According to Ion, a lot of shadowlands design ideas are based around the RPG element, such as Covenants and the abilities / powers that are borrowed from them. The intention being that it is a strong RPG by making the choice matter.
However I define RPG considerably different and i’m not sure whether i’m wrong or whether Blizzard are.
I see RPG (Role playing Game) being about acting out a role. now in real life when you Role Play, it doesn’t effect your actual life as you’re simply playing the part. whether it’s completely imaginary or you wear/look a certain way to fulfill the fantasy.
Now in this regards, the so called RPG choices that have been implemented into Shadow Lands aren’t RPG at all, because the choices influence the character life / ability. In sense you’re not acting or playing the role, you actually are the role.
Now maybe i’m looking at this from a different point of view, that the real life person is role playing through the character, where as i see it as the real life person is playing the character, which they then use to play the role play they want. The way blizzard are looking at the RPG is so pigeon holed that it will effect the game in such negative ways due to balance.
Removing Covenant abilities and powers and placing that in the class baseline / talents means it does NOT effect any other part of the game. While making Covenants more cosmetic / World changing (world quests / world abilities) means people can truly act out any role they wish to play without it effecting Dungeons, Raids and PVP?
My first ever RPG was D&D some 40 years ago; that’s how I define RPG’s. Vanilla WoW was quite close - but over the years many RPG elements have been taken away for “conveniences sake” which although understandable is a shame. Having played classic for a while I can see why some of these conveniences came about over time.
Nowadays though I very much feel like i’m playing diablo when playing WoW with its fast paced throw stuff at you all day.
It’s still an RPG though and still fun; just a lesser one.
Why does anyone have to be wrong? There’s many aspects to RPGs and some people put more importance into certain aspects than others. And that’s not wrong. It’s just different.
But at the end of the day it’s THEIR game. They’re designing it so if they use THEIR idea of what an RPG is as the foundation for that; that’s their prerogative.
See, I completely disagree with this. You’re playing your character and the choices you make for your character affect your character. Makes total sense and is very much RPG.
The Issues that a computer RPG has is that it just can’t emulate the traditional tabletop/pen and paper RPGs that have a human dungeon master directing the game. It doesn’t matter how sophisticate the tech is or how clever the coding, we’re still light years away from replacing a human DM/GM with a computer.
A MMORPG like WoW has to be a compromise between the RPG elements and what is required for gameplay, with gameplay taking a slightly higher priority that the RP part.
Also bear in mind that the devs are trying to cater for many different gamestyles ranging from the purist RP gamer through to the hardcore PvP player so there will be systems and game mechanics in the game that someone somewhere won’t like but are necessary for the overall good of the game.
Rpg in its base form is making choices and change aspects of your character so you can play how you want.
However talent trees and unlocking moves and weapons etc has become so standard in games that what rpg used to be has become part of most games and rpgs nowadays is usually focused on story, dialouge or character development, or a very expansive character builder.
So many games are rpgs now due to the existance of gear, even tho there is 0 character choice in the game. Wow is an rpg in gear sense but not in character or story sense imo. You pick your race and class, then never another character choice again.
I realise im very likely going to be told im wrong about this, but its how ive felt about this for the longest time.
Edit: Action-rpg has become a standalone genre rather than a sub genre ino. An action rpg is a game where the rpg elements are mostly focused on gameplay and character builds rather than character choice and developmemt. For example wow, poe and dark souls would be actiom rpgs.
While divinity original sin, cyberpunk and dragon age are rpg games.
As someone who has played the Pen & Paper RPGs since the 80s I see a large part (although not the only part) is the construction of the Role in the first place.
Choosing Race, Class, Back-story, weapons & armour.
This often includes assigning stats, feats, skills etc.
Although even in Pen & Paper versions you get min-maxing and cookie cutter builds. You learn what skills and feats get used generally and that teh Appraise skill won’t get used often enough to blow any of your 12 starting points on.
I think where Ion is coming from here is that your will have to choose abilites from the covenant for your character role.
There is a problem here though in most RPGs you’re playing with the same five or six people and your role generally stays the same for that campaign. In WoW you can be DPS for WQ / levelling, Tank for M+, Heals for Raid.
Then there is the Lore side of RPG. A dwarf warrior is almost always going to use a battle-axe, in large part due to Gimli and his kin.
With Covenants Death Knights will take the Necrolords and Paladins will take the holy ones, Druids will take the nature one. Unless Min-Maxing powers over-ride this. This is another choice which could feel bad. Pick the Lore one as it make playing the character more fun or pick the most powerful one as it makes playing the character easier?
WoW is about as much of an RPG as the Call of Duty or Battlefield series, in that they have progression systems. But that’s about it. And the swords and sorcery setting I suppose.
Games like Divinity: Original Sin, Baldur’s Gate or the Witcher series are RPGs. They tend to have (among other things) branching dialogue trees and a strong central narrative that can meander through various player choices.
In WoW you are completely on rails and there is no input from the player other than the literal buttons you are pressing.
Covenants will not be a choice either for the vast majority of players, as people on the top will figure out which choice is “the best one” and everyone else will follow.
