Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Ngruk said:

I am unsure if I agree or disagree. I guess I would ask this, if WoW didn"t have that much solo content pre-70, would it have had as many players? The answer is no, but how much of a no?

If WoW content was spun around to be group content rather than solo content in the same quantity, how different would the audience size be? Would it be 10% less? 90% less?

Understand this, I am a HUGE social gamer, I love grouping, raiding with friends, solo play was NEVER my gig (which is why I think I loved EQ so much) but if WoW was not soloable up to 60ish I"d have quit LOOOOOONG ago.

You give me WoW as a group game and WoW as a solo game, and the group game has server crowds that make finding groups not a 40 minute exercise, and I go with the group game 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.

So is it that 90% prefer it? Or that 90% adjusted to it? Or both?

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Here"s what I think:

Everyone playing MMOs enjoys grouping and socializing to some degree, and in some fashion. That"s the only draw to playing one instead of a single-player game, and it"s a big one, since people play MMOs even though they are technically limited in a lot of other regards as compared to single-player games.

MMORPGs also address a different desire: people who really like RPGs and enjoy roleplaying, character advancement, and/or storytelling. Plus, the MMO part tends to make it a more interesting RPG for a lot of people since if you do a good job creating your world and mechanics it feels more real and immersive than an environment where you are just the hero character with a lot of NPCs around you.

Sometimes people feel really social and they want to get online and hook up with their friends to do something. The "something" doesn"t matter too much, they just want a fun backdrop to hang out in front of. In a game like WoW, they do a great job of giving you lots of excuses to hang out - arena, battlegrounds, raids, instances, and just plain questing.

However, as someone who enjoys both the "MMO" and "RPG" part, sometimes I don"t really feel like hanging out; I just want to sit and zone out for an hour or two on a video game. I might sit and play Half-Life 2, Oblivion, or whatever. But it"s also very attractive to me to be able to sit down to WoW (which, after all, I"m paying $15/mo for) and just play it like a single-player RPG. That way I get the pleasure of further advancing the character I"ve put so much time into, which is a nice thing to do, and maybe I"ll exercise my skills for the next time I"m in a group.If I couldn"t solo in WoW, I wouldn"t spend that time in groups instead. I"d just log off and do something else.

Spending less time on the game translates pretty directly to people getting bored and unsubscribing, so I think that if other people are like me in this way, WoW providing a lot of high-quality solo content probably lets them hold onto a lot more subs.

Given the fact that many, many, -many- people have multiple alts due to boredom at max level, I"m gonna go ahead and say that the solo content is what contributes to the vast majority of the population in WoW. It wouldn"t have sold even 50% of it"s subs if it required more grouping, especially while leveling. The fact that you can do so much solo is why a lot of people like it. Due to the heavy-handedness of instancing and the the separation of half the playerbase due to hardcoded language retardery, you have a game that is most times more "small group" online roleplaying than "massively multiplayer."

Personally, I don"t agree with this model, but the moneyhats are to be found in catering to the largest group of people possible, so my opinion is definitely in the minority. Instances are great, but having the average intermingling of players be almost entirely regulated to major cities and AV (with AV being a stretch) after the first week of an expansion is a little bit too much.

Ngruk said:

I am unsure if I agree or disagree. I guess I would ask this, if WoW didn"t have that much solo content pre-70, would it have had as many players? The answer is no, but how much of a no?

If WoW content was spun around to be group content rather than solo content in the same quantity, how different would the audience size be? Would it be 10% less? 90% less?

Understand this, I am a HUGE social gamer, I love grouping, raiding with friends, solo play was NEVER my gig (which is why I think I loved EQ so much) but if WoW was not soloable up to 60ish I"d have quit LOOOOOONG ago.

You give me WoW as a group game and WoW as a solo game, and the group game has server crowds that make finding groups not a 40 minute exercise, and I go with the group game 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.

So is it that 90% prefer it? Or that 90% adjusted to it? Or both?

Click to expand...

Prepost note: There is still one page to read at this time.

I"ve asked several people I know, including my father who plays this game (turns 60 tomorrow), and they say they would never of played this game if they couldn"t of soloed.

People love MMO"s because they feel part of a community. They can communicate with other people at any given time. They feel like they"re part of a world when they are running around doing their quests and they see other real people along the way. You don"t have to have a group based mentality to make it a MMO. MMO"s are about being around others, whether they are strangers or friends it doesn"t matter, it"s the social aspect of it.

