what they've done is they've broken the first rule that I learned on my course.
You make the game for the consumer, not for the designer.
If you aim a game at 16 year olds, you make it playable by a 16 year old and enjoyable by a 16 year old, and if anyone else happens to enjoy it too then that's a bonus. If you make a game that you think is great and you enjoy it that's fantastic, but when that game is meant to entertain 10 million players to a sufficient standard to warrant £9.99 a month from them, then you need to think really carefully about how your game is being designed.
I wrote about how I'd fix things a while ago, and while it was written while I was angry and was obviously biased, what I've taken from that is that the community knows this game better than the developers do.
That's not me saying that Johnny Lightning with his level 36 paladin knows exactly how level 100 Destro Warlock should be played. That's me saying that if you have a community of X class saying that Y ability is broken in some way, shape or form, that you have the responsibility as a game developer of investigating that school of thought and either giving evidence of why they are wrong or admitting you are wrong and fixing the ability.
What you're not entitled to do is just to remove the ability because you don't like it (HeroicStrike.org) and try and rework a spec at the drop of a hat.
When a community comes together in order to defend something, you need to stop playing God and ask yourself -why- they are defending it. If they are defending bad design then you need to explain to them very specifically why it's a bad idea and what your plans are for fixing that bad design. What you shouldn't do is just say that it's bad design and tell them what you're going to do instead and take all choice away from the players.
I can already feel this devolving into a rant about the state that Warriors have been in but it's still a relevant point because lots of features of Warlords have been given the boot just as badly as Warriors have, explained very well by the poster of the thread I linked above, and honestly it's just not on.
In the meantime, I've got other games to keep me busy outside of my college work, including Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and Evolve.
Two games where they've been designed very well, and if they're not, the developers explain why and fix the issues as soon as possible.
Until next time, eat your vegetables. Doctor's Orders.
