Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsGuest Post: Into the future with user-created content
by J. Chesley Roberson Jr. 
Oct 4th 2010 at 3:00PM
One wonders how long World of Warcraft will remain viable. It is quite possible that my warlock will still be going strong decades down the line. Of one thing, however, I am certain: I will be playing some sort of MMORPG for as long as I'm able to tweak my spec. But will that game be WoW?
My friends and I muse about what it would take to switch to another game. That game would have to build upon WoW's legacy and offer something new and amazing to boot. Speaking of boots, I'd wager my Prelate's Snowshoes that the new game will be some incarnation of WoW itself, as Blizzard has proven so willing and able to adapt and grow with its fan base.
What makes WoW so popular and enduring? For starters, the game is so accommodating, with plenty to offer noobs and leets alike. Players can feel a sense of accomplishment from merely questing, while others can savor the challenge of working through multiple levels of high-end raid content. I can feel the delight of one-shotting a low-health rogue sneaking around the lumber mill or experience the soul-destroying chaos of getting quickly roasted in arena. And those of us with creaking, overworked CPUs are able to take part in the fun.
The power of people and players
WoW's most powerful legacy is its community. Imagine all of the man-hours spent creating the artwork, addons, comics, machinima, websites and endless forum posts (BTW, I think I figured out an awesome new demo spec). In my humble opinion, the most exciting part of the whole experience is the out-of-game time spent researching, theorycrafting and just plain daydreaming about the game. It is an imagination engine, a fantasy facilitator (an alternate existence?). Blizzard actively encourages this community by shaking things up on a regular basis -- rebalancing the classes, adding new content, giving and taking away. And we are allowed to create our own programs that enhance the experience, which gives us a glimpse into the future of MMOs: user-created content.
The web at large has been moving in the direction of user-created content for years. Why should online games be any different? My son plays a game called Roblox that allows the users to create their own environments in which other players may participate. Seemingly very simple, some of the user-created game spaces are devilishly complex and interesting. Ratchet this up to a Blizzard-like level of complexity and creativity, and we have the future! Imagine the possibilities ...
The player-created dungeons, battlegrounds, grottoes, panopticons and so on might be too difficult for some, too easy for others, downright boring or wondrous. The WoW community would guide us to the best of the lot, which we know would end up being mind-blowingly ingenious. For all the greatness of the Blizzard designers, there is some misfit out there willing to "waste" countless hours to design a delight to knock your socks off. Perhaps Blizzard could get out of the design business altogether and simply be in charge of the uber-rules and basic design pieces.
Nothing is as creative as the collective overmind of those who wish to build for the love of it. This, my fellow fantasists, is where we are bound.
Have you ever wanted to write for WoW Insider? Your chance may be right around the corner. Watch for our next call for submissions, and be sure to sign up for Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider. The next byline you see here may be yours!Filed under: Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Damien Oct 4th 2010 11:26PM
While I myself occasionally wish Warcraft featured more created user-content , I wonder whether if it is for better or worse that they don't. User-content created worlds are often one-trick ponies which leave a lot to be desired later on in their life, with my mind wandering to games like Little Big Planet and City of Heroes as examples.
The appeal of World of Warcraft is in the consistency of the material that Blizzard releases; you know as a gamer that you will get at least a decent story and a decent resolution on your armour sets, even if you may disagree with how the story goes or what the set looks like.
Would it be nice to design your own? Yes. But is it ultimately worth the cost of implementation to Blizzard, not only with the initial set-up of such a system but also the maintenance and inevitable necessity to moderate such custom content? Maybe in a new franchise, but I'm not sure I'd ever feel comfortable in a World of Warcraft where those around me can contribute to the environment as much as Blizzard does.
MsMoo Oct 5th 2010 1:47AM
It would be fantastic to create zones, dungeons even boss fights! What makes WoW great is its community, allowing the community to breath life into the game directly would be awesome! Of coarse fallowing some pretty uber rule set just to keep the game looking WoW authentic and not zoning into a mock up of a McDonalds where you have to defeat the Fry kids...
stevenwoodworth Oct 5th 2010 2:27AM
No. No. No freaking no. WoW doesn't need and will never need user created content. Put that out of your minds now. That would completely ruin the game. If you want to build content go play the freaking sims. Why do people keep suggesting this completely idiotic idea?
Izaach Oct 5th 2010 3:43AM
There's this super neat addon called GHI that allows you to make your own (non-graphical) items in game and can share them with other players who also have the GHI addon. Add in the complexity of scripting and it also allows you to make quests. :)
Infinite Duck Oct 5th 2010 1:10PM
I don't think WoW currently could support this as I think (and do not for sure) that all instances and raids require downloaded content, not just the skins, but the layout. However they are adding that new stream feature in, so that may make it completely possible to stream new or user created dungeons to people. It would require though, I think, I separate application from WoW, like the map creator for Starcraft.