If you want your game to be a success you have to cater to group and solo content. You have to be able to get "max level" completely on your own without any group help at all and in a reasonable time or else your game will not have mass appeal. I"m assuming you want your game to have as many subs as possible. If this is what you want you must look at the fundamentals WOW has succeeded with. Toss out any details of the game and look at what makes WOW fun. It"s been mentioned before, but here are my points on the "WOW Fundamental":

1. Ease of entry.
2. Pick up and Play (Anytime of the day)
3. Accessible (Tech Req.)

If you fail at any of those three things, your game will be nothing but niche. This doesn"t mean you can"t have your raids, or hard dungeons, or catass rewards for certain things, but your core game needs to rely on those three things or you will be relegated into the "Niche-EQ Like-DIKU" corner.

Of course this is my opinion. But instancing falls under "Pick up and Play".

Draegan said:

Prepost note: There is still one page to read at this time.

I"ve asked several people I know, including my father who plays this game (turns 60 tomorrow), and they say they would never of played this game if they couldn"t of soloed.

People love MMO"s because they feel part of a community. They can communicate with other people at any given time. They feel like they"re part of a world when they are running around doing their quests and they see other real people along the way. You don"t have to have a group based mentality to make it a MMO. MMO"s are about being around others, whether they are strangers or friends it doesn"t matter, it"s the social aspect of it.

If you want your game to be a success you have to cater to group and solo content. You have to be able to get "max level" completely on your own without any group help at all and in a reasonable time or else your game will not have mass appeal. I"m assuming you want your game to have as many subs as possible. If this is what you want you must look at the fundamentals WOW has succeeded with. Toss out any details of the game and look at what makes WOW fun. It"s been mentioned before, but here are my points on the "WOW Fundamental":

1. Ease of entry.
2. Pick up and Play (Anytime of the day)
3. Accessible (Tech Req.)

If you fail at any of those three things, your game will be nothing but niche. This doesn"t mean you can"t have your raids, or hard dungeons, or catass rewards for certain things, but your core game needs to rely on those three things or you will be relegated into the "Niche-EQ Like-DIKU" corner.

Of course this is my opinion. But instancing falls under "Pick up and Play".

Click to expand...

I think those three are no brainers. I think there are more to add to that list though.

That solo thing is pretty much hard to miss though, and even though I don"t like it all that much, it"s true.

If I had to point to any one thing in addition to the actual gameplay, one thing that made WoW win, and kept me playing, it was the fact that I could log in and actually PLAY the game in as small or large of a chunk of time as I choose to, and accomplish at least something, anytime, anyplace.

I think that"s a HUGE part that has flown way under the radar.

I laugh at all the commentary from the "experts" about not being WoW clones or trying to "dethrone" WoW.

There is so much they did right, very little they did "wrong". Depending on your play style it might be perfect, or horrible. Being the "old school" realism guy from EQ and EQ2 I put WoW off for a loooooong time for no other reason than the perception I had of it being a "kids" game and too "care bear" ish...

I regret doing that, because it"s a great game, great game.

Ngruk said:

I think those three are no brainers. I think there are more to add to that list though.

That solo thing is pretty much hard to miss though, and even though I don"t like it all that much, it"s true.

If I had to point to any one thing in addition to the actual gameplay, one thing that made WoW win, and kept me playing, it was the fact that I could log in and actually PLAY the game in as small or large of a chunk of time as I choose to, and accomplish at least something, anytime, anyplace.

I think that"s a HUGE part that has flown way under the radar.

I laugh at all the commentary from the "experts" about not being WoW clones or trying to "dethrone" WoW.

There is so much they did right, very little they did "wrong". Depending on your play style it might be perfect, or horrible. Being the "old school" realism guy from EQ and EQ2 I put WoW off for a loooooong time for no other reason than the perception I had of it being a "kids" game and too "care bear" ish...

I regret doing that, because it"s a great game, great game.

Click to expand...

