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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsIs WoW being run by its B-team? Is that bad?
by Eliah Hecht 
Jul 14th 2009 at 8:00PM
This post by Eric Heimburg on the excellent MMO design blog Elder Game, alleging that WoW is currently run by Blizzard's B-team, has ignited a fair amount of controversy around the blogosphere. The general argument appears to be that the people previously in charge of WoW, like Jeff Kaplan, have moved on to other projects. As a consequence knee-jerk changes are being pushed through very fast, without being sufficiently tested first. "Back in the day," claims the article, "QA held the game to a higher standard."
My reaction to these claims are mixed. Kaplan may not be in charge of WoW anymore, but I don't think that "the steady hand has left the rudder," or if it has, maybe a less straight-ahead course is a good thing. Changes may be getting pushed through very quickly - Ghostcrawler routinely refers to players getting whiplash from the frequency of balance changes - but in many cases, I think this is for the best.
Throughout the BC era, WoW followed a model of punctuated equilibrium: relatively large changes in major patches, and very little in-between. This did mean a lot of testing could be done for most changes, but the downside is that it regularly took months for problems to be fixed.
Nowadays, we appear to have a faster cycle of minor (two-decimal-point) patches, as well as copious hotfixes. Sure, it causes some cruft to accumlate - like leatherworkers being able to craft now-worthless quivers, in Heimburg's example - but I think a faster problem/solution turnaround time is well worth a few rough edges. Rapid iteration has been a principle of web design for a while now. Maybe it's time it came to MMOs, which are conceptually similar to web apps.
Overall, I think the game is continually improving. It's in a better state now than it ever has been, and it will be better still in 3.2, if what I'm seeing from the PTR is any indication. (Caveat: No more jousting, please. It is simply not fun.) So if there are indeed new people in charge of WoW, I for one welcome our change-happy overlords.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
havitech Jul 14th 2009 8:56PM
It would explain more than a couple of things, including but not limited to:
- The lack of unique and diverse equipment models.
- The models that we are getting aren't very creative.
- The fact that Blizzard has no idea what they want to do with raids. Stay with me here: before WotLK was released, 10man raids were being touted as the means by which everyone would get to see content, with 25mans still being what they were in TBC; WotLK came out, and it turned out that both were the same difficulty, with 10man being harder in some respects; Ulduar is released, and that whole idea is scrapped in favor of hard modes for the "hardcore"; 3.2 is going to scrap that, and both 10mans and 25mans will have heroic versions with timed and/or limited-attempts encounters.
- Jousting, 'nuf said.
The only positive direction I see Blizzard taking is in the PvP department, in that they are finally moving focus back to battlegrounds. Unfortunately, the next battleground will have a large emphasis on vehicles. Ugh!
RetPallyJil Jul 14th 2009 8:58PM
... still no clue what to do with me and my 2h kindred, though. Maybe it's time for the C-Team to get a shot?
Avan Jul 14th 2009 9:07PM
Definitely the B-team.
Vanilla WoW was pretty cool in its content, save the ridiculous time investment needed to get to 60 (and the ridiculous investment needed to start raiding). The end game raids were kinda fun back then. The worst part about it was having 40 people talk over TS at once, getting them all online at the same time, and generally having to deal with 30 mins of setup for 5 mins of gameplay (haha, buffing joke).
Now? You can just blitzkrieg content. Trash can be cleared faster than you can say, "trash mobs are supposed to be important." Homogenization of gear has made purples go from "OMFG YES, FINALLY!" status to "alright, next boss."
Don't get me wrong, WotLK is a better product than vanilla. Vanilla was still far more fun, though. Wanna know why? More rewarding. As the old adage goes, "risk versus reward," vanilla raid content was far more riskier, and it was much more rewarding because of it. Because you can steamroll WotLK content, a lot of the "reward" isn't so rewarding because its really, really easy. Even hard modes, which are indeed more of a challenge, aren't as rewarding because everything up to that is still piss easy.
WotLK is better, but not perfect.
Swordchucks Jul 15th 2009 9:40AM
Naxx trash is nothing special, but the Ulduar trash... some of the Ulduar trash is pretty intense. Frigging Faceless Horrors...
Andelorn Jul 14th 2009 9:20PM
Just two points on the 'unimaginative designers':
- How the hell can you call anything that's been released since Wrath, Naxx aside, unimaginative and 'cut and pasted'? Every 5man, every raid is something new, something unique. I mean, Vanilla patches contained a class review which swung the balance pendulum wildly, and one single feature, be that a battleground, a holiday event, or in the last patches of Vanilla, new raids. No Vanilla patch compares AT ALL to the changes 3.0, 3.1 and now 3.2 bring to the table.
