"If I want to advance my character to the top levels of WoW"
There's your choice.
Dave Huston
· 11 months ago
Ah, but WoW is all about character advancement. More importantly, the content is there, and it's part of the story. If this weren't an MMO, what would be my choices? Quit the game at that point? If the player quits your game before finishing, you've failed.
PuppyBlade
· 11 months ago
Have you? They still bought a copy. :)
What you're objecting to is that they didn't make Malygos out to be enough of a bad guy for you. If they had, would you be complaining that there were no other way to get top tier gear? What if you don't want to kill Arthas, or Illidan or Onyxia? Your "choice" in those cases is just as limited.
To be fair, the main focus of Wow isn't to give players a choice in how the overall story plays out. Games like WoW have always reminded me of big amusement parks. What you do doesn't leave a permanent mark on the world. Malygos will be re-spawning again after you kill him so the next group of players can have a turn.
If there were a choice involved, how would it be presented to the players? Just off the top of my head, after your group deals the final blow to Malygos, they have the option to kill him or double cross the Mages who sent them. How would the players decide? Would they vote? What if there were a tie, or if someone went AFK or link dead? Would their vote time out and not be counted, or counted a certain way? For the designers of the game adding choices complicates the design. They have to ask themselves if it's worth it.
Not that I think you're wrong, I think there are compiling options Blizzard could have implemented that would fit well within the game and it's story. Maybe there's a different quest chain that the players could take to Malygos that offers a different outcome, story-wise, and offers different or better rewards.
I think its too overreaching to say if the player quits before finishing the game the designer has failed. I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the players of WoW don't care weather or not Malygos deserved it. It's probably more reasonable to say if the *average* player quits before finishing, you've failed.
Besides, do you *ever* finish WoW?
Dave Huston
· 11 months ago
My suggestion that the designer has failed if the player quits before finishing is based on the designer's motivation to take the player through a narrative. It's important to design the story as well as the gameplay. In this case, they presented me with a plot point in a character-driven game that I don't agree with my character participating in. Were I on an RP server, I would most definitely have skipped much of Wrath's content.
This is similar to the problem that Richard Bartle caused a ruckus about soon after Wrath was released. He pointed out a quest early on, in the Borean Tundra zone, where you are told to torture a prisoner as part of an interrogation. As you pointed out, you're welcome to skip this quest completely. Unfortunately, there's no alternative method to advance in the quest chain. Not only will you miss out on that quest, but you miss out on several quests that come after it, along with the experience points, gold, and items that come with them.
When designing our experiences, we need to make sure that we are aware of points in our story that some players may feel their characters would choose a different path and make sure that they can be equally rewarded for their choice. This is similar to Burning Crusade's player choice of Aldor or Scryer. Sure, choosing one cut you off from a number of quests and rewards available from the other, but the rewards and quests given to you were of equal quality (somewhat debatable, depending on who you ask).
Aldor/Scryer, good design. Kill Malygos whether you like it or not, bad design.
PuppyBlade
· 11 months ago
I hadn't heard about the torture thing. I could see more people having a problem with that.
I still say quitting WoW is a perfectly valid (and possibly wise) choice.
Though, yeah. Bad from a game design perspective.
ailaG
· 11 months ago
I don't see any problem with skipping that BT quest chain, and missing out on gold and XP. (unless the next quests' content is totally unrelated, I guess)
It's kind of like how I'm a vegetarian and therefore I do miss out on some flavors in life. I've made a moral decision that required some sacrifice and was willing to take it. Same goes for the game, you can make a moral sacrifice that'd make you miss out on things, and gain nothing but the feeling that you acted right.
That said, if you can't level to 80 without that quest then yeah, that's a problem. Because the developers shouldn't be too harsh on players that make valid decisions against the storyline. (as you claimed in the original post about Malygos)
ailaG
· 11 months ago
Well, if it could somehow happen in real life, where you'd be some fighter in that battle with other people in your team, how would you decide what to do? In life, there are team decisions as well. WoW imitates small parts of real life in the game, I don't see why group decisions can't be imitated too.
Technically, they could roll like you roll BOP loot, or have a leader deciding what to do.
And you may have bought a copy, but WoW earns money from your being there constantly.
jacklhasa
· 11 months ago
test for disqus. test. how have you been dave?
Dave Huston
· 11 months ago
Not bad, except for having problems with Disqus misbehaving.