That is exactly what I did. I said wtf, WoW? Child"s play. A few weeks ago I started playing and am having a blast with it. Gameplay aside, how people perceive your game (before actually playing it) is going to be incredibly important.

i) Things have changed since EQ. Due to smaller populations, the influence of the bigger guilds and the total lack of instancing we had mutual respect - you wouldn"t jump over other parties and camping was respected. Some servers even had spawn calendars planned months ahead, with guild rotation on major mobs. This kind of player created ruleset is essential for a non instanced environment. We aren"t going to see that again. Todays customer base will not put up with it. The best feature of MMORPGs is other players, but often the worse feature of MMORPGs is also other players.



ii) Housing demands instancing. Whether to have housing is another question, but I also believe housing is a huge plus in MMORPGs. Apart from the fact many people want them and enjoy them, housing and the house contents can be a great part of the economy, creating necessary money sinks and crafting opportunities



iii) The amount of content that needs to be created for a non instanced game is exponentially greater. Folks reminise about Guk (and I"m one of them) but forget about the overcrowding. Back in 1999, sitting around medding and waiting for 6 mobs to spawn every 20 minutes, plus we had no RMT back then and you can bet the RMT would have the best spawn and xp camps locked down 24/7.

iiia) The wow (not WoW) factor. If I"m clearing a dungeon thats been well created I want to be able to enjoy the environment and own the experience. eg The Scarlet Monastrey is, for me, still amongst the best dungeon experiences I"ve ever had. I remember so clearly the first time I cleared into the SM courtyard and caught sight of the Monastrey itself - and it was there for our group to enjoy clearing to. Devs can spend massive amounts of time creating quality content, but if theres a dozen groups in there keeping the mobs and named clear, it doesn"t matter how great it looks or the story and quests it owns, the enjoyment is going to be drastically reduced. I"d suggest for the mass market, instancing doesn"t take away from the immersion and enjoyment, but adds to it. Imagine clearing through the Scarlet Monastrey getting to the altar and finding three parties queued up waiting for spawns. Then racing to capture the spawns off RMT.



iv) Boxing - I"ve kept this as a separate point, because its an element of MMORPGs which has received little to no consideration by past MMORPG designers.

iva) The attitude to boxing (one player running one or more characters concurrently) has changed massively and the number of people doing it has grown exponentially, since Planes of Power in EQ1 forced it upon us. I could write a fair bit about why people do it and the various mechanics used to achieve it, but I doubt most folk are interested. Suffice to say, I would guess that 20% or more of all accounts belonging to valid players (ie not RMT or farmers) in MMORPGs are not primary accounts; its not uncommon for people to run a full party of 5 or 6 characters. You can"t stop boxing these days; it doesn"t use any macros beyond the basic in game ones - it doesn"t need any macros at all and it doesn"t break any existing EULAs or rules. To outlaw it you would have to revert to the old MUD rules of one legitimate user can only run one character, on one PC, on one account. I"m not sure if you can do that, legally, and I"m certain you couldn"t enforce it.

ivb) In short its here, its a significant part of a games revenue stream, it will only grow and it needs planning for. Without going into it in any more depth, a strategic plan for instancing in a game is the best tool you can have in controlling boxing and to integrate it into the rest of the playing base.




In summary, the decision for or against instancing is beyond debate. The real questions are how to implement it, how much to commit to it and what other considerations does it bring to bear.

Ngruk said:

I am curious to know thoughts on instancing. I don"t know that I care one way or the other.

I do think, right now anyway, that instancing is a must to doll out massive in depth content with your dungeons and zones.

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I"d respectfully suggest this is something you need to care about. Its something that will make or break your game. Decide which way you care about, decide to believe in that and embrace it, as early in a games design as possible, then commit to that approach 100%.




Its helpful to look at past MMOs and consider their approaches, their failure and their successes.



i) Anarchy Online - AO had a mission system, whereby a single character or a party could accept randomly generated missions from terminals. The terminals had sliders where you could select difficulty level and other factors, such as whether mission objectives would be kills or retrieving objects etc. The system dynamically generated missions, objectives and the dungeons themselves and had many different entry points spread across the zone, with one randomly selected for each mission. (As an aside, the game was massively bugged at release, one example being that characters often couldn"t enter the instances - this turned a lot of players off the game early on.) It was the most enjoyable quest / mission system I"ve experienced in any MMORPG; it proved you can have a balanced instance system, that is attractive for both solo and party play. The game has gone from strength to strength, in terms of fun and content, but was one of the first games to prove that a poor release will lose most of your customer base and you will never regain it.


