It's not as easy as you think
by Amanda Rivera 
Oct 26th 2007 at 7:15PM
As an example Fate shares with the readers an experimental talent tree for Wrath (and a very nice job, I should say), and references this as just one very complicated aspect of the design of the game. Analyzing every angle of a spec may go very well, until you open it up to the players and realize what you thought was balanced really is no where close. Things go from bad to worse, and the players begin to complain, and complain, and then they, you know, complain. Trying to keep everyone happy is really a thankless job, and this is only one tiny aspect of the game. It doesn't take into account building boss battles, creating loot tables, designing armor and weapons, or anything else that makes this Massively Multiplayer game so very massive.
I haven't considered exactly how much work really goes into building this game, keeping it running, pushing through new content and keeping it balanced at the same time as not completely ruining the old content. Fate has put it all into perspective for me. Although I'm not much of a ranter or a railer when it comes to the Blizzard devs, I certainly from this point on will give them the benefit of the doubt.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Krick Oct 26th 2007 7:44PM
This is exactly why they shouldn't increase the level cap to 80. Keep the talent trees exactly as they are and concentrate on making it more enjoyable to level a character, instead of making it faster to level.
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Krick
http://www.tankadin.com
Alex Oct 26th 2007 8:07PM
I work in the video games industry too and it's really NOT easy as you think. I really wish more people would understand that before whining on forums.
Kalis Oct 26th 2007 8:12PM
If it makes the devs feel better, testers generally aren't too fond of them either.
Sophey Oct 26th 2007 9:42PM
Mike Schramm should read this post since about 85% of his posts on this blog are complaints about something. I wonder why the guy even plays.
Dave Oct 26th 2007 10:19PM
You know, I'm going to totally disagree with this concept.
There's a small portion of very loud complaints that are baseless and just plain whiny.
Then there's the vast majority of very legitimate complaints about the game, that is for the most part completely and totally ignored because the lead design team is made up of former everquest no-life college kids who stayed up until 2AM every night playing a video game and thought it was the most fun thing ever, which is the direction they wanted to take their video game since they got a chance to finally drive the ship. And for a couple of years, the entire game was developed towards this end, rather than attempting to create a fully balanced game with fun for the entire subscriber base, rather than the top tier of elite guilds that raided.
Blizzard makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Yes, the least they could do would be to fix the game that exists, rather than churning out new stuff that nobody wants. Nobody really needed voice chat. Mages still need a 41-point talent in the Arcane tree that's worth putting a point into, and I think lots of other classes have the same issues. I play my mage every single day I'm in the game. I've never used voice chat. I'm pretty sure I'm in the majority here. What's Blizzard's focus? Voice chat. Nobody's even saying anything about ever doing anything about fixing classes with worthless talent trees.
I'm not sure why the fact that it's "hard" there should be any less honest feedback about the things in the game that make no sense, or just plain suck.
vlad Oct 26th 2007 11:25PM
LAWL!!!!!!!!! "and a very nice job, I should say"
that tree is so retarded. and wtf? shadow priests are vampires too. that tree was written nicly but the actual talents were stupid.
ErsatzPotato Oct 27th 2007 12:14AM
Glad someone's saying it. I don't work in the industry but have friends that do. Game design *hard*. Making content is time consuming and expensive. Balancing content is ridiculously time consuming and expensive. There's a limited number of people who can do any of the three well. Subsciption fees don't magically conjure them from the aether.
While I'm never giving any company a free pass--I complain more than most--many complaining clearly have no idea how to design a game, much less the cost/time involved in tweaking one.
Always reminds me of the response to a letter in Dragon Magazine many (eek, twenty?) years ago. The writer complained about the number of ad pages and claimed it was excessive. The editor said (this is from memory), "A year as junior editor on your high school paper didn't teach you the realities of magazine publishing."
Caleb Archon Oct 27th 2007 12:13AM
@5 ... what, you're telling me that the people who worked on voice chat should've been working on talent tree balance instead? Maybe the model designers and server admins should've gotten in on it as well.
Idiot.
Shefki Oct 27th 2007 1:42AM
@5
I'd encourage you to actually go play some of the other games on the market. Blizzard didn't end up with such a massive player base by catering only to small minority. Maybe they don't do what you want. But hey you can't please everyone.
Your argument about EQ is just a repetition of an oft cited and erroneous complaint. By and large this game does not have the camp fests that other MMORPGs have in them. Most WoW players have never spent hours camping a world boss to get the best loot in the world. Then either see another guild get the claim on the boss or be MPK'ed (Mob Player Killed) by another guild in order for them to claim the mob.
