Why I Don't Play Wow Right Now

I played World of Warcraft for nigh on two years straight starting in closed beta, took a break, came back for The Burning Crusade, and then stopped again when summer of 2007 ended. Why? Because, in a manner of speaking, I had already figured out all the patterns in the game.

I should probably rephrase that, but I was trying to tie it to James’s post earlier (he is borrowing my copy of “Theory of Fun”). I have not solved every underlying pattern that WoW has to offer, but I have experienced almost all of them, and they do not change. When you have a persistent online world, and you are expecting that people are going to pay to play in this world, you need to provide them with reasons to continue playing. Now is the time that you point out “but Matt, Blizzard is making another expansion…” and I say, “Yes they are, but I would like to address a point that going into and beyond simply releasing more content.”

Creating alternate characters is the other way, besides simply growing the world, that MMO’s retain players. However, I tend to find playing alts to be tedious most of the time. This is where I tie in the whole pattern issue. I have already played through this part of the world. Many times. Nothing changed. I am doing the same quests for the same people, in order to receive that same loot. What I would like to propose is the idea of a much more dynamic quest system.

In WoW there are two factions, Horde and Alliance, with different races and different starting areas. However, once you get to around level 30 or so, as either faction you end up in the same neutral zones doing the same quests. From 30-60 I did the same quests on my Horde rogue as I did when I was 30-60 on my Alliance priest. The quest giver simply changed race and name.

Obviously generating dynamic quests on the fly is a very tricky issue, considering that the majority of all quests in all role playing games are probably hand written and planned out. As a temporary solution I would also be strongly in favor of simply creating quest trees with different branches. I would be much better to be able to follow one branch in a series of quests, and then if I come back as a different character, I could follow a separate branch for different results.

I think as MMO’s continue to evolve, we will see worlds that are increasingly more dynamic, and this requires increasingly dynamic tools to work properly. Perhaps one of the reasons that we are in what I would call a quest rut is that the NPC’s in WoW don’t “require” anything. The dwarf who sends me off to kill the yetis that took over his cave is not going to actually return to his cave. But what if he did, and the next time I ventured by he needed other materials in order to rebuild. That is the kind of dynamic quest structure that would make me want to roll another character to and continue playing…and paying.

GDC, and theories on fun.

GDC is almost upon us, and I'm getting excited, as well I should be. As a gamer and a computer scientist, I can't imagine an event that would combine more of my passions. Well, unless it was a game developer's conference with a rock climbing competition and Mystery Science Theater 3000 playing in the background the entire time. Until the day that dream is realized, I will be content with attending the GDC. Plus, it's in San Fransisco, so I get to visit somewhere new.

I am a bit nervous though, since part of the reason I am going is to try to land a job. Since I don't graduate until May, my resume is a bit sparse. I am lacking the, "Must have shipped two games on X console" each job seems to require, but everyone has to start somewhere. I will be putting the finishing touches on my resume this week, and I guess we will see what happens.

On a slightly unrelated tangent, I have been reading "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" by Raph Koster, and despite how irritating I find the title (for it's casual use of the word "theory," which is a topic that has no relevance to this blog), I am benefiting greatly from reading it. First and foremost, it has got me thinking about things that I had never even thought to think of before. That was an odd sentence, so let me give you an example: I had never thought about what it is that makes games fun.

As I wrote that, I realized just how ridiculous that sounds from someone who is trying to get into Game Design. After all, shouldn't that be all that I am thinking about? It wasn't that I didn't think the topic wasn't important, I just assumed that I already knew. I've played enough games to know what I find fun, but I had not considered why it's fun, or even exactly what it is beyond "winning" and "crushing all those that stand before me."

Koster's book presents the idea that underneath their pretty exteriors, games are all really about patterns, and our brains love patterns. We delight in finding them, and in a game this is what we are doing when we start to win. We have started to recognize the underlying patterns in the game and have learned how to exploit them. I won't go into all the reasons Koster provides because he does a much better job presenting his point of view than I do, but I have to admit, it's got me thinking. I'm not sure how much I agree with him, but the important thing is that I'm now thinking about something that I had taken for granted. And thinking is good.

I hope to follow up on this post with a bit more of my impressions of Koster's book, but that may have to wait until after GDC, when I have a chance to reread it. And speaking of books worthy of a reread, "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Hunt and Thomas is also on that list.