And there would have to be restrictions. Scaling comes to mind. Scaling is the only way it can work to ensure people don't abuse it by making rewards too great, or mobs too easy.
Let's use a lvl 40 instance for an example. You design your instance using existing skins in the game for terrain and items. Depending on the size depends how many pulls you must include in your instance and how many bosses you can have.
Our instance (we'll say) is around a size 4, we may have 20-40 pulls, and 4 bosses. Each pull can consist of 1 to 10 mobs, that do a combined 40 dps per second, and have a combined life of 3000 and may have 1 special ability with a combined cooldown. The loot tables are also combined as well as the XP. Thus more mobs does not equal more loot or xp. Thus we can have tough single mobs, or aoe pulls. Each pull must be so far from the next as to not chain aggro. However a pull may have a 'patrol' area and that crosses into another pulls aggro radius.
Boss abilities can be chosen by the designer. Depending on how many abilities depends on the strengths of each. Many weak abilities or a few strong abilities.
Finally user created loot. Let's say at this level you can have an item with no more than 50 stats(perhaps a bit high, but it's just an example.) Each stat must be 15% to 40% of the total amount. And you may have 3 to 5 stats on an item. Stats are always rounded down. Armor will depends on the item type and how much is acceptable. However perhaps bonus armor can be added at double the normal rate... (or maybe quadruple for plate, triple for mail, and double for leather) so where normally it be 10 strength it could be +20 armor.
Let's say plate gloves drop, we could have the following:
20 stam, 10 strength, 10 parry, 10 dodge
20 Stam, 15 Strength, 15 dodge.
20 Stam, 20 Strength, 10 dodge.
10 Stam, 20 Strength, 10 parry, 10 dodge.
10 Stam, 10 Strength, 10 Agility, 10 Intellect, 10 Spirit
Keeps it fairly controlled, and perhaps fair. Perhaps harder to abuse.
Matthew Finitz Oct 5th 2010 5:06PM
I agree that UCC (user created content) has the classic pitfall of poor creators flooding the system with crap. However, there are creative solutions around this.
As far as I'm concerned, UCC has *always* been on my mind. I've spec'd ways to do this since vanilla wow. For example, we used to farm BOE epics, then host raids where the guild members actually carried the story-line to guildies (imagine meeting me in Northshire where I tell you of a dire quest). We had to *bend the metal* quite a bit to get a working role-playing "adventure/campaign" going (chaperones, duelling, scavenger hunts), but it worked and players liked the spin from standard blizz content. And in those moments, we tasted how great UCC really could be, and the addictive qualities it had on players. Players seemed to bind more and prefer PVE content when they were playing against real, thoughtful adversaries.
There are other spec'd ideas that I won't go into here (since I'm protecting those ideas), but there are several ways to safely introduce UCC. I think TonyMcS's idea is one of those (to allow you to control raid bosses - however, the con of that would be malicious users who purposefully 'lay down their sword' and let attackers defeat them easier as a means of farming. (Compare this to the old PVP rules where you were disallowed from staging matches between factions in order to speed up the PVP grind).
All that babbled, I'd be *extremely disappointed* if Blizzard is not building this natively into their next-gen MMO. It is the holy grail of RPGs as anyone who's ever truly played table-top RPGs realizes there are two parts to the game - playing - and creating. Ask any true DM what they prefer to do, and they'll probably say they like to create the adventures and worlds vs. just playing in them. Just like some of the greatest software ever invented, people like to use tools, but the most popular tools are those that allow users to create even better things.
MMORPGs need to do just this. They need to expand the game system into two parts (possibly three if you read my specs) - Playing, and Creating. Through clever publishing of game development tools (that most rigs use), they can enable players to not only experience the world they imagine, but to expand it into infinity.
And that is truly what will keep players playing a game for years to come.
+.02
DayDreamer Oct 5th 2010 10:27PM
Disappointing article.
This article didn't really say much that wasn't in the title. "user-generated content would be nice in WoW". Uh huh. In what way would it be most possible? What makes them think this is a direction WoW is going in? In what way would WoW user-generated content function? This "article" really should have been "give us your opinion on the issue", since the comments easily dwarf the content of the article.
Also, beyond add-ons and sites like wowhead and wowwiki (which I'm not underestimating the work that went into them at all), the community isn't that important. Apparently guilds persist and PUGs still happen despite most players being pretty terrible. but the system under which people play doesn't allow for the flexibility of making up our own games.
Darias.Perenolde Oct 6th 2010 5:03PM
Interesting suggestion, but that would require that everyone attending our parties would have to install the addon. At minimum, we typically have 100 or so non-guildies show up. At our highest attendance (back in vanilla WoW), we hit 400 once.