Fri
11
Jul '08
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Rog posted in World of Warcraft
Sooner or later I was bound to take this snapshot, because it's been nagging at me. This is my 2004 World of Warcraft retail box:
A whole lot of people either have selective memories, or they arrived on the scene later, but the release of WoW was not 'polished'. It had numerous bugs, abysmal server stability, barely passable Endgame and virtually none of the faction-PvP features that were highlighted during pre-release.
Sieges of course, were not included. Nor was the "mighty Dragon of Blackrock Spire", although Nefarian did arrive 7 months later.
It was still a great game.
Accolade it for what it was and what it became, not what it wasn't.
(3:08 pm)
Jul 11, 2008 6:47pm
Who is this pointed at...
Conan haters? or WAR lovers?
Hard to say. All I know is that the MMO genre is in for a world of hurt after the end of this years offerings.
Nothing is working out, and investors will start to hold off on putting any cash into a game that "May" succeed.
With budgets like small movies, timelines LONGER than blockbuster movies, and people ready to love or hate them, MMO's are a big bet that Vegas would love to cash on...if they got another WoW.
Maybe we all just need to stop buying these games on release and demand trials.
Jul 11, 2008 7:18pm
I don't think it is pointed at Conan haters or WAR lovers, it is simply being pointed to.
lawl - maybe its pointed to the "WoW was absolutely perfect at launch, had little to no bugs at all and was 100% playable" people =P Those people really make me shake my head.
I enjoyed my time in WoW, but launch was no picnic.
I think Rog is merely pointing out that a lot of games launch and they do not have everything that is advertised. WoW advertised PvP which was not even there at launch, including the mention of seiges on the box.
AoC advertised seiges, technically they have them, but they are not working so well. (some people count this as not having them)
WAR had to cut content.
*shrugs*
Sometimes not everything makes it in the game that was originally planed. This is nothing new
Jul 11, 2008 9:32pm
Writing this, I was more concerned about future games and the uphill climb in the face of revisionist history over what made WoW successful. It's been turned into some monolithic symbol of perfection, which it hasn't been. The Blizzard worship has become some sort of established way of thinking, we're not supposed to question it.
I think it's important to point out the flaws that were there.
It's not just WoW. Diablo 2 was an exploitive mess in the first months, Warcraft 2 never got past its low unit numbers limitation.
Blizzard is very good at building up their products over time, adding incremental changes until the overall product quality is high. They're sequel laden and when they do enter a new field (like MMORPGs with WoW) they build upon established mechanics. Blizzard is subject to the same mistakes as any other game developer, but their approach reduces the chances of repeating their mistakes.
Other companies are not only expected to follow Blizzard's 'polish', but they're expected to get it right the first time, something Blizzard themselves have not done.
Thank the god's of gaming the other success story lately is Nintendo's resurgence that's inherently about new ways of looking at things. I just wish that level of innovation would make a greater impact on the MMORPG space.
Is this a bit of an anti-Blizzard backlash on my end? You bet. I'm not all that happy with their products right now, so I'm having a hard time kneeling before them.
Jul 11, 2008 9:40pm
Oh and this is my opinion of what free trials are like when a game is still new:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/2/15/
If someone isn't interested in your game, there better be a lot of hidden nuggets revealed in a free trial, or just ways to trap the player in once they've started. The approach with MMORPGs is usually that friends give out the free trials to their buddies, that works a lot better, it has the inherent trap. =)
I think most consumers would just rather buy the game, honestly. Unless you're offering something new that's hard to explain in a screenshot or trailer.
On the other hand, sneak peaks like Spore's Creature Creator are just a fantastic way to get people hands-on excited for the product.
Jul 12, 2008 10:09am
Okay, I'm seeing too much of a gray area here on how you're applying the term "polish".
WoW's CONTENT was unquestionably the most polished content ever released in a mmorpg at the time. Level 1-60 was completely developed with quests, instances/dungeons, regions, loot, and basically delivered itself as a full "package". That's a HUGE reason why the game was such a success compared to past and future mmo launhces.
WoW's server stability was another issue altogether. You can't really apply the term "polish" to technical issues because of their almost random and uncontrollable nature. Bottom line: Stability blew big time. It just plain sucked for weeks.
WoW's feature list is also not something you can apply the term "polish". It lacked PvP, Epic sieges, Housing, Hero Classes, and a LONG list of features that Blizzard just plain lied to us about for years. Eventually they added some features and are going to add some of these missing features but it's being done at a time where most of the people they made these promises to have quit the game or stop caring. They're able to add them however they want now, not how they promised.
