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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard's internal tools need an upgrade
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 20th 2008 at 5:00PM
Susana of Hyjal speculates about something I've thought about a few times before -- just what exactly are Blizzard's internal development tools like? Most games that have mapmakers can churn out new maps pretty rapidly, but we've had the same BG maps for years now, and only one or two per year since then. And even the created maps aren't fixed easily, apparently -- a few map tweaks on WSG would probably fix the turtling problem, but Blizzard instead is tweaking the rules to fix things. Just what is Blizzard using to make their game that they take so long with development?To be fair, the rules here are a little more complicated than most first-person shooters (since you can do a lot more than just shoot at each other), so obviously the maps would presumably be a little more complicated as well. But in the age when players have access to the Neverwinter Nights toolset and even the Forge on Halo 3, surely it's a little crazy that Blizzard takes months to release one map, when other great games can pump out whole packs of them in the same time.
Now, this is WoW Insider, so it's ok if you're a Blizzard apologist. It's fine for you to say "Blizzard has the biggest game in the world not despite the fact that they're so slow, but because of it," and it's fine for you to be a fanboy/girl and say you'd rather wait three years for a Blizzard-quality Arathi Basin than play a whole "Hidden Fronts" pack. And the truth is that when Blizzard does release content, they don't disappoint. But we're still left wondering just why, after doing this for so long and having so much practice at it, it still takes them so long to do it.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Battlegrounds, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
mirilene Mar 20th 2008 5:32PM
First, i agree with Ktok. Thanks for pre-disreguarding us "fanboys".
The people who want blizzard to hook up the NWN toolset and "crank out" maps are really underestimating the complexity of the game and the time it takes to properly design a map that has to be played on by 10 million people.
I think it could be argued that NONE of the maps they've already released (bg and arena) are prefectly balanced and fair to all sides. Some arenas are really bad for LoS, some give an unfair advantage to casters, some are unbalanced for horde, etc.
And how do you fix it? How do you determine what really makes an impact on the game. Is it the starting location, or the tiny bit of terrain that makes someone dismount 20 yards before the other team, or a height advantage that lets people parachute and slow fall from one base to another.
I would also imagine the responsibility of producing something that so many people play (and who aren't shy about being incredibly vocal and poisonous about any inadequacies) probably paralyzes the development of new or existing content until they are SURE its not going to cause more problems than fix.
Not to mention that PvP is hard to balance anyway in wow and they're still struggling to get a handle on it. Players seek the path of least resistance and will seize upon ANY advantage and completely grind the game to a halt from its intended purpose.
Finally, yes, any jerkoff can crank out a map pack for halo or NWN, but HAVE YOU SEEN SOME OF THOSE MAPS? I've got news for you. they AINT all day of defeat. Most of the custom maps out there for ANY game are total garbage, either completely unbalanced or so vanilla to be boring or remove any need for strategy from the game, like all those starcraft maps with unlimited crystal nodes so the map becomes who can zerg up the fastest. Man THATS interesting.
Who wants 15000 capture the flag maps that essentially boil down to "Well on this map, the farm building is a tower!" or just pointless killing. Not to mention it will dilude the queues further so we're even more spread out between maps.
Paul W. Mar 20th 2008 5:32PM
Sure map making may be simple, but new maps would increase server load as well...
gundamxzero Mar 20th 2008 5:38PM
Entirely incorrect AFAIK BG's are on a completely different servers than world servers. Just like instances are.
Staggerlee Mar 20th 2008 5:41PM
I just dont understand how they do these things either. The only thing obvious is that they dont put money back into the game and have very small development team.
It sure as heck isnt the complexity of the maps or the fit and finish that they worry about. The maps they now have outside of AV are very very basic and mundane. I am sure a 7th grader could produce maps like we have now if not better.
You know that there are still bugs and exploits in the maps we have now right? Defend them if you feel the need but I dont buy it for a minute that Blizzard just cares that much. To this day you can bypass all of the Horde NPC's and jump a fence in numerous areas. You can get to an unreachable place in WSG.
