Bliz: Changing the Shape of WoW

"20080126 - shape of WoW.txt"

[i](Yes I know this is tl;dr... :P but it's worth it!)[/i]

World of Warcraft 1.0 was like this: A very fun endgame, if you could ignore the gear disparity and/or didn't mind conforming to a raid schedule.

World of Warcraft 2.0 is like this: A somewhat fun endgame, if you don't mind grinding and don't mind having all your work obsoleted as soon as the next 'arena season' is released.

WoW 2.0 was meant to fix the problems in WoW 1.0, but ended up introducing problems of its own. What will WoW 3.0 be like?


It is possible to combine the best elements of WoW 1.0 and WoW 2.0 and evolve them to the like, next level, but it requires significant and non-obvious changes to some of the core mechanics of the game, because in order to get to point D sometimes you also have to go thru points B and C. Change is difficult... but compared to the alternative, of infinitely imbalanced PvP and raiding that destroys countless guilds it comes in contact with, it is worth it.


[i][b]Part 1: Thinking in the Present[/b][/i]

Opportunity: countless stories to explore and dungeons to conquer, with no obligation to do any of it if you don't want to. Bliz has already announced their intentions to put greater emphasis on the story in WotlK, especially as the setting is so perfect for it. But with any story in an MMO comes a darker side, the rewards associated to give players a reason to explore the story at all... and this is Bliz's undoing, because with progress comes competition, and players end up wanting to complete a dungeon not for the sake of completing the dungeon, but so they can progress with and compete against other players who will do the same content over and over again, no matter how mind-numbing, for the sake of the rewards.

Failure to account for this competitive spirit among limited-playtime 'casuals' was the essence of WoW 1.0. Catering to this attitude at the expense of all other design principles is the essence of WoW 2.0. There is another path, to render the differences between well-geared players and poorly-geared players, in fact no difference at all. This does not mean eliminating the difference, it means making it so [i]it doesn't matter[/i]. Then players are left only with choice, and are free to do things in the game as they so choose, not because they are forced to do things to compete or to enable the potential to [i]begin[/i] to complete content that is at a higher level of progression. With choice comes enjoyment, with enjoyment comes renewed subscriptions and $$$... so there's your motivation Bliz -.-

These things apply to both PvE differences between players and how they restrict choice, and PvP differences. You must study this, and understand deeply.


[i][b]Part 2: Heroes[/b][/i]

It has been said that in WoW 2.0, no one is special. Whatever achievements you might make can be mimicked by a monkey playing <insert OP class of choice> on a cookie-cutter 5v5 team farming arena points, and either way will be worthless as soon as the next expansion is released. Once you solve the problem of differences reducing choice tho, you can make a new endgame, which I will present here:

[ul][li]Minimalist, casual endgame: level cap blues, no epics. Time is spent doing 5-mans with friends for fun, PvPing in BGs, solo play/questing, and doing 10-15 man [b]UBRS-equivalent[/b] casual endgame raid instances with no epics and no lockout timer.
[li]Raiding endgame: [b]PUG-able and guild-alliance-friendly raids[/b] that do have a tiered difficulty but are NOT so closely tied to gear quality as in TBC. This means introducing more randomness into PvE combat mechanics and requiring more versatility, it does not mean nerfing the difficulty of raid encounters overall. This can be done while still allowing top guilds sufficient challenge to race for world first kills 'n stuff, but accomplishing this is the primary reason why some of WoW's core mechanics must change, because WoW's current mechanics do not support random switching out of players, no matter how skilled their replacements might be. You simply cannot replace a guild's Main Tank without extensive, specialized gearing-up of the replacement beforehand, and neither can you 'adapt' to the MT dying mid-encounter.
[li]PvP endgame: endless world PvP warfare. BGs for team play and specialized, entry-level PvP gear. Scheduled, extremely publicized and sociable [b]arena tournament events[/b] wherein you can earn top-level PvP gear... but to some the gear earned is secondary to the competition itself and the support you can get from the crowd in the stands for fighting well. You could even have a Most Wanted list of the most notorious gankers (prolific ganking [i]and[/i] skilled enough to kill equal-leveled bounty hunters while avoiding death themselves), altho this would likely be a nonessential feature and not one to receive developmental priority.[/ul]
Both the hardcore PvE and PvP endgames would be accessible to casuals who ran out of stuff to do on their own or who wanted to venture deeper into the game's content, either from a desire to progress for their own sake or because they had friends who were already there. In WoW 2.0, it is difficult or impossible for the independent-minded casual to experience 'endgame' PvE or PvP content and still have fun; in WoW 3.0, it should not be.