ii) Dark Ages of Camelot - Laterlly introduced dynamic solo dungeons, scaled for levelling. Poorly implemented, but well received. Was the best option for levelling if you couldn"t find a party. DaoC was another game that released in poor condition and was uncomplete. It had few dungeons and even the level 20 dungeons were not initially itemized. Yet again, this hurt the subscription rate, In short, although the system was well received, it was poorly thought out and poorly implemented and not part of any strategic planning for the game.


iii) FFXI - Its difficult to come to conclusions about what lessons instancing in FFXI can teach us, because it has the most abhorrent non instanced content in the industry - and masses of it. Absolutely none of it is fun. Its proof that a lot of the arguments for not having instances for social reasons do not stand up to experience. One lesson that can be learnt is that a series of set party instances can be a very powerful tool in story telling. A number of the games expansions came with a series of party and small party instanced quests, which were a lot of fun.


iv) City of Heroes / Villains - Implemented solo, party and raid instances. Again difficult to come to conclusions because CoH has a massive unique variable - no loot system (beyond the very basic enhancer system). Instancing was a lot of fun in this game, but it was relatively static and total lack of loot meant there wasn"t enough reward vrs risk.


v) Lost Dungeons of Norrath LDoN was hugely succesful and well received - amongst the masses probably the best received of all the EQ1 expansions. The only people who didn"t live in LDoNs were the top end guilds who had the elemental Planes to farm and XP in. LDoN was so successful it was hard to get people out of them and enjoying other parts of the game. It was so successful that it was dropped like a hot brick by Sony in future expansions, because the only way to stop people playing them was to let them age. The lesson here is that people want them, they will be successful, but you have to plan them as part of your strategy for the game, not try and bolt it on as an "added extra". They never did look at solo instancing, which I believe would have increased their subs massively.



In short, party, small party and solo instancing work and are popular. They are so popular that, if you implement them, you have to have a strategy to make sure people play the other parts of your game.

Rezz said:

Given the fact that many, many, -many- people have multiple alts due to boredom at max level, I"m gonna go ahead and say that the solo content is what contributes to the vast majority of the population in WoW. It wouldn"t have sold even 50% of it"s subs if it required more grouping, especially while leveling. The fact that you can do so much solo is why a lot of people like it. Due to the heavy-handedness of instancing and the the separation of half the playerbase due to hardcoded language retardery, you have a game that is most times more "small group" online roleplaying than "massively multiplayer."

Personally, I don"t agree with this model, but the moneyhats are to be found in catering to the largest group of people possible, so my opinion is definitely in the minority.

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I agree absolutely with these assertions.

I believe that the need for instances in large and succesful MMORPGs are beyond question. One of the few debates to be had by game designers is whether they implement solo instances. The answer to this question depends on many fundamental aspects of an individual games design.

However, my personal belief is that the solo and instanced aspect of WoW is largely responsible for its commercial success and its continued growth. I"d also suggest that the first fantasy MMORPG that embraces solo instanced missions will find it is a massively successful concept. The trick, as previously established, is to integrate this system into your strategic plan for the game.


I"m a hero. I"m Drizzt; I"m Conan. Sometimes I want to hang out with Wulfgar and Bruenor, or with Taurus or Sonja, sometimes I just want to do my thing and be a hero. I don"t want to be Conan calling out," Barbarian and Thief looking for healer to do The Tower of the Elephant" (sigh, Conan #4, first issue that was distributed in the UK /wipeatear). Or Drizzt, "New guild, Companions of the Hall, looking for members. We need more healers and a mezzer before we can finish off the Hunters Blade quests and move on to Transitions." I"m not belittling party content - I want that too. But we CAN have it all. We don"t need to live by the barriers EQ1 created.


Going beyond the ethereal and my own opinions Draegan is spot on, in my belief :

Draegan said:

Prepost note: There is still one page to read at this time.

I"ve asked several people I know, including my father who plays this game (turns 60 tomorrow), and they say they would never of played this game if they couldn"t of soloed.

People love MMO"s because they feel part of a community. They can communicate with other people at any given time. They feel like they"re part of a world when they are running around doing their quests and they see other real people along the way. You don"t have to have a group based mentality to make it a MMO. MMO"s are about being around others, whether they are strangers or friends it doesn"t matter, it"s the social aspect of it.

