World of Warcraft, I’m sure by now everyone has heard of that highly popular game from Blizzard Entertainment. Heck, with 5.5 million subscribers playing world wide, there is a good chance that someone reading this right now is a WoW player. Even with the games enormous success, there is still a lot of room for improvement, as any WoW player will tell you.
I decided to take a break from WoW to create a little write up about my thoughts on what the game is doing wrong, or where it could use some improvements.
World of Warcraft is classified as an MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing game, so that is as good of a place as any to start. While it is definitely massive and a multiplayer online game, WoW has a hard time filling the “role-playing” part.
Sure there are RP and RP-PvP realms (servers) available, but that’s just a generic title. The first problem with RP in WoW has to do with the game’s mechanics. For example, each playable race has a specific set of classes that can be used. While I’m not disagreeing with this decision, it severely hurts guilds that want to be a single race. Say a guild wants to be all undead (also known as The Forsaken). This guild would not be able to use the druid, shaman, or hunter classes, all three classes are extremely crucial in end game encounters. Now, players can get around this by making a two race only guild, which is what “Stone & Steel” did on the Bleeding Hollow server.
The next game mechanic that comes into play is communication. It is impossible, without violating the games TOS/EULA, for an Alliance member to communicate with a Horde member while in game. So RP across faction is about as useful as mime trying to communicate to a blind person.
I think Blizzard could easily address this issue by making the “common” language available to all races. If nothing else, at least on the RP/RP-PvP servers. There could still be a “human” and “orcish” languages available for each faction, as to allow each faction to communicate without allowing the other to “hear” what was going on. After all, if you read any of the lore, the Horde and the Alliance were able to communicate to form an alliance against the Scourge and other common enemies.
Speaking of lore, that’s another problem with the game. What exactly is the timeline of events? What’s going on? When did xyz event happen? How long has it been since this? These are all common questions I see in and out of game. Sure, there are Warcraft books and other Warcraft games which all provide a little bit more detail, but the specifics on a lot of things are still iffy, and even then, WoW has changed a lot of its own lore. A clear picture for the world we’re playing in could go a long way.
The last point I’ll make about RP in WoW is Blizzard’s lack of enforcement of the RP rules. I understand that Blizzard only employees so many people to help enforce the rules of the game, but to me it seams like there could be a better way to enforce the RP rules. I really don’t care what people are saying in general or trade, it’s the people with names like “Silentbob” and “Oxanabaiul” that run around saying (or yelling) stupid stuff like “can i have som gld plz?” or “omg! teh alliance r attacking. pst 4 raid invite. kthx” that really get’s annoying. Some people come to the RP servers just to ruin the fun of those that actually try an RP.
Moving on now… Let’s talk about lag. Every MMORPG, hell every game, has it. It depends on the game, the server(s), the connection, and even the computer. With WoW, a lot of the lag problems are definitely at the server end. But why? It’s been a problem since beta, and it’s still a problem on the low population servers like Maelstrom. What’s the deal? The argument has been made before that with 5.5 million people playing WoW, which are all paying at least $15.00 per month, you’d think Blizzard would have some killer servers. Assuming each of those 5.5 million players all play for one year that’s an amazing $82,500,000,000 per year (before taxes, payroll, and other expenses). Even if 60-70% is going out to pay expenses, that’s still a hell of a lot of money left over for other stuff.
That leads me to believe that it isn’t the servers, or even the connection, but the server code itself. Perhaps the entire issue revolves around poorly written, unoptimized, server code. Could that be it? But then, what about Monday and Tuesday, the two most problematic days for the WoW servers. Have the servers just had enough by the end of the WoW week? — WoW servers are taken offline every Tuesday for several hours. So the normal work week for the WoW server is Tues-Mon, though some servers take off additional time, without request, during the week. — Ultima Online, another popular MMORPG, had a system in place that worked well. Each night around 2 a.m. when the server population was at the lowest point, the servers were taken offline and rebooted. A process that took a few minutes to an hour, but greatly helped things in the long run. Could this be what WoW needs? I don’t think it would hurt to try.
Ok, I’ve covered RP and lag, so lets talk about PvP in WoW. Blizzard has done well with their battleground system, so I’m going to talk about “World PvP” which Blizzard has ruined. You see, Blizzard implemented this whole “Dishonorable Kill” system in WoW that would have a negative impact on your overall PvP ranking. The only way to get a DK as they are called is by killing a civilian NPC (non-player character) found around the world. The only problem is the towns and major cities are full of civilians which can easily get mixed into the fray during a large scale invasion. Because of this, and the fear of getting a DK, many guilds have quit trying to raid cities all together. The solution many of us would like to see is to remove DKs completely from PvP servers (including RP-PvP servers).
The other problem with Blizzard’s PvP system is that there are no FFA (free-for-all) servers. The addition of one or two FFA servers would probably get a lot of the griefer’s off of the regular servers. It helped a lot in other MMORPGs, and was actually a lot of fun. In the FFA servers any player could attack any other player, even those of the same faction. Though, there would need to be some form of protection in place. Say capitol cities and pre level 20 areas would not allow PvP of the same faction. It’s a thought, whether Blizzard would do anything like this is unknown.
The last thing is the lack of small scale dungeons in the game. I’m talking about little things that can be done with 2-5 people in 30-60 minutes. The game desperately needs places like this in all level ranges. Not everyone wants to spend 2+ hours in a big dungeon with 10+ other people; Much less spending an hour or more trying to get people together for an instance. Small encounters like Yeti Caves, Bandit Hideouts, or Murloc Villages.
Well, that’s all I have for now. Don’t get me wrong, I love WoW, I’d just like to see a lot more from the game.
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Tags: WoW