Oliver Smith (not verified) on May 8, 2006 - 03:05.
You're cute :) And funny :) And like a lot of MMO designers you miss the fact that WoW isn't a game of vision. It's a game of units sold and subscriptions held.
These two universes have different math, algebra and geometry. That's why in your universe you can't compare PvPs. But in Blizzard's you categorically can. MMO PvP is consumed X much, CTF PvP is consumed Y much and since its addition subs have gone up and unsubs have gone down.
"Better" in WoW geometry means "holds more subscriptions".
It's been said that Eve has better PvP than WoW. Eve has five million, nine hundred thousand less subscribers than WoW. In WoW-heuristics, that's "YBetter" (Your Better) not "Bbetter" (Blizzard Better).
Your arguments are like hearing someone try to argue Marlboro's product line improvement based on observations of Hersheys. "Cover the Marlboro lites in caramel! The only reason people don't smoke caramel coated cigs is because nobody has had the balls to make them yet!". Worse, you don't seem to be open minded enough to see that they are two very different products with very different goals.
Whether or not you believe it, Blizzard's evaluation of PvP is that more traditional PvP sells less units, more deathmatch/CTF-like PvP sells more units.
Thankfully the designers and developers on Zen got my point - that if you want to make "better WoW" you have to sell your soul and think in terms of unit counts - the way counterstrike clone developers do. But the stats on WoW PvP consumption demonstrate that there are massive reserves of PvP players to be tapped into still, as long as you're willing to go into it recognizing that "Vision = bad" in anyone thinking in WoW terms.
Did you know that Raph said that given a $50m budget he would make a game in which the goal was to find a cure for cancer? If he said "$50,000" well then it wouldn't sound so lame.
WoW's model is to sell mush that touches on thousands of niches. Folks like us wind up on the periphery thinking "This is laaaaame PvP, it would be so much better if" WRONG. In their Universe better = more copies sold. As long as millions of people like it that way, its good. Moving it in the direction of any one niche makes it less common-denominator, loses subscriptions and is "worse".
And the reason I'm laboring to try and explain this is because I actually feel the same way as you about WoW's PvP. But if you think WoW are going to make PvP less like generic mulch, you've bought into the wrong product =( I want to get people to see that you *can* make better-than-WoW PvP, and that you don't have to wallow in the mire like WWII Online to do it. But you have to be willing to forgoe a few million customers to do it. Probably all million of them, and make do with hundreds of thousands. Budget accordingly, and make your Vision real.
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Re: PvP and faulty thinking - How to learn all the wrong lessons
You're cute :) And funny :) And like a lot of MMO designers you miss the fact that WoW isn't a game of vision. It's a game of units sold and subscriptions held.
These two universes have different math, algebra and geometry. That's why in your universe you can't compare PvPs. But in Blizzard's you categorically can. MMO PvP is consumed X much, CTF PvP is consumed Y much and since its addition subs have gone up and unsubs have gone down.
"Better" in WoW geometry means "holds more subscriptions".
It's been said that Eve has better PvP than WoW. Eve has five million, nine hundred thousand less subscribers than WoW. In WoW-heuristics, that's "YBetter" (Your Better) not "Bbetter" (Blizzard Better).
Your arguments are like hearing someone try to argue Marlboro's product line improvement based on observations of Hersheys. "Cover the Marlboro lites in caramel! The only reason people don't smoke caramel coated cigs is because nobody has had the balls to make them yet!". Worse, you don't seem to be open minded enough to see that they are two very different products with very different goals.
Whether or not you believe it, Blizzard's evaluation of PvP is that more traditional PvP sells less units, more deathmatch/CTF-like PvP sells more units.
Thankfully the designers and developers on Zen got my point - that if you want to make "better WoW" you have to sell your soul and think in terms of unit counts - the way counterstrike clone developers do. But the stats on WoW PvP consumption demonstrate that there are massive reserves of PvP players to be tapped into still, as long as you're willing to go into it recognizing that "Vision = bad" in anyone thinking in WoW terms.
Did you know that Raph said that given a $50m budget he would make a game in which the goal was to find a cure for cancer? If he said "$50,000" well then it wouldn't sound so lame.
WoW's model is to sell mush that touches on thousands of niches. Folks like us wind up on the periphery thinking "This is laaaaame PvP, it would be so much better if" WRONG. In their Universe better = more copies sold. As long as millions of people like it that way, its good. Moving it in the direction of any one niche makes it less common-denominator, loses subscriptions and is "worse".
And the reason I'm laboring to try and explain this is because I actually feel the same way as you about WoW's PvP. But if you think WoW are going to make PvP less like generic mulch, you've bought into the wrong product =( I want to get people to see that you *can* make better-than-WoW PvP, and that you don't have to wallow in the mire like WWII Online to do it. But you have to be willing to forgoe a few million customers to do it. Probably all million of them, and make do with hundreds of thousands. Budget accordingly, and make your Vision real.