- Those things that are reused or 'boring' are for a GOOD reason. If you were there at the end of Vanilla/start of BC you'd know that Blizzard stated they dropped the ball releasing Naxx so close to the expansion since they loved the work they put into the raid. So when an expansion came where Naxx would be setting appropriate, they brought it back to let people see the work they did and an even more badass looking version of a tier set very few people got to wear. As for the T9 gear, it's already been said by others that the design is because the Tournament is training troops for an attack on Icecrown Citadel. And, as the troops of each faction will want strength through unity, what better way then to create a 'uniform' of sorts? Who cares if your shoulders don't have a flaming eyeball impaled on a spike, or that everyone.. haha.. 'looks too much the same'. Get over it, enjoy your shiny higher stats and the raid and look forward to Icecrown.
And for all those who say that WoW is too easy, I just have one thing to say: Final Fantasy XI is still running. It's not for casuals, if a game that's challenging is all you want.
Irem Jul 15th 2009 7:59AM
I still look back on my years playing FFXI fondly, usually whenever someone starts concern trolling about the deep, deep sadness they feel now that Blizzard's dev team has magically morphed into a bunch of vaguely-humanoid cackling money-counting machines, intent on churning out half-assed patches because they like the taste of gamer tears and want to spend more time kneeling before some wailing corporate demon who demands their creativity as a sacrifice.
It's at that point that I want to scoop the person posting up, turn them into, say, a Tarutaru black mage or summoner, and insert them into one of three places in Vana'diel:
1) Dragon's Aery, in an LS that's been camping Fafnir/Nidhogg for an hour already (and there's still at least three hours to go!);
2) Sky, the endgame zone where nearly everything aggros magic, sound, sight, or all three, in an LS that's waiting on them to start Kirin and with exactly three 30,000 gil-per-stack sneak and invisible pots in their inventory;
3) LFG for a merit/leveling party while they stand outside Aht Urghan and solo colibri and marids very...very...slowly.
Even at their most clueless, I never thought the FFXI dev team didn't love their game.
Malkia Jul 14th 2009 9:20PM
If this is true then I make a plea.
Dear B team,
show us that you're better than blizzard's "stars" and fix our instance problems and give us our unlimited ammo.
signed,
Malkia
(who had to give up on classic raid night because we couldn't get into karazhan for an hour and we gave up.)
Honestly, in regards to game balance I see what vanilla WoW was...and think people here are looking at it in rose tinted glasses. And the guy complaining about weekly maintenance being weekly? uhm WEEKLY maintenance? When they didn't do it in burning crusade I know my server felt it.
JLC Jul 14th 2009 9:23PM
Given the state of tanking and specifically warrior tanks, I believe it.
mike_brodhead Jul 14th 2009 9:24PM
There's an underlying assumption here which doesn't hold up. Namely, the assumption that more frequent updates equate to sloppy development practices.
More and more programmers are finding that they can increase quality and decrease risk by making smaller changes more frequently. My own experience programming for financial and scientific applications bears this out. I don't mean to start a debate about software methodology here but simply to challenge the idea that short development cycles are the province of bad programmers. Many of software development's leading lights are moving in the same direction of the WoW team.
Andelorn Jul 14th 2009 9:47PM
I think people who complain about this have seen Hackers and believe they now know what software development is.
yunkndatwunk Jul 14th 2009 9:25PM
Anyone who thinks the recent changes are so drastic and the live team years ago made fine small changes is either 1. looking back with rose colored glasses or 2. didn't actualy play
Ever since the beginning Blizzard has made drastic swings from mini patch to mini patch. This is nothing new. Hell the addition of arena itself changed the game irrevocably even for people who have never step foot in an arena.
The only difference is they are changing the focus of the game, but that's nothing new, if you've been playing since '05 you've seen it going this way for a long time. At least the people running the game now are not grade a jerks like kaplan.
theholyevil Jul 14th 2009 9:30PM
I'm usually a person who looks at the glass half full. However with WOTLK you need to take a more realistic approach. Frankly what content do we have with WOTLK?
Single player: little to none
5-man: done and gone with
10-25 mans: with Ulduar being the exception, Naxx was a remodeled vanilla WOW raid, with the colosseum being nothing more then a dreaded arena match. And the teir 9 looking WORSE then the sunwell sets. (alliance FTL)
BGs: Wintergrasp was a nice attachment to world pvp, only to see that kind of large scale pvp being removed in 3.2. Then you have stand of the ancients, probably one of the worse BGs ever made. It epitomizes teamwork and focuses on a zerg type pvp. Hopefully the next BG will bring it back.
PVP: S4 was the last time pvp even saw a remote possibility of pvp balance. We are already almost a full year into WOTLK with still no pvp balance. I do agree that pvp will probably never be balanced, but this design tactic blizz seems to favor "Throw it in there and pray something good comes out" does not fair well for balance. Example: giving shadow priests 20% mortal strike. IMO WTH is that for?!?
