Richard Bartle grudgingly plays World of Warcraft
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 20th 2008 at 3:00PM
Richard Bartle hasn't necessarily been super kind to Blizzard's game in the past, but our sister site Massively recently sat down with the legendary MMO developer to set the record straight. In an interview from the Indie GDC from earlier this year, Mr. Bartle speaks candidly about his job as a consultant to MMO companies, and while he says that he has leveled three characters to 70 to see what all the fuss was about, he's not that interested in playing World of Warcraft -- he'd rather make his own games.He does have good recommendations for what he'd tell Blizzard to change, though: first things first, he wants to see an official "WTB" mechanism for the Auction House, where you can offer a price not only for what you want to sell, but for what you want to buy as well. He'd also fix the LFG system (and who wouldn't, really? has it ever worked?), and he says that Karazhan was a great example of a mistake -- by putting such a rough, guild-killing instance first in line for progression, Blizzard really put the hurt on players (especially solo players -- he says Karazhan is impossible to PuG) heading into the endgame.
Finally, he's excited for "Lich Kingdom" as he calls it, but not really happy about it: "The only reason that I played up to level 70 was credentials," he says, "and when Lich Kingdom comes out, I shall have to requalify myself." We can't say he doesn't have a point -- as popular as WoW is, competition always makes a marketplace better, and up to this point, WoW hasn't had any competition at all, leaving its faults glaring to an expert developer like Bartle.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Instances, Interviews
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Lenina Jun 20th 2008 3:05PM
Karazhan is guild killing?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
mk Jun 20th 2008 8:16PM
mick is totally right. my former guild that had raided to naxx in vanilla wow lost over 10 quality raiders due to failing to handle drama over who got into kara, which group, etc. it was a big problem for us and the fallout from those people leaving probably hampered that guild's progression until it died.
Mia Jun 21st 2008 2:42AM
How quickly some forget! Kara was pretty traumatizing for most raiding guilds. You had 40 man guilds with 3 or 4 tanks, tops; and usually 7-8 healers. Suddenly you needed 4 groups of 10 people, and each group had to have 2 tanks and 3 healers. Guilds were short the tanks and heals to run that many Kara groups, so a lot of DPS players got completely shafted. Drama, guild quits, game quits, angst, tears, my guild had it all and so did everyone else's I knew. And some players (three in my guild alone) rolled tanks or healers and abandoned their beloved mains just to be able to raid and help the guild progress; interestingly, they were all eventually burnout cases who canceled their accounts.
Most seem to have forgotten how very much Kara got nerfed last year. :)
Mia Jun 21st 2008 2:43AM
How quickly some forget! Kara was pretty traumatizing for most raiding guilds. You had 40 man guilds with 3 or 4 tanks, tops; and usually 7-8 healers. Suddenly you needed 4 groups of 10 people, and each group had to have 2 tanks and 3 healers. Guilds were short the tanks and heals to run that many Kara groups, so a lot of DPS players got completely shafted. Drama, guild quits, game quits, angst, tears, my guild had it all and so did everyone else's I knew. And some players (three in my guild alone) rolled tanks or healers and abandoned their beloved mains just to be able to raid and help the guild progress; interestingly, they were all eventually burnout cases who canceled their accounts.
Most seem to have forgotten how very much Kara got nerfed last year. :)
Mia Jun 21st 2008 2:44AM
How quickly some forget! Kara was pretty traumatizing for most raiding guilds. You had 40 man guilds with 3 or 4 tanks, tops; and usually 7-8 healers. Suddenly you needed 4 groups of 10 people, and each group had to have 2 tanks and 3 healers. Guilds were short the tanks and heals to run that many Kara groups, so a lot of DPS players got completely shafted. Drama, guild quits, game quits, angst, tears, my guild had it all and so did everyone else's I knew. And some players (three in my guild alone) rolled tanks or healers and abandoned their beloved mains just to be able to raid and help the guild progress; interestingly, they were all eventually burnout cases who canceled their accounts.