[i][b]Part 3: "Si non confectus, non reficiat"[/b][/i]

Right, so... I'm trying to put all these different concepts together in a way that makes sense. If you have issues with anything before this (and I can see no reason why you would tbh) you should write your reply now, because otherwise you'll probably just get confused lol.

WoW 2.0 rewards players with items. This is an inherently flawed approach. Items are useful for [i]capturing[/i] stories, but by themselves they become nothingness in the next expansion. WoW 3.0 must explicitly focus its efforts around rewarding players WITH stories, i.e. their achievement is a story of what they have done, instead of with items. And stories can be represented with more than just items: they can also be represented by titles (PvP stories), a new permanent infusion mechanic (PvE raiding stories), and just the stories themselves in the form of quests that have been completed. Not to mention social stories which exist entirely within the players and have no in-game representation apart from maybe guild membership. So that is really what all the following ideas are about.

[b]KEY LINKING IDEA: PICK-UP GUILD RAIDS[/b]. The concept itself is simple enough: 'casual raiding' in TBC failed, in the sense of having destroyed countless guilds even if others survived, because there is too much pressure to fill raiding slots from [i]within the guild[/i]. This causes tension between those who want to progress faster, and those who are not really interested in raiding, since both feel there is an obligation for the other type to support their own wishes as they have needs which otherwise cannot be met. [i]This is a result of lacking design[/i]. A well-designed game would NOT have this problem; to-date there has not (to my knowledge) been such a well-designed game, but this does not mean WoW 3.0 could not be this game... if only the right changes are made. The required changes are extensive, however they also involve other aspects of the game (like PvP balance, and how fun the actual PvE raids are) so that's fine then:

[ul][li]Fixing [b]hybrid scaling[/b], so instead of being fully specialized in a single role a hybrid can instead choose to hybridize in multiple roles and still be somewhat close to the effectiveness of a specialist in each of those roles.
[li][b]Changing encounter design[/b] to increase randomness in a fight. Not only because adapting to changing conditions is the only thing that can make hybrids at all viable in a raid environment (the gear-collecting situation is also a factor, but only for long-term efficiency not for min/maxing specific encounters), but also because it is necessary to allow multiple diverse guilds to pull together into a single unit without unreasonable tactical-organizational and planning-organizational requirements on who fills which role and when. Raid modularity is essential to the pick-up guild concept.
[li]Implementing the necessary tools so raids can use fluid and stateless [b]loot distribution methods[/b] while still keeping everyone satisfied with what they've got from going on the raid.
[li]Implementing efficient LFG features for both short-term and long-term raiding needs, so guilds can find other guilds and individuals interested in raiding a particular instance without resorting to low-participation avenues like the forums (most players don't read the forums).
[li]Fixing mana efficiency scaling to get away from the absurd efficiencies in current WoW that lead to class imbalance/overpoweredness and just too much specialization away from hybridness and raid modularity. The last thing you want to hear is, "Oh we need 2 more shadow priest mana batteries to be able to raid that instance... sorry, both the priests in your guild are Holy spec, we can't use your guild bye." No offense to shadow priests.[/ul]
Now, each of these ideas has its own huge description, but other than mentioning this first major mechanics change I will move on: the way threat works would have to be changed. The 'main tank' concept is just too damaging to raiding and to hybridness, and it is self-propagating too as people complain about dying to aggro which means they get MORE threat reduction tools which means raiding becomes even MORE about min/maxing dps which means MORE damage mitigation specialization by the main tank which leads to higher mob damage which leads to MORE dying to aggro which means MORE QQ'ing for threat reduction which leads to MORE threat reduction tools which leads to.... So this means threat would have to have a random component attached to it such that [i]any[/i] threat-producing attack would have a chance to pull aggro, proportional to the threat generated by the attack and the difference between your threat and the threat of the mob's current target. Probably set your threat to max too when this happened. [b][i]THIS IMPLIES THAT RAID BOSSES & MOBS WOULD DO LESS DAMAGE SO CASTERS WOULD NOT GET ONE-SHOTTED WHEN THEY PULLED AGGRO!!![/i][/b] The second change to threat mechanics would be that mobs would tend to 'lose interest' in someone the more mobs were already aggrod on that person, instead looking for someone else to chomp on. Anyway, next idea...