Frankly it disapoints me that blizzard if anything seems lazy in their devlopment and testing. They still require the playerbase to do most of their policing and bug finding.
Once again my bet is that they dont put money into the game and most of their developers work on upcoming titles rather than WOW the cash cow.
Arturis Mar 20th 2008 7:53PM
@Staggerlee
"Dont put money back into the game"? Lazy? Are you even playing the same game as I am?
Ok, lets step back a moment and and realise something here. The Burning Crusade is technically patch 2.0 (well, 2.1 once most of the issues were fixed) and prior to that there were 13 content patches. Each one brought either major changes to the game geography or character class play, and sometimes both.
Several of the instances didn't exist at launch (Blackwing Lair, Ahn Qiraj, Zul Gurub - just to name a few) - hell, there was no weather at launch, that was added in later. Blizzard has been putting out free content patches to improve the game since day one, several of which compare in size and scope to complete paid expansion packs in other MMOs. When they did create their first paid expansion pack, it brought with it an entire other world to explore. And now they are about to unleash 2.4 on us, with enough content to hold us over until WotLK (3.0).
To put things in perspective, EverQuest released an expansion pack that added in instanced dungeons. They were randomly generated - all the designers had to do was build the basic "lego blocks" of the dungeon and set up scripts to string them together and populate them with a random number of monsters adjusted by the number of party members. This is just one of the 14 PAID expansions that they have released since EQ's conception. But really, this is not meant to slight EQ - that was just how things were done, you paid for new content on top of your monthly subscription.
Now Blizzard hands out new content every couple of month for no fee on top of subscription costs, they take the time to revamp their sound system to allow in game voice chat, they do what they can to address game breaking issues and add the features that players request when they can, and they called "lazy".
Call me a fanboy if you want, but that just makes me sad. Blizzard is not infallible by any means, but they do put in tremendous amounts of work. If you cant appreciate that (or even acknowledge it) you aren't likely to find contentment with WoW or any other MMO in the future.
pudds Mar 20th 2008 5:41PM
I think the issue is more complicated than that...we don't have 4 BG maps, we have 4 completely different battleground *games*.
If and when Blizzard releases a 5th map, I presume it will also be a 5th unique game, and designing/implementing that game is far more complex than a map design.
Milhojas Mar 20th 2008 5:43PM
You can't have a huge amount of maps (or dungeons) because people will be too dispersed and it will be difficult to gather them for a single map. What Blizzard can do prevent this and give us more maps is to rotate the map for a battleground each week. For example, we can have four maps of EOTS and rotate them through the month.
I believe that they don't dedicate that much time to each map because of lack of resources. I mean, we're already playing those maps, right? And each time you play it's a new experience because you play against real people. It's still fun. So, they probably take their resources and make more PvE content (like the Sunwell and WOTLK) because once you start farming high level instances and there's nothing left to see, you start walking the boredom path. And you know where it ends.
Baluki Mar 20th 2008 5:43PM
Well, it would be relatively quick to create new maps, but Blizzard wants to create new content that is actually NEW, not just a slight tweak on a previous map.
Would people really be satisfied with new versions of the same styles of battlegrounds that we have now? Do we want another WSG when the current one is still very flawed? They would have to create a map that has a different playstyle than what has come before it, or people would just say "we already have THAT". Even EOTS is basically just WSG + AB.
This is probably why they haven't released Azshara Crater yet. If it's too similar to the other BGs, nobody's going to care. They want to release ORIGINAL content, not just MORE content.
Staggerlee Mar 20th 2008 5:49PM
Point really is that they wont even tweak the maps they have now. They flat out refuse to do it. The entire game knows about the problems and exploits and yet they dont even fix those let alone create new maps.
They just dont care obviously.
Unundead Mar 20th 2008 5:47PM
Honestly, wtf are blizz doing?
"OMG it takes ages to make maps, there are still some bug in the wsg for example"
Well then fix them you tard. Honestly look at lotro, they have about a billionth of the customer base and they still churn out loads of new material.