Most seem to have forgotten how very much Kara got nerfed last year. :)
Argent Jun 20th 2008 3:11PM
i thought his first two suggestions had merit, but karazhan? seriously -- LOL.
the problems associated with kara early in the expansion (imo) had more to do with the resizing of the raid caps from 15/40 to 10/25 -- there was a lot of logistics and growing pains involved with sorting out who was gonna raid when and with whom, but it really wasn't that big of a deal.
if he wants to bring up a guildkilling instance -- that would be sunwell. but kara (imo) is just about the best raid instance in TBC.
beatphreek Jun 20th 2008 3:24PM
What 15 man instances were you running?
Leon Jun 20th 2008 3:44PM
Maybe he meant ubrs, but what he should have said was 20/40. UBRS was definitely a PUG instance.
Mick Jun 20th 2008 5:05PM
Obviously none of you are remembering the rampant crying over how hard Kara was. How most guilds on a server couldn't down nightbane for their SSC attunement, because bears and tankadins couldn't stance dance and not everyone had fear ward. And how the ushers would one-shot anyone but tanks and you couldn't shackle them.
And how the attunement sucked because resto druids couldn't heal heroics, off-specs didn't fit in 5-man groups, and rogues didn't have improved sap. And of couse, tanks were squishy as shit in their leveling blues and heroic mobs actually hit hard before they were nerfed.
Guilds broke apart because Kara was too hard and it was too much work getting 35-40 people through the nightbane quest line and attuned for SSC.
Breck Jun 20th 2008 3:12PM
I call BS. There's no way anyone would level 3 characters to 70 if they didn't like the game. I don't care how dedicated you are to your job, that's a long time to do something you dislike.
summerty Jun 20th 2008 3:25PM
Powerleveling FTW :)
wha? Jun 20th 2008 3:14PM
the entire last paragraph made me cringe. Get the name of the game right...and Kara being a guild-killer? Maybe if you are talking about the 10 -> 25 man jump, but not because of difficulty!
Verit Jun 20th 2008 7:55PM
Kara was a guild killer - killed the first guild I was in on staghelm and there was a ton of drama in the guild I joined after that.
Don't forget the instance itself has been nerfed considerably - the usher pulls for instance used to be non-cc'able - which meant you didn't just have to have one tank and an off-tank (who is lesser geared) they both had to be really well geared.
And if you were gearing up for the 25 mans (the next step in progression) you had to maintain 3-4 kara groups - which was a huge pain in the ass since one group was all the uber elite players and officers (who strangely had access to all the high end enchants/mats and craftable items all the time) and the rest of us.
I can even remember the world first kill of nightbane - yes it was a big deal. All priests getting fear-ward was really a direct result of this encounter.
Most pugs I've been on still have a lot of trouble with nightbane, shade, netherspite and prince - I definitely wouldn't call that pugable - unless its a pug made up of mostly guildies.
Preston Jun 20th 2008 9:26PM
When Kara came out, it was a guild killer. You guys are too jaded now and forgetting how things were when it came out.
kodysandwich Jun 20th 2008 3:19PM
3 characters to 70 to see what the fuss was about? If it was me, I think one would have done it, but two more just in case... seems like he liked it. ;)
MechChef Jun 20th 2008 3:24PM
I quit my first scrub guild to get into Kara. /shrug
Lab Monkey Jun 20th 2008 3:24PM
WTB the WTB feature.
niko Jun 20th 2008 3:46PM
AH still applies here, so for ur WTB, I say:
100,000g!
Chuddy Jun 20th 2008 3:29PM
"Did you know one in 100,000 people are psychopaths? Well, you do now."
I love how RIGHT that guy likes to be.
Gulbrandt Jun 20th 2008 4:22PM
...except that it's more like every 1 in 100 people are psychopathic, which I find interesting. :)
That doesn't mean a psychopath is necessarily violent, but they do tend to be self-centered, pathological liars, shallow, impulsive, and irresponsible. They don't respond to punishment at all, but very strongly to reward.
It could certainly explain at least *some* of the people we've all run into in-game.