Conclusion: WOTLK had a nice beginning, but when it comes down to it, the more and more I play this game. The more I see blizz cutting corners and neglecting true attention to WOW. Yes GC is a great dev, but I say the facts speak for them self. The game has positively lost the attention it had in BC.
havitech Jul 14th 2009 10:10PM
This is a nice summary of how I feel about WotLK
Personally, while I believe this expansion had a lot of improvements over TBC, it also had a lot of regression. 3.2 is a major overall regression. I expect that farming a 1-room raid until Icecrown might hurt or even kill a lot of guilds, just because of how utterly boring it will be.
turkeyspit Jul 14th 2009 11:35PM
Yep, pretty much.
For myself it's kind of an irony: I had to quit WoW a few weeks ago (forum lurking is part of my 'weening' phase') because I just couldn't commit the time necessary to keep raiding (my guild was working towards Algalon, with all but 2 of the 25 man Hard Modes on 'farm'), but I always bitched about having nothing to do except raiding.
My daily routine was:
- log in
- check mail
- pickup cooking daily
- pickup JC daily
- head to IC to get AT dailys
- Solo the 3-man Quest, kill a bunch of scourge, lolJoust, collect Champion seals
- hunt down the target of JC daily
- collect Mushrooms for Meatloaf (for the 100th time in a row)
- check H. Daily, and accept anything that wasn't Occulus or OK. Engage Dual Specs, switch to Tank and enter LFG.
- logout
Now that might seem like 'a lot', and I guess in a way it is, but it was mind numbingly boring, and it was all grinding.
- daily gold = repair bills + consumables
- AT dailys for Champion Seals = future rewards
- Daily Heroics = Emblems of Justice = Epic Gems in 3.2 (I had over 500 emblems when I quit lol)
None of it was 'fun' tbh. The fun would start when I got to the raid.
Now I look ahead at 3.2, and I feel like puking, as the raid content looks so terribad. It makes quiting easier tbch, as I feel like I'm getting out at the right time.
I dunno about anyone else, but WoW is definitely not heading in the right direction, at least imo.
havitech Jul 15th 2009 12:33AM
@turkeyspit
Minus doing the dungeon dailies, that was my exact routine until I got my Crusader title. Then it was just the same routine minus the Argent Tourny dailies.
I think that speaks very strongly about the terrible state of the endgame. Raiding is currently the exception, and 3.2 is going to chew that up and spit it out.
andy Jul 15th 2009 6:27AM
ok a few things
Single play in WOTLK, argent tordy, daily quests ect
single play in vanilla wow nothing.
making gold in WOTLK again daily quests, grinding mobs in WG, hell i evem make money of raiding the 10mans
making gold in vanilla wow, grinding tyrs had with EVERY ONE else on the server
pvp in wotlk, an entire zone dedecated to it, 2 bgs this expation, arenas
pvp in vanilla wow, yea the honor patch with NO battle grounds implemented meant grinding tyrs hand was even more fun.
5 mans in wotlk, about 12 hc instances,
in vanilla, BRD or stath anyone,
raiding in wotlk, you can do 10 or 25 man, if you find them too easy do them on hard mode,
in vanilla wow, after doing your 20 hours of grinding to prepare for this 2 hour session, you wait for the 39 other ppl to turn up, and 1 hour into waiting you get a email from your warrior tank saying he cant make it. well no other class can tank to the raid is called off. this and so many bosses in vanilla being so badly killed they are unkillable, and due to no mini patchs this takes 3 weeks to fix.
i have comented above on class ballance so i wont get into that here
ok, i will admit that raiding in wotlk feels a bit like blizz havent made there minds up but thats only because hard modes are new and they are trying to work out the best way to implement it,
so pritty much every thing you have stated was worse in vanilla wow, take of your rose tinted glasses and see that this is the best wow has ever been
jfofla Jul 14th 2009 9:30PM
I have played WOW since release, and I can honestly say I have never been bored.
I love this version of the game better than at any other time, and I see 3.2 as a brilliant patch.
turkeyspit Jul 14th 2009 9:31PM
Quantity != Quality.
Sure, there are lots and lots of changes, but are they all necessary? Clam meat not stacking wasn't really high on my priority list y'know.
And the content is showing the lack of 'quality'. T9 looks to be the biggest joke in WoW raiding history. 5/10/25 man Violet Hold for Tier? Anyone who really excited about that?
havitech Jul 14th 2009 10:47PM
Most of the people I've seen excited about 3.2, are only excited about the gear.
But gear alone doesn't keep customers interested long-term. It's what you have to go through to get the gear that makes it exciting and worthwhile. It doesn't help that any time gear is mentioned the incredibly obnoxious casual vs hardcore arguments pop up, in which both sides are drooling, mouth-breathing, short-sighted idiots who should have absolutely no influence on the direction of WoW. Unfortunately, it seems Blizzard is intent on listening and catering to those idiots.
A Firetruck Jul 14th 2009 9:42PM
heres the thing blizzs B team is likey equivalent to alot of other developers A team