So really, if you look at the parts of an mmorpg that you can apply the term "polish" to, WoW's launch WAS polished.
Jul 12, 2008 11:44am
At this point, polish needs to really be.
1. All items listed on a box, are in the game.
2. All said items work to some degree of capability.
For #2 this means either I can complete said item, objective, etc. If I cannot complete said objective, then I need an alternate way (a GM can fix it for me, there is a work around)
If I cannot do a certain objective in some manner, then it it not complete. It was not polished.
For all of this, WoW was polished in it's released content.
Jul 12, 2008 1:17pm
@Keen: My issue is that everyone applies the word 'polish' magically.
If you mean content, say content. Say good content. Say a lot of content.
WoW had a lot of good quality content. Specifically they had a lot of leveling-up content, while they lacked in content for other areas (still do, I think you'd agree that their PvP content is pale in comparison).
'Polish' to me has become a fully bullshit blanket fanbois term for supporting one brandname or another. It doesn't actually mean anything the way it's applied.
Jul 12, 2008 1:55pm
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polish
Polish
transitive verb
1 : to make smooth and glossy usually by friction : burnish
2 : to smooth, soften, or refine in manners or condition
3 : to bring to a highly developed, finished, or refined state : perfect
Jul 12, 2008 2:11pm
Even that definition of the word could run people in circles, because you could apply "highly developed" a lot of different ways and what's "finished"?
But overall, I'd say polish in game development means knowing when to cut off some underdeveloped game features, remove inconsistent art & gameplay, fix the bugs and make sure it's stable before it goes out the door. Give it a nice glossy coat. It's knowing what doesn't work and needs to be postponed or tossed. It's almost the opposite of more content. What WAR is doing right now with its cutting of what isn't ready, THAT is polishing.
If fans don't articulate their likes & dislikes and they continue to point to WoW and say "we want a polished game like that", what they're going to get is a bunch of half-assed WoW clones, because they haven't highlighted what they really want and the mystique of perfection isn't really true.
"We want more content, like WoW has but in more than just leveling content" says so much more.
Jul 12, 2008 2:44pm
Polish is definitely one of "those" words.
It requires reading between the lines and often times a prior knowledge of the subject matter.
I could say "WoW was polished but AoC was not" and you would have no clue what I'm talking about unless you had played both games and we see eye to eye on game design and development.
I could say "WoW's content was the complete package and delivered a full experience from levels 1-60 with little to no hiccups or bumps along the way. Age of Conan's content on the other hand was rough around the edges and lacked the essence of a hand crafted fine tuned experience".
High School reading comprehension can lead anyone to deduce from the above that in the opinion of the author WoW was more polished than AoC.
I agree with your sentiment that fans can't point to WoW and say "I want that" without being more specific. WHAT, of that, do you want?
At the end of the day though shared experiences bridge the gap of understanding far greater than words.
Jul 12, 2008 4:19pm
True Keen, but my perspective is most game developers don't have as much time to play MMORPGs as the players do. Meanwhile the fan dialect is thick with catchphrases that do nothing more than state a preference.
In conversation with a game-designing friend, I made a derisive comment about Tigole/ Jeff Kaplan... That Blizzard hired a raid leader instead in place of a game designer. It seemed an obvious poor choice to me. But my friend replied that's not a bad idea, because who within the industry actually takes the time to play these games thoroughly?
I don't believe fans make good designers on the whole, but we're the only ones with the unique perspective from deep inside these games.
Most developers fail to see the flaws within WoW, or even AoC because they sit down, play, and it seems fun. They don't spend the same hours that the fanbase does.
They see the fanbase has rallied behind their old favourite (WoW) and the grass is greener over the next hill (WAR). We split into factions over game choices and insist that anyone must be able to spot at a glance that game A was all bad and game B was glorious. We're not really sports fans just rooting for our team, but it comes across as such.
And we want stuff, oh yeah we do. We're demanding. We want full and complete games, right? What the hell is that? We're so poor at describing exactly what it is we want and we're sending all the wrong messages.
I'm not asking for a lengthy description of every detail that makes up our definition of completed games, but I'm saying key points of interest are much more informative.
There's a lot of negativity from the rest of the game industry toward the MMORPGs, although WoW's success definitely turned some heads. Many of them still wonder if these are actually games, but us players know the difference between a glorified chatroom like Second Life and an actual game like WoW.
We should explain that better.
And yeah, to illustrate the point, sometimes we need to say what we liked in a game that we otherwise thought was bad, or what failed in a game that was otherwise good.