What has blizz put out in the last year? Voice chat which no one uses, a 20 man dungeon and a few new quests. Wow, no wonder I recently cancelled my account.
Matt Mar 20th 2008 5:53PM
And thank goodness you did.
Unundead Mar 20th 2008 6:02PM
Nice to see you articulated your point with clear examples or comparisons as I did. Oh wait...
Matt Mar 20th 2008 7:23PM
Except you didn't. They've got 2 25 man dungeons, a 10 man, a 5 man, new factions, dailies, mounts, voice chat, new holidays and boss encounters, and the LFG tool. Could there have been more? I guess, but don't play like they're sitting on their asses counting money.
Unundead Mar 20th 2008 9:39PM
What has blizz put out in the last year? A 10* man dungeon, voice chat and quests.
You added the new lfg tool, dailies, new holidays and new mounts.
I know there's a big patch and an xpac just round the corner, but you have to admit that certainly the last 10 months or so have been pretty barren for the world's top mmo.
Considering they have a small army of devs, I expected better.
kellzea Mar 21st 2008 3:26AM
lol you turd. (i normally wouldnt abuse people for stupidity but what the hey)
if you canceled your acount wtf are you doing here? hate wow? thats fine, but fuck off somewhere else and hate it.
the last year has seen lots of blistering content not to mention most of there devs have been working on WOTLK for about a year. you could say that the content weve had so far was to keep us interested and drip fed. but why should they do it differently. not everyone has finished black temple, not everyone is in full S3 gear.
i sympathise with reaching the top and then geting bored, but thats realy only 1% of the population that it effects.
they still tweek teh starting areas and the lvl 20-30 30-40 brakets etc. new content isnt all about
I WUNTZ NEW BEE GEES AN SHIZZ
its about what everyone wants
Matt Mar 20th 2008 5:56PM
Hey everyone! Since your skillz are so hax, check this link out!
http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/
Show those lazy bastards how it's done!
Retron Mar 20th 2008 6:43PM
Rob Pardo covered this issue in his GDC keynote, as covered by WoWInsider:
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/02/20/gdc08-live-from-rob-pardo-talks-about-blizzards-approach-to-mm/
Blizzard seems to feel that more maps is not better, since players never get the feel for any given map. It's also related to Pardo's 'bucket' metaphor, where too many options (including map selection) makes it less likely for players to get matched up evenly.
At any rate, I'm sure this isn't a case where they just can't make them fast enough. In addition, it looks like Wrath will bring in the idea of zone-wide PvP nearly replacing battlegrounds with Lake Wintergrass, which should be like a huge, persistent battleground with multiple objectives. Personally I'm much more excited about LW, with its siege weapons and destructible buildings than I am about any possible new battleground maps that may come with the expansion.
Mike Schramm Mar 20th 2008 6:11PM
Well that is a good reason not to make new maps, but why haven't they edited the old ones? All we've seen in AB and WSG are rule changes and point redistributions when some map editing would have helped.
I should clarify, as well, that no, I am not a game programmer. I have done some programming, but nothing too big or professional. So yes, I'm an armchair programmer. But I look at how quickly certain tools can turn out content and how quickly Blizzard's tools seem to, and something doesn't vibe. If you disagree or have other insight, great, thanks for posting a comment. :)
Kyle S. Mar 20th 2008 6:47PM
To be honest with you I don't think that this is a problem with tools. I think this is a problem with this being designed as a PvE game and adding PvP to it. All of the battlegrounds have relevant horde vs alliance areas (exception being EotS). What would the new BG area be?
I think blizzard probably needs better tools to figure out the class balancing issues instead.
jurandr Mar 20th 2008 6:43PM
Blizzard should have a contest of a sort.
10 dollars, Blizzard gives you the map maker on a 3-month license. Players make what they think is an ideal map, and the winning map gets put in game. Blizz can send them a free frostmourne or something as a grand prize.