If you want your game to be a success you have to cater to group and solo content. You have to be able to get "max level" completely on your own without any group help at all and in a reasonable time or else your game will not have mass appeal. I"m assuming you want your game to have as many subs as possible. If this is what you want you must look at the fundamentals WOW has succeeded with. Toss out any details of the game and look at what makes WOW fun. It"s been mentioned before, but here are my points on the "WOW Fundamental":

1. Ease of entry.
2. Pick up and Play (Anytime of the day)
3. Accessible (Tech Req.)

If you fail at any of those three things, your game will be nothing but niche. This doesn"t mean you can"t have your raids, or hard dungeons, or catass rewards for certain things, but your core game needs to rely on those three things or you will be relegated into the "Niche-EQ Like-DIKU" corner.

Of course this is my opinion. But instancing falls under "Pick up and Play".

Click to expand...

This sums up everything I believe there is to say about the soling and instancing debate, with regard to the mass market. One final point in closing - the majority of people on this and other forums say they don"t like the lvl 1-max grind - they just want to get to the end game and thats all its about. To me that means games are failing. To most people games mean fun. If everything that has gone before in a games history is defunct except for the present max level, that goes way beyond failure and is just sad. I believe that a random, dynamic instanced quest / mission system would prove hugely popular and help to maintain the fun factor and, thereby, keep the subscriptions going. Folks get bored at max level, whether this takes a month, a year or 5 years varies by individual. The option then is drop the game and move onto something else or roll some alts. Your responsibility is to give them something thats fun so folks don"t hate the prospect of doing the grind again from level 1 up - so it isn"t thought of as a grind.

In summary : the first fantasy MMORPG that embraces solo instanced missions will find it is a massively successful concept. The trick, as previously established, is to integrate this system into your strategic plan for the game.

I tend to log on first thing in the morning for an hour before work, I scan the AH check my mail and often set off to a zone that I am currently questing in. I go home for lunch and occasionally log on for about 40 minutes or so and do a little questing all while solo and I like that I can do this.

After work, gym, dinner and social time with the family I log on for the evening, this is where I typically group with my daughter or try to find someone else to quest with or join a group for an instance run or two.

WoW appeals to me is because of this.

I will admit to be an anti social gamer. I have said many times that if I could find a single player game with the level of content that WoW had I would play it instead of WoW. However, there is nothing that comes close in the single player market, and given how WoW can be played single player why try to find the impossible.

As said WoW has made a lot of smart business decisions that have kept my sub logn after I planed on giving it up, mainly due to the ability for me and my wife to play the game together either by ourselves or with friends.
We can get our welfare epics by grinding honor or losing in Arena games. We can grind out factions via daily quests.

If I want to do a 5 man instance or raid, then I can with my guild friends.
If I want to muck about, then I can either do that solo or in a duo, or again with friends.

The biggest turn off for me in EQ2 back when it was in beta was the requirement to group to do anything. the 3^ group encounters that still tore you a new one when they were grey.
I only started playing EQ2 when they released EoF and made solo play a lot more appealing.

I think people have long since moved on from the need for exp groups. I dont think we will ever see a successful game on the market where we once again are forced to group to make any meaningful head way while leveling.

Ngruk said:

I think those three are no brainers. I think there are more to add to that list though.

That solo thing is pretty much hard to miss though, and even though I don"t like it all that much, it"s true.

If I had to point to any one thing in addition to the actual gameplay, one thing that made WoW win, and kept me playing, it was the fact that I could log in and actually PLAY the game in as small or large of a chunk of time as I choose to, and accomplish at least something, anytime, anyplace.

I think that"s a HUGE part that has flown way under the radar.

I laugh at all the commentary from the "experts" about not being WoW clones or trying to "dethrone" WoW.

There is so much they did right, very little they did "wrong". Depending on your play style it might be perfect, or horrible. Being the "old school" realism guy from EQ and EQ2 I put WoW off for a loooooong time for no other reason than the perception I had of it being a "kids" game and too "care bear" ish...

I regret doing that, because it"s a great game, great game.

Click to expand...

Damn, this is exactly how I feel about WoW now. You are my brother from another mother.

Ngruk said:

it was the fact that I could log in and actually PLAY the game in as small or large of a chunk of time as I choose to, and accomplish at least something, anytime, anyplace.

I think that"s a HUGE part that has flown way under the radar.

Click to expand...

