Home

P.S. I was right again

Submitted by Abalieno on April 23, 2008 - 18:58.

After this I'm done commenting mmorpgs for a while, because as I already explained it only leads to more and more. And I don't intend to waste my time.

I was reading some news about WoW's arena's system. And those news fit exactly the model I anticipated and that I summarized with this lame image:

Now it all looks obvious, but at the time it was pure guesswork as we were five months before the release of the expansion and the PvP revamp. Everything I wrote in that long post was quite correct and I remember on the forums I had to fight a battle because everyone continued to repeat that Blizzard learned from mistakes and that you could save up arena's points, and so, ideally save up enough of them to buy the best rewards.

While I was saying that no, Blizzard didn't learn a damn thing and that no matter what people expect, the arenas system was made by Kalgan for his need of being l33t. And so they were going to add some kind of reset system to make Arena's reward truly l33t, either by resetting your points after each arena season, or by adding rank requirements.

My point: nothing is going to change. They are maintaining the status quo where a small subset of players have access to the best gear, while the majority sits at the bottom of the pyramid. So making the elite stronger, and the noobs noober(?).

And now I read of the two upcoming changes:
1- They are rising rank requirements for arena loot
2- They are stopping powerlevelling

I never participated in a single arena's match, but I'm sad to see I was right. From what I read you can't purchase arena's loot with points, but you also have to maintain a certain rank. EXACTLY LIKE IN THE OLD HONOR SYSTEM.

From Tobold's blog comments:

This will remove most people below 1500 now from the arena, creating a whole new playing field. And arena ratings on honor gear? Ridiculous.

It seems to me like the Arena has turned into what the honor system was at it's launch. Something for the hardcore players. And of course as usual, the casuals will be steamrolled even if they've got a set two seasons below the current.

It seems that with patch 2.4 and this PvP announcement that Blizzard is returning to the WoW 1.0 model of hiding gear and patterns in inaccessible raid dungeons and behind PvP rating/ranking obstacles.

There will always be teams who win against better geared opponents because they outplay them. But this will get harder and harder. Just think about how much damage a S4 warrior will do to a S2 equipped cloth or leather wearer. With an equipment spiral like that, skill matters less and less.

And I'm writing this because I'd really want to see in the face those that FOR MONTHS argued with me. And then make fun of me if I point out to them that once again I was right.

The morale is in the article:

Saving your points (or even your honor) for Season 4 may not be as effective anymore though, if you can't also muster up the ratings to purchase the gear.

Last Kalgan's move to catassing. You know he is l33t. And you know where he's heading with all this.

Then there's the powerlevelling. Every idiot playing a MMO knows that it would be stupid to let a level 1 player group with a level 60 player and gain the level 60 player's experience.

Apparently, considering they are fixing it now, Kalgan didn't think of this:

Together, these rules (which Tom Chilton alluded to but did not reveal in a recent interview) should mean that a person cannot simply ride a high rating team to victory, but will instead need to fight their way up the ladder to gain points regardless of what team they join.

Because before you could group with the l33t and get their points/ranks. Which created the perfect opportunity to offer RMT to be up there for one turn, grab the loot, and leave.

And with this Kalgan made the last move to make arenas exactly the same of the past honor (catass) system.

Congratulations. You are back home.

Old summary:
- The Honor system is pure catass, players complain for two years
- Blizzard gives up and transforms Honor points into currency
- But doing that then every player will be able to eventually get the best rewards! *SHOCK!*
- So they nudge back the Honor system in the food chain
- And add on top an Arena system that is more Hardcore than ever and whose rewards dwarf everything that was in the game till that point

» add new comment

Re: P.S. I was right again

Ronixis (not verified) on April 23, 2008 - 20:35.

You don't need to maintain your rank
You only need the rank to buy items

I agree with you, it's an hardcore mechanic. But not as hardcore as honor system.

they wanted to stop people with 1300 ratings to have the same gear of people with 2300 ratings. it was stupid.
But imo the solution is to increase Arena points for gear.
Good team 1 season = Full stuff
Bad Team 1 season = Half Stuff

» reply

Re: P.S. I was right again

Innsmouth on April 23, 2008 - 21:41.

they wanted to stop people with 1300 ratings to have the same gear of people with 2300 ratings. it was stupid.

Nope, it allowed the 1300 guys to compete fairly with the 2300 guys.

Now the 2300 guys starts with advantages over everyone else, so increasing the gap and consolidating their position. This makes the game much less mobile.

A fair system allows new players to enter. This one just consolidates and rewards the "leet". Gives them advantages.

This isn't even eSport. I'd love to see competitive matches where a Warcraft 3 players get more powerful units every time he wins.

And it isn't even better than the old honor system. The mechanic of having to keep the rank didn't last one patch cycle. It's exactly the same. In fact the arenas system goes further as the best gear is always mudflated as a new season starts. While the old honor system was fixed.

In short these new rules shirk the pool of players who will participate in the arenas. Making these arenas more the hardcore system it was supposed to be.

» reply

Re: P.S. I was right again

Rakeris on April 24, 2008 - 14:14.

Wow, just hearing about the arena system, sounds almost just like the old honor system. (as you said) Which is kinda sad, as the way players screamed about the honor system.....

In my opinion they need to sack Kalgan and kick him in the balls on the way out. From what I have seen, he has done nothing but bad for the game anyhow.

If they have any hope of turning it into any type of "E-Sport" they are going the farthest from it. Guild Wars is the only "MMO" type game that would even remotely fit into that category. That I know of.

The whole arena thing hits me as retarded anyhow, it seems like they saw something they liked in another game and wanted it too. As it doesn't fit with the game, or how the classes are suppose to work. Or fight each other, and stuff....

Sorry if that is a but incoherent, I'm kinda tired.

» reply

Re: P.S. I was right again

Stranger (not verified) on April 26, 2008 - 10:42.

An MMO (or, at the very least, an MMO like WoW) is inherently incompatible with anything resembling an eSport. By definition there will be tiers between players, in terms of levels, gear, and so on, and the advancement of XP/equipment/etc. is what ultimately drives the game mechanics. A fair deathmatch environment is directly contrary to this, requiring players to be on a relatively equal footing; similar equipment levels, balanced classes (or at least ways to swap class/spec with little to no downtime), and so on. WoW will never be Starcraft or Guild Wars, and further more, should not be, and the more development time is spent trying to make it so, the worse the whole becomes.

I have a personal grudge against arenas in general, as there isn't even a token effort to fit them into the rest of the lore and gameplay. It's lazy and metagamey design, and that sort of suspension of disbelief is impossible to recover.

Honestly, it makes me wonder what idiot at the high end has a hard on for eSports. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same incompent who continues to keep the LFG system from being remotely useful...

» reply

Re: P.S. I was right again

Chuckles the Sane (not verified) on May 14, 2008 - 03:29.

A brief greeting and introduction. I am a long-time player and occasional developer in MMOGs, and used to be a counselor and seer's chimp in UO, so I have