T.R. King
· 10 months ago
Torture? No one in WOW is tortured. NPCs are nothing more than a series of polygons and strings of code mashed together with glue and duct tape. No one is getting hurt.
On the flip side, if you were to get all philosophical about states of mind, and role play, and belieff systems, then we can get ourselves stuck in a deep miry clay, wailing and crying over things that don't exist. Just because a quest requires you to torture someone, that does not mean you are willing to torture someone in real life for some nice gloves and a pocket full of change. Let's keep reality in focus.
What Dave is questioning is the decisions of the game developer, and weighing whether there are better alternatives or not. I didn't enjoy killing the innocent neutral animals in Sholazar Basin, but I did it anyways. So the real question is, am I going to go to my local zoo with a machete? All signs point to no.
All Comments
There's your choice.
What you're objecting to is that they didn't make Malygos out to be enough of a bad guy for you. If they had, would you be complaining that there were no other way to get top tier gear? What if you don't want to kill Arthas, or Illidan or Onyxia? Your "choice" in those cases is just as limited.
To be fair, the main focus of Wow isn't to give players a choice in how the overall story plays out. Games like WoW have always reminded me of big amusement parks. What you do doesn't leave a permanent mark on the world. Malygos will be re-spawning again after you kill him so the next group of players can have a turn.
If there were a choice involved, how would it be presented to the players? Just off the top of my head, after your group deals the final blow to Malygos, they have the option to kill him or double cross the Mages who sent them. How would the players decide? Would they vote? What if there were a tie, or if someone went AFK or link dead? Would their vote time out and not be counted, or counted a certain way? For the designers of the game adding choices complicates the design. They have to ask themselves if it's worth it.
Not that I think you're wrong, I think there are compiling options Blizzard could have implemented that would fit well within the game and it's story. Maybe there's a different quest chain that the players could take to Malygos that offers a different outcome, story-wise, and offers different or better rewards.
I think its too overreaching to say if the player quits before finishing the game the designer has failed. I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the players of WoW don't care weather or not Malygos deserved it. It's probably more reasonable to say if the *average* player quits before finishing, you've failed.
Besides, do you *ever* finish WoW?
This is similar to the problem that Richard Bartle caused a ruckus about soon after Wrath was released. He pointed out a quest early on, in the Borean Tundra zone, where you are told to torture a prisoner as part of an interrogation. As you pointed out, you're welcome to skip this quest completely. Unfortunately, there's no alternative method to advance in the quest chain. Not only will you miss out on that quest, but you miss out on several quests that come after it, along with the experience points, gold, and items that come with them.
When designing our experiences, we need to make sure that we are aware of points in our story that some players may feel their characters would choose a different path and make sure that they can be equally rewarded for their choice. This is similar to Burning Crusade's player choice of Aldor or Scryer. Sure, choosing one cut you off from a number of quests and rewards available from the other, but the rewards and quests given to you were of equal quality (somewhat debatable, depending on who you ask).
Aldor/Scryer, good design. Kill Malygos whether you like it or not, bad design.
I still say quitting WoW is a perfectly valid (and possibly wise) choice.
Though, yeah. Bad from a game design perspective.
(unless the next quests' content is totally unrelated, I guess)
It's kind of like how I'm a vegetarian and therefore I do miss out on some flavors in life. I've made a moral decision that required some sacrifice and was willing to take it. Same goes for the game, you can make a moral sacrifice that'd make you miss out on things, and gain nothing but the feeling that you acted right.
That said, if you can't level to 80 without that quest then yeah, that's a problem. Because the developers shouldn't be too harsh on players that make valid decisions against the storyline. (as you claimed in the original post about Malygos)
WoW imitates small parts of real life in the game, I don't see why group decisions can't be imitated too.
Technically, they could roll like you roll BOP loot, or have a leader deciding what to do.
And you may have bought a copy, but WoW earns money from your being there constantly.
On the flip side, if you were to get all philosophical about states of mind, and role play, and belieff systems, then we can get ourselves stuck in a deep miry clay, wailing and crying over things that don't exist. Just because a quest requires you to torture someone, that does not mean you are willing to torture someone in real life for some nice gloves and a pocket full of change. Let's keep reality in focus.
What Dave is questioning is the decisions of the game developer, and weighing whether there are better alternatives or not. I didn't enjoy killing the innocent neutral animals in Sholazar Basin, but I did it anyways. So the real question is, am I going to go to my local zoo with a machete? All signs point to no.