[b]KEY LINKING IDEA: TYPE OF RAIDING REWARDS[/b]. The idea here is to change what kind of rewards you get from raiding, which changes the actual [i]structure[/i] of raiding since you don't have to depend on gear progression so much to keep raiding fun, and also gives a more permanent story associated with the rewards than a gear-based story that will be obsoleted with the next upgrade. So then, related ideas:
[ul][li][b]permanent stat infusions[/b] for defeating a final boss of a top-level instance. This is a huge change if you haven't noticed, it would have negligible change in stats but huge story incentive to go somewhere. However, it is itself linked to the type of loot distribution method used, as the wrong type could cause even more drama than normal epics do. Thus it is linked to the pick-up guild concept above and enabling better loot distribution methods.
[li]greater quest emphasis in raiding, both inside the instance and stories linked outside the instance, in the manner of Blackwing Lair. Gives players more reason to visit an instance [i]despite[/i] whether or not they want item upgrades from there.
[li]reduced depth of item tier upgrades. This implies instances that are closer together in progression, so guild can choose to do Tier A and Tier B at the same time if they choose to, even venture into Tier C at the same time they're still doing Tier A. This is enabled by the greater emphasis on non-item rewards and shallow loot upgrades. However it also implies...
[li]methods to slow initial progression in a raid instance. Traditionally in WoW this has been gear. Flattening the gear curve means other methods must be standardized, sort of like Onyxia Scale Cloaks for BWL... you could do the fights without the cloaks maybe, especially after the shadow flame effect got nerfed, but having a cloak made it a whole lot easier. It would, of course, be nice if the mechanic was the difficulty in actually [i]learning[/i] the fights... and maybe with more variability in encounter design (with threat changed, and hybrids more viable) this might actually be possible... but otoh it might not. This could be linked into the quests emphasis with, e.g., it usually takes a couple of weeks or a month to complete the quest that gives you an item that makes the entire instance a little easier, thus top guilds who could do the instance WITHOUT completing their questlines could get the world firsts they look for.
[li]alternative/situational upgrades. This is closely linked with fixing hybrid scaling, because the same mechanism that makes dissimilar, hybrid stats viable could make different types of [i]similar[/i] stats more competitive on the item budget with each other, thus giving the [i]item designers[/i] more room to design diverse types of items, instead of all items having the exact same stats except 5% more because of higher iLevel. Also, a flatter gear curve and more variability in encounters (non-tanks taking damage, etc) means less emphasis on dps and more room to choose what gear you [i]want[/i] to wear because it looks good. Tiered clones are highly overrated imo. :)[/ul]