I would put this under Pick Up and Play. Here"s my take on solo vs. group play. When I"m leveling all I want to do is hunker down and get it done. I don"t have a core group of buddies I play every game with. Most of the time I"m playing a game with 1-2 other people I know on the internet and we play together whenever but most of the time it"s a solo endeavor because I rely on myself. I"m not the "enjoy the ride" kind of person. I want to get to max level and take down some baddies.

(side note: The only time I enjoy the ride is when I"m racing or it"s a fresh game. But I"m enjoying the race.)

The elder game for me is grouping, raiding and getting those extra points.

The one thing WOW doesn"t do is give incentive for grouping. You can do things more efficiently solo in your average case.

If you want a great idea that you should flat out STEAL is the Public Quest system WAR is going to use. I"ve experienced it first hand and you can watch some Podcasts on it. I don"t think it"s NDA-Breaking to say it"s absolutely amazing, fun, entertaining, and induces a group/raid environment at every stage of the game. You can get this feeling by watching the material they have available on their site.

i don"t understand why people continue to say a new game "has" to have instancing to be successful. why? instancing is an automatic immersion breaker for me. it"s like one second you"re part of a massive world and the next you"ve left it and are playing another game. the other thing that i hate about instances (i"m going with the WoW model) is that it forces you to finish the instance which can take hours. i actually miss the old EQ dungeons where i could just log on, find a camp in a dungeon and stay there for as long or as little as i like and then gate out and be done. i hate the fact that in WoW you have to do an instance from start to finish and it was the reason why i quit. there was no socialization whatsoever (in the instances). if you had to leave the party (or someone else had to leave) it pretty much screwed everyone else in that you had to leave the instance and wait to find someone else and start all over again. in EQ (for example) if someone had to leave your group you simply made an /ooc for another player to join you and you continued.

am i suggesting to go back to EQ style dungeons? not necessarily, but what i am suggesting is that a next gen game could find a way to do something new, something different that isn"t instancing or completely instancing. perhaps you could have dungeons that are part non instanced (for simply camping) and part instanced. or have dungeons that are instanced for people who like it and dungeons that aren"t for people who don"t. i am not a game dev, but i know that cutting and pasting WoW and making a WoW clone is not a good idea. i think the company that makes a game that is truly innovative in several aspects of gaming and creates something new and unique is really going to make the next successful MMO. all i"m saying is just because no one has created an alternative to instancing yet, doesn"t mean it can"t be done. i do know it will NEVER be done if everyone is just going to continue to make another WoW.

etchazz said:

i don"t understand why people continue to say a new game "has" to have instancing to be successful. why? instancing is an automatic immersion breaker for me. it"s like one second you"re part of a massive world and the next you"ve left it and are playing another game. the other thing that i hate about instances (i"m going with the WoW model) is that it forces you to finish the instance which can take hours. i actually miss the old EQ dungeons where i could just log on, find a camp in a dungeon and stay there for as long or as little as i like and then gate out and be done. i hate the fact that in WoW you have to do an instance from start to finish and it was the reason why i quit. there was no socialization whatsoever (in the instances). if you had to leave the party (or someone else had to leave) it pretty much screwed everyone else in that you had to leave the instance and wait to find someone else and start all over again. in EQ (for example) if someone had to leave your group you simply made an /ooc for another player to join you and you continued.

am i suggesting to go back to EQ style dungeons? not necessarily, but what i am suggesting is that a next gen game could find a way to do something new, something different that isn"t instancing or completely instancing. perhaps you could have dungeons that are part non instanced (for simply camping) and part instanced. or have dungeons that are instanced for people who like it and dungeons that aren"t for people who don"t. i am not a game dev, but i know that cutting and pasting WoW and making a WoW clone is not a good idea. i think the company that makes a game that is truly innovative in several aspects of gaming and creates something new and unique is really going to make the next successful MMO. all i"m saying is just because no one has created an alternative to instancing yet, doesn"t mean it can"t be done. i do know it will NEVER be done if everyone is just going to continue to make another WoW.

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Correct. But to make money faster, copying an already existing model is the path of least resistance for a new game.

That was a mess of a post. But what I think you"re saying you like camping a mob or two for loot and then quit when you have to go? Most of the boss mobs in WOW contain scripts or sequences that could lead to bugs, griefing or just wouldn"t work unless they were instances and only set aside for one group to interact with.

