This is an extract from The Wow Diary, written by John Straats, level designer for Molten Core. What he wrote was:
“If there is a place where players can exploit gaining experience, items, currency, or reputation, then that’s precisely what players will do, because they always take the path of least resistance. Since MMO content is measured in months, not hours, the content is paradoxically daunting, so any shortcut to the top will become the most popular route, even if it isn’t fun. And if a game’s path of least resistance isn’t fun, it means the game isn’t fun. Lazy or inexperienced game developers blame players for “ruining” a game with aberrant behavior, but these accusations are like dog owners blaming their pets for eating unhealthy scraps.”
Imagine that!
Edit note: Didn’t think forums allowed for the link posts to be seen like that! Now you got it in doubles.
I think that’s still what players do today. But when game developers make “non-flying” for a certain period of time to actually have fun on the ground, players also complained because they wanted the route with the least resistance. And that is nothing lazy or inexperienced game developers.
Problem is that present Blizzard is completely another company than original Blizzard which created vanilla WoW. Today it’s just another corporate driven by managers and shareholders.
Another one is that game development as a business experiences way less regulation in sense of quality control compared to other businesses.
Let’s say for products like clothes or food you even have institutes and laws to secure quality. Game development rather is free to regulate itself which in turn attracts profit orientated investors because low investment is required for meeting guidelines.
The ambition to produce quality is automatically reduced if it’s not for competition. And since mega game companies like Blizzard barely have any competition these days, they can pretty much do what they want as long as they keep up the cash flow.
Sure, you have gaming magazines, blogs, platforms and streamers reviewing games and measuring / comparing their quality features. But those barely are official institutions that have any influence on legal processes to secure quality. In general a difficult task because how would you measure fun while gaming or prove that gamers are exploited financially as long as you always have the choice to not buy without existential disadvantage?
The only legal tools you have is to take a look on a games company’s work conditions and legal cash flow. Which indeed has an influence on game quality most of the time.
This reminds me of the time in MOP when the Gulp frogs on the Timeless Isle were dropping bucket loads of Lesser Charms (which could be used to upgrade gear).
There were dozens of groups just standing around spamming AoEs killing and looting frogs (I joined in a couple of times).
Blizzard (I think it might have been Ion but not entirely sure) berated us players for doing such inane activities. They couldn’t believe we would do such a thing.
They obviously didn’t read that article.
I expect this guy was fired at some point for having “extravagant and disruptive” ideas. Guess this is just another thing that goes to show the current team have no idea what fundamentals the original game was built on.
I honestly hope it will be possible. I remember someone saying in a documentary like video on the matter that to change the current state of gaming business you have reboot it completely and start new from scratch. And sometimes, I feel likely to agree.
I doubt it, quality in creative fields is subjective. They can rake RNG and shady MTX practice under casino laws but it’d be impossible to get any game dev for anything else. Even the NMS guy got off relatively unscathed and he was straight up lying and deceiving his customers.