[b]KEY LINKING IDEA: WORLD PVP[/b]. World PvP has suffered in WoW because of two conflicting design attitudes: the devs don't want to give major gear rewards for world PvP because it would make it about farming gear, instead of having fun. But at the same time the progression requirement means that major gear rewards keep getting introduced [i]elsewhere[/i], so players never really have time to stop and have fun in what they've got because of the need to keep up with those who are farming gear. Not only that.. but the ways they do have of farming gear are not always fun (try PvPing in arena in quest blues, or trying to get into a raiding guild without having first farmed out Heroics to the max), so they basically have a choice between 'playing but not having fun' and 'not playing at all'. Ideas:
[ul][li]bringing back ranks in a new title system that does not decay with time, but does decay from [b]being killed by a similarly ranked opponent[/b]. This is the crux of the whole system really, what makes everything else in this post work. Thankfully Bliz *might* *possibly* already be working on something like this for WotlK.
[li]new arena design, as a tournament which is entered singly instead of something you enter as a group. [i]There are no brackets[/i] but players might have an individual rating which determines initial placement within the tournament. Multiple events are featured, such as random 2v2 and deathmatch between 10 ungrouped players, and players can win different qualities of tokens (not all tokens could be used for the highest-level rewards) depending on how well they do in the tournament. Player input from the stands might have an effect on what rewards a participant in the tournament gets. New 'tiers' of rewards, corresponding to PvE tiers, can be unlocked thru server-wide AQ-gate-style events, which have a minimum cooldown between when a tier is unlocked and the event for a new tier can start, regardless of how far 'behind' a server is compared to how many arena tiers have already been released by the devs. PvP servers would probably progress thru arena tiers faster than PvE servers, while PvE servers would have more advanced guild PvE progression than the arena tier they've unlocked so far.
[li]faction-wide XP/honor buff for killing an enemy faction leader, lasts for 24 hours and persists thru death. If both faction leaders from that city have died the city also burns for an hour or two which is mostly a graphical effect, tho changed NPC conversations and reduced guard spawn would both be nice.
[li]reintroduction of BG-specific rewards under a new system.
[li]reduced guard spawn.. plz -.- Or changed mechanics so raids that are too incompetent to nuke down civilians don't wipe to guards every single time.
[li]Most Wanted list that was mentioned before.[/ul]


[i][b]Part 4: rain[/b][/i]

Some of these ideas have been explained elsewhere. For a more detailed explanation on what went wrong with hybrids and how to fix them, see this thread: <link> For a more detailed explanation on how to fix the larger problem of world PvP, see this thread: <link> Both of those problems are old, old. But arenas and raiding did not go as Blizzard planned, thus the repostings of those two solutions, and this thread.

A hodgepodge list, then. [b]Encounter design[/b] falls under two main categories: increasing the damage/healing/tanking requirements on the raid as a whole, either within a specific encounter or between encounters, and increasing the damage/healing/tanking requirements [i]or restrictions[/i] on any particular player. Both of these allow hybrids to be raid viable, despite reduced ability in any single role compared to someone of the same class who specialized both gear and spec to fill a particular role. However, unless hybrid [i]scaling[/i] is fixed it is impossible to have any encounters like this because you can't design for something which doesn't exist. [b]Changing threat mechanics[/b] then, is a subset of changing tanking requirements on individual players, however the details were explained above. Note that damage, healing, and tanking can each be divided into multiple categories when it comes to requirements/impositions, such as magical damage, or ranged damage, or heals that act while incapacitated (aka HoTs/PWS/Earth Shield), or physical tanking against a large number of weak opponents (see previous suggestion to mod threat by how many mobs are already aggrod on a target), or magic-damage tanking against large single nukes that affect multiple targets, etc. All these can be used to encourage versatility in spec, gear, and playstyle.