By and large the vast majority of the content in this game is instanced so everyone can enjoy it on the schedule they want. The few world bosses there are don't drop loot significant for anyone to camp them, let alone be the best loot in the game.
If you want to see a post EQ game made in the mold of EQ go take a look at FFXI. You'll hate it, I can pretty much guarantee it. But maybe just maybe you'll appreciate the changes that were made for more casual players. You'll also find a bunch of people on those games who call WoW a carebear game.
Blizzard could probably do everything you wanted and you'd still find something to be unhappy about. There are always ways the game could be better.
I suspect part of the reason there is so much complaining about this game is because Blizzard actually listens and responds. They may not always respond how we'd like but they do respond.
Balli Oct 27th 2007 3:22AM
@6 While I haven't really studied the Shadow tree in the linked proto-build I *did* notice some extremely interesting gameplay innovations in the Discipline one.
dacamper Oct 27th 2007 4:44AM
Another consideration is that Blizzard is a company and is thus aiming to make money, so business decisions must come into what they decide to do to the game and when. Coming from a commercial software development background, I have often seen cool software features deprioritised and not made it so some relatively uninteresting (yet greatly in demand) thing can be added.
They only have limited resources and are most likely making some calls about what gets in and what isn't done based on how many subscribers it might keep, loose or gain. I'm sure they have a todo list 1000s of items long and would like to get them all done, but the day is only so long etc...
Tyler Oct 27th 2007 5:02AM
_____________________________________________
Up one post, "They only have limited resources".
You CANT have it all.
Deal with it. WoW isn't everything.
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Tyler Oct 27th 2007 5:04AM
I'm agreeing with 11 if that isn't entirely clear, for those less intelligent reading this forum :)
Joshua Oct 27th 2007 8:02AM
I sometimes feel as though blizzard doesn't put too much time into the game. Consider how ofter the armor and weapon models are reused but with a different color? Season 2 gear = Tier 5. That doesn't make people feel very good to know that their T5 is easily obtainable. I know I know "it's about the stats" but would you wear T6 if it looked like trash?
Sohanstag Oct 27th 2007 8:26AM
Yeah...I agree basically with the premise of this post, but I do often wonder: what the heck are the doing with the millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars that they're making? I've never seen any kind of financial report from them, but I have trouble believing that enough of their subscribers' dollars are going back into development. Maybe someone else can shed some light on that aspect of the company.
Is it due to a limited talent base? Bigger overhead than most of us think? Overly-cautious financial directors?
Charlie Oct 27th 2007 11:39AM
@12
Remember that WoW isn't just supporting WoW, its supporting all of Blizzard, its their big money maker, the cash coming from that is going to develop all of the other games[SCII and Project Hydra], as well as new WoW Content.
Also, they are putting the money into paying their employees (which is prolly a few mil a month for 200+ people), as well as paying for maintinence, and technical development. Adding new servers, adding voice chat, cross-realm BGs, all those things are different from game developlment. Plus theres PR, Marketing, Advertising, Web developlment, cinemetography, accounting, management. Loads and Loads of deparments
Most likeley they still get a large amount of cash (3-5mil+ a month prolly, thats less that 5% total revenue) to develop the game, but you still can't just throw money at a problem, and you can't just throw people at it either, it takes time.
Charlie Oct 27th 2007 11:41AM
Oh, and remember all those deparments go tripple fold, for each of the 3 games. As well as back support for battle.net and all of their old games.
thush Oct 27th 2007 12:07PM
I really don't feel THAT sorry for Blizzard. They've had the most amazing success with WoW and they have set the bar so high it will really be a miracle if Conan or Warhammer actually have a chance. They've done well for themselves. I'm a software developer myself, so I certianly understand the process of prioritizing and triage of bugs and new feature requests to keep the game working as well as to keep it marketable. The Apathy Inc blog post asked a lot of really good questions, but there are questions on the flip side to be asked. Does Blizzard funnel enough of their profits back into WoW maintenance, or are they spending that money on new games? Do they set a fair number of goals for each patch? Typically what happens in software is a list of items for release is created - my question is how much of that do they trim down and deemed unimportant? Then how do they prioritize those items? We don't know that. We also don't know if they have a reasonably sized development team either. When you have 8 million subscribers and are the most successful MMO in history, you're going to be held to a very high standard. They are not going to be perfect, but they had better damn well try. That being said I think they are doing well and the QQing is out of control.