In WOW you can log in, kill a few mobs then log out anytime you want. They just arn"t mobs with good loot potential.

I think it"s better that you have to complete the whole dungeon to get your loot. You"re experiencing the whole environment properly just like the designer intended it to be.

So is a game made basically just like wow but with the addition of quested zones like Sebilis thrown in something that would appease both crowds? Or perhaps making grouping a more viable option than it is in WoW. Currently it is better to solo than to group in order to complete quests and level.

I still don"t quite understand why you can"t have both types of games. WoW would be more fun for me that way. And no this has nothing to do with nostalgia.

It"s not about changing the formula from why WoW works. For me, it would just be about adding to it a little bit.

Ngruk said:

If I had to point to any one thing in addition to the actual gameplay, one thing that made WoW win, and kept me playing, it was the fact that I could log in and actually PLAY the game in as small or large of a chunk of time as I choose to, and accomplish at least something, anytime, anyplace.

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Along these same lines, you can also choose to play the game in as small or large of a group as you wish. You can be an army of one and solo, join a small group and do elite quests, join a regular group and do a dungeon or join a raid and PvP or raid.

WoW is about options, not exclusives. You can play as little or as much as you want with as few or as many people as you want and in every facet there is something to be accomplished. Going against that grain is commercial suicide. Yes, a niche game may find moderate success but I don"t think GMG would be happy with niche.

Outside the whole solo vs. group content it comes down to this point. I think, let me know.

Strip away the "social aspect" of running a single group dungeon around 5 other groups. That may or may not be a good thing in your opinion.

I think what it comes down to is people don"t want to bother clearing trash constantly to fight bosses. When you"re in a dungeon you can skip around and there is less time (or trash fighting) between bosses and loot potential. Perhaps dungeon design needs to be better. I don"t like the design in WOW as it is in TBC. Wings with 3 bosses. You run one track, 2 sub bosses and one main boss encounter.

Best designed non-raid dungeon in WOW is BRD. Large, expansive, multiple track and a ton of bosses and unrepeating trash cycles.

I think I solved it. Intelligent dungeon design. It"s all in the trash. So Curt, when your designers are creating dungeon, make sure you implement dynamic mob population. Sometimes you get really easy trash in parts, sometimes it"s hard, and they are never in the same place and same type.

Do I win a cookie?

WoW has a lot in it for everyone. I think one of the more inclusive aspects of it is that beginner stuff is all very easy hand-holding type of content, while raids are difficult and challenging. There is everything inbetween as well, so people can find what suits them. In EverQuest there was only 1 difficulty, fucking hard, and it turned off a lot of people who could have at least participated in the game to the benefit of the players who DID enjoy "fucking hard" difficulty.

Add this to "everyone gets content" instancing and the game just scales from nothing to everything whenever and wherever you and your friends want it to. You"re never left out in the cold. Accessibility is higher than 99% of the population finds necessary.

Instancing is necessary. This comment has nothing to do with Vanguard, and everything to do with the competitive nature of raiding guilds. The carrot must exist for every single individual, not just the people who can get up at 7am and go slay the dragon.

Draegan said:

That was a mess of a post. But what I think you"re saying you like camping a mob or two for loot and then quit when you have to go? Most of the boss mobs in WOW contain scripts or sequences that could lead to bugs, griefing or just wouldn"t work unless they were instances and only set aside for one group to interact with.

In WOW you can log in, kill a few mobs then log out anytime you want. They just arn"t mobs with good loot potential.

I think it"s better that you have to complete the whole dungeon to get your loot. You"re experiencing the whole environment properly just like the designer intended it to be.

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that"s just my point. the problem i had with WoW was that to get to the "main boss" you had to do the entire instance, which could take hours. in EQ, i could for example in sebilis simply head to the crypt or the disco area, stay there for as long as i wanted and i can get exp and perhaps some loot and then leave. i am not being forced to do an entire scripted event or entire instance. now, obviously if i"m doing a raid with my guild it"s going to take longer and i expect that, but i think one of the reasons why i liked EQ so much was the fact that dungeons were non instanced. yeah, it lead to some griefing, but it also made the game social. you met the same guys in the same dungeons every day and got to know them and they got to know you (heck, that"s how i got invited into my guild in the first place). i think my point is is that there has to be a way to make both the instanced and non instanced people happy. perhaps it will be with an idea that no one has even thought of yet.