A Pilgrim’s Digression

Whether for good or ill, I came to the World of Warcraft rather late in the life of the game. Two years late, to be exact. It wasn’t until I started reading about it in the New York Times a few months ago that I decided to give the game a try. According to some veterans of the game, it is already getting long in the tooth, at this point.

To me, it remains fresh and exciting, but I have begun thinking about what could be better, and what I’d like to see in the next generation of this type of game. I’ve also been looking at a couple games that are due to be released next year, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and The Lord of the Rings Online. The latter in particular has engaged my interest, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, I will not be able to play it. Ever. Or at least until I upgrade my Mac to one of the new Intel machines. LoTRO is a Windows-only game and the company states bluntly that it has no intention of developing a port for the Mac. Nonetheless I find it interesting to see how these games develop in the wake of the success of WoW. What are they going to do differently? Where are they taking chances? Will those chances pay off? Given the secrecy with which the developers guard the details of these games, answers to these questions become little more than guesses or opinions.

However, guesses, assumptions, and opinions are what I am best at.

Most of what I am going to write here will simply be copied and pasted from posts I’ve made in various forums over the past week or so. In forums, one’s thoughts can be lost in a thread several pages in length. Here on my blog, as I have written before, I am king. I may be a king with no clothes, but I am still a king nonetheless.

First of all, to return to the issue of Mac compatibility, I think that any game software company that produces a Windows-only product in 2007 is making an unwise business decision. “Cost-effectiveness” has always been the argument used to excuse companies that choose to develop only for Windows. However, the game market is so huge, so profitable, I simply do not believe that b.s. anymore. This time of year (Christmas), all I hear on the evening news is about how game software and console sales are through the roof, compared to traditional toys and gifts.

I won’t even make the argument that Mac sales are also rising.

I will point out that at some point in development Blizzard must have made the same cost/benefit analysis as other game developers…and Bliz decided that developing for both Mac and PC is the way to go. Some folks argue that Blizzard has an incredible profit margin, compared with other companies. Yet how expensive could it be to port a game already in development for one OS to another OS that runs on the same hardware? New Macs run on Intel chips, now.

I don’t know why companies choose not to develop for Mac, but I don’t think potential lack of profit is one of them. If a company can sell one more product to one more person, they will usually choose to do so. Maybe it all comes down to platform prejudice, such as is routinely displayed in forum threads on the subject.

I have my prejudice as well, but it is a prejudice that favors opening a product to a broader range of potential users, not limiting it to the unfortunate users of one outdated operating system.

One last thing on this topic: Blizzard earned my loyalty back in the dark days of 1995-1998, when game companies were deserting the Mac platform left and right. Blizzard has stated again and again their commitment to developing for the Mac. Blizzard is the only company that I know that releases Mac and PC versions of its games simultaneously. Mac users know something about brand loyalty. A company that treats us well and that respects us is a company we will buy from again and again.

When a company like Turbine, developer of the LoTR game, outright dismisses the possibility of ever developing a version of its game for the Mac…well, let’s just say, its their loss of thousands of would-be loyal customers.

Yes, I can buy an Intel Mac and then purchase and install Windows on it (shudder), so as to play my games. But I buy Mac and am a Mac user because I want to use Macintosh software. No single piece of software is worth spending inordinate amounts of time working and playing in Windows.

Now, as to what I would like to see in the game that eventually replaces WoW:

1. More, damn it, more classes/races/professions. Limitations on what kind of character you can develop are so 2003. I’d like to see brewing become an available profession, or bowcrafting (doesn’t that just make sense?). I’d like to see bards, monks, and barbarians become available classes. Heck, why couldn’t there be scholars, or “Lore Masters” as they are called in LoTRO?
2. A more tightly controlled economy. After a realm has been in existence awhile, inflation runs rampant. A 20 stack of copper bars on a new server might go for 20 or 25 silver, but on an old server, due to inflation, it will run as high as 1 gold or more. This makes it difficult for new players to get a foothold, or even a toehold, in the economy. As a tailor, I’ve found it incredible how the price of wool has gone up just in the months since I started playing. I can’t buy a 20 stack for under 50 silver now.
3. The game developer should have “gold farmer hunting” events in which bands of opposite faction mercenaries hunt down and slaughter bots that are farming loot and money. Gold farming is a generic term for the automated killing of a type of creature for the items it drops. it could also be called mechanical harvesting, since it is usually done remotely by a computer-controlled character. Gold farming is one of the reasons inflation runs rampant. I was questing in Duskwood a week or two ago, and I saw a farm bot in action along the Hushed Bank. I needed to kill a particular kind of spider for a quest, but there was a dwarf hunter running around in a circle killing them as soon as they spawned. I reported him to a Game Master, but of course you never know if action is taken. When you have companies with robot characters that farm 24/7, cornering a market on rare drops such as Spiders Silk, you’ve got problems. Not to mention, these companies also turn around and sell the virtual currency they earn to unscrupulous players. To my mind, this “bought” gold is little better than counterfeit currency. It was never earned; it was in a sense manufactured. I would think a game company could hire real-world economists to come up with solutions for these in-game economic issues.
4. Don’t underestimate the power of the dark side. Some players want to play “evil” races, and this should be factored into game development. This is the major error of the Lord of the Rings Online. The only races available for roleplaying are Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Hobbit. That is extremely limiting. Certainly everyone’s first instinct is to play a race that looks good, that one can identify with, thus in WoW player numbers are heavily weighted towards Alliance, while Horde players are relatively smaller in number. I think it takes either a high level of maturity to play a creature like an Orc or Troll, or a high degree of immaturity…I’m not sure which, since I don’t have much experience in roleplaying either. I suspect maturity is more the rule, because you really can’t identify with your character visually or viscerally. One must identify with one’s character on an intellectual level. You have to create a character that is perhaps not noble, but not evil, either. Someone very, well, human, in the sense of being made of equal parts darkness and light. A good MMORPG gives roleplayers plentiful opportunities to walk down a well-lighted path, a dark path, or simply a shadowy, morning-gray path. We should not be limited to playing a “handsome,” righteous hero of might and magic.
5. Finally, I’d like a game that allows more opportunities for solo advancement. This caters to the casual gamer like me, almost exclusively. But I feel characters need more paths to advancement and high-end loot, rather than group raids and dungeon crawls. Right now, my character, Ophir, is at level 30, and the most desirable treasure for his level is to be found in Instances. Instances are dungeons or special areas of the map where grouping is absolutely necessary for success. The problem with always having to group to complete Instances is that good groups can be hard to find. Even in a guild, it can be difficult to find players working those same quests who can group with you when you need them. Often, you end up questing with strangers, and unreliable strangers, at that. Last week, I did the Stormwind Stockades with a PUG (pick-up group) of strangers. About half-way through, one of our most powerful members, a Warlock, suddenly hearthed out (left the Instance and returned to an Inn using a hearth stone), muttering something about a phone call. The loss was not crippling, but it did mean that we took longer to complete the Instance run. My ideal game would offer alternatives to Instances that allow players to find or craft items that are as powerful as one can find in difficult dungeons. This way, someone like me, with limited time could still accomplish quite a lot without having to devote several hours to doing an Instance.

So far, I have described a game not so different from WoW. What I want, I guess, is more World of Warcraft done better. It may be that Blizzard will develop this ideal game. I can foresee WoW continuing to develop, while the “game” itself remains much the same. Apparently, WoW has already changed much since its first inception, and is about to change even more with the addition of an expansion pack in January. So it may be that an all-new game is unnecessary. All I know is I have developed a devotion to Blizzard that rivals my devotion to the Mac. Blizzard has created a game unlike any that I have ever experienced before; and it is an experience, not just “play.” It’s a hobby, it’s an experience, it’s a way of life, now. I’m ready for the next thing, and I hope it comes from Blizzard.