[b]Loot distribution methods[/b]! This is a fun one... the best loot distribution methods are [i]social[/i] ones, the problem is finding a social method that will work with a PUG raid. In the end it comes down to again, modularity: distributing loot to groups that will [i]then[/i] decide how to distribute it amongst themselves. True pick-up-groups, or subsets of a raid that consist of PUG-players, have a slightly different requirement, but here we can borrow from the Chinese: top gold bid for item wins, in an open auction within the group. Proceeds from the run are distributed evenly to all players at the end of the run, so if you can't afford to bid for anything this time, you will be able to next time. From a design standpoint this requires supplying players with the tools so they can efficiently use these kinds of loot methods... the raid leader must be able to designate [i]multiple[/i] players who can distribute loot, one for each group. The procedure in a pick-up-guild raid would then be for the raid leader to /random for which group (based on number of players) gets any specific reward, then the group would decide who gets it and the loot leader for that group would assign that person the loot. Or they could trade/sell it to another group if they didn't need it or got a really good offer. Either way it is fair, and simple, but does require additional development work to be made to enable the method. More if you wanted to support the Chinese-style auctioning of loot and automatic splitting within a certain subgroup, as designated by the group leader. Otherwise players would have to do it by hand and that's both inefficient time-wise and can lead to cries of fraud (don't know how the Chinese avoided this).

Group size, then, could be anywhere from 3 players from a casual guild who like to join a guild alliance to go raiding, to an entire raid which is from a single guild that chooses to use DKP. It doesn't discriminate against anyone based on how many friends they like to go raiding with, unlike the current raiding environment which does usually force group size onto someone. Tho maybe defining multiple 'groups' [i]inside[/i] a raid might be a requirement, to simplify the distribution process.. this means more conceptual work of how it's going to be displayed, sub-raids and UI elements etc.

At the same time tho, guilds need efficient [b]pick-up guild LFG functionality[/b] so they can find other sister guilds that want to raid in the first place. This might take the form of a community bulletin-board type functionality, or it might be specific notes associated with a single guild and its UI. Either way being able to list raiding intentions and/or raiding needs somehow is necessary.

[b]Mana efficiency scaling[/b] is somewhat related to hybrid scaling, but in the end is related to overall PvP balance really. For example: rogues are very dependent on cooldowns to succeed in PvP. In 2v2 arenas where fights are [i]short[/i] they can burst down an opponent and have a chance to win the match; in 5v5 bursting anyone down is probably not going to happen because of multiple healers and difficulty of keeping everyone CC'd, the rogue is going to run out of cooldowns, and the rogue will do MUCH WORSE in 5v5 because a healer in TBC can heal the entire damage a rogue dealt using cooldowns using probably just 1/10 of the healer's mana, factoring in mana regen over the duration of the fight. So, rogues get buffed for 5v5, but at the same time this makes them OP for 2v2. This also happens with hunters and druids in a similar way, and all of it is a consequence of fight duration as a result of increased mana efficiency.

So the solution is the [b]second major change in game mechanics[/b]. Instead of spells getting a constant mana cost and a constant spell coefficient up till [max level before upgrade + 6 levels], spells would 1) INCREASE in mana cost as you leveled, 2) increase proportionally in the base amount healed/damaged, 3) the coefficient would go UP proportionally with the increase in mana cost but at the same time 4) would go DOWN as if it were a ratings coefficient with comparing the original level with your current level. The net effect for spells post-60 would usually be a decrease in coefficient as you leveled, while total damage remains relatively constant and mana cost actually increases, until the next rank upgrade where damage, coefficient, and mana cost would all go up proportionally with the next rank. Basically all this complicated stuff is just to avoid letting downranking be a cheap way around greatly increased mana costs for new spell ranks, however at the same time total damage would go up more than with the current system which is one reason it's necessary to keep gear depth at the level cap as shallow as possible.

You would also need to fix the scaling of certain imba spells, altho there is a reason for other classes of spells having a nonproportional coefficient but these would need to be made up with leveling ranks the way that [i]some spells in WoW currently are not made up for[/i]! -.- (Note: at a singularity like the lvl 60 caster stat conversion change there would be 'rating coefficients' for downranking that did not correspond with normal coefficients, exactly because damage scaling went up while mana pool scaling went down. So this is something to watch.) In other words... suppose a mage at lvl 60 had 5k mana and did did 500 damage with Frostbolt for 260 mana. At lvl 70, the same mage has 10k mana. This means that max-rank Frostbolt must now take up 520 mana per cast (10k/5k * 260) altho it probably also now does 1600 damage because of +damage that the mage had none of at lvl 60.

Other classes would be affected the same way, especially healers. So instead of Flash of Light doing 500 healing at lvl 60 for 140 mana and 1800 healing at lvl 70 for 180 mana, it would instead cost [b]280 mana[/b] (because the average pally now has 2x the mana pool) which is more significant in PvP than a piddling 180 mana that the paladin can spam pretty much indefinitely. However this also implies that [i]Holy Light would have a similar efficiency to Flash of Light[/i] which means paladins could return to their 2H-hammer bashing roots. I could make a chart and explain more but this post is wayyyyy too long :D

[b]Permanent stat infusions[/b]! This one is also fun. Imagine you killed Ragnaros... and he dropped THREE (3) BoP "essence of ragnaros" items with the On-Use property (1 charge): infuses your being with the essence of Ragnaros! Imagine the loot drama this could cause, which is why it's so important to make social methods of loot distribution of viable. Now, what it does is put a special icon in your spellbook or maybe on your character sheet somewhere: [Icon] [b]Essence of Ragnaros[/b] - your spirit has absorbed the essence of the great Firelord Ragnaros, increasing your Spirit by 3 and your Fire Resistance by 5.

This shows up in your armory profile. However just because you don't have it doesn't mean you didn't kill Ragnaros, it is after all only given to the most honorable and self-sacrificing members of the guilds that have killed him.

Increasing story and quest emphasis in raiding is self-explanatory, however note that if you had collection quests which took WEEKS to complete they could be used as a pacing mechanic. New guilds would take months for everyone to complete their quest, while guilds that had been doing an instance for a while could get the drops for a new guild member in a single day.

I would like to reiterate that shallower gear tiers and less emphasis as [i]item upgrades[/i] as the pacing mechanic allows more individuality in character customization, since it wouldn't matter so much what your pure dps was but rather how good you were at delivering that dps while staying alive when drawing random aggro from the changed threat mechanics. More fun. Less tedium. Less clones running around would be a good thing for all concerned.

The PvP ideas are all explained in the thread linked above (<link> if you missed it), except for the Most Wanted list. This is an idea tied into the whole honor system concept, so you won't understand why it would work unless you've read that thread: ganking anyone low enough to con as gray to you would give you infamy. Getting an HK against a similar-level, equal-ranked player (so not someone in greens, while you're in epics) gives you [i]notoriety[/i] in proportion to how much honor you got AND how much infamy you have. Infamy is shown in the UI as a debuff or some other, more special place to display it (sort of like the PvP flag except with a tooltip saying your infamy), however notoriety is not shown so directly, it MIGHT be shown in your Honor tab. [i]Dying[/i] to someone who gets an HK on you (so again, they have to be of similar or lesser rank/gear and similar or lesser level) reduces your Notoriety, also in proportional to how much infamy you have and how much honor was awarded from the HK. Infamy is a temporary thing, that eventually decays and drops to zero (if in the form of a buff, then it would stack to X amount and the entire stack would have a duration that is refreshed by each ganking), while Notoriety is the real stuff that nets you a place on the opposite faction's Most Wanted list.

Having an Infamy debuff prevents you from joining a BG, and keeps you PvP flagged. This lets other players gank you. It also increases how much honor is awarded to them when they kill you, giving players an incentive to defend their lowbies who are being ganked. (*NOTE: In this system, honor is mainly used so you can have a good TITLE, it is NOT used to buy rewards altho the title might enable a few rewards. Read the thread.) Being on the Most Wanted list may or may not increase the amount of honor awarded to whoever kills you... but either way they'll probably try lol, just so they can say they killed someone on the list. Think the most notorious PvPer on your server except [i]everyone[/i] knows who you are and is going to try to kill you... nowhere are you safe! ;)

And that is it, thank you for reading this gigantic humongous post, I hope your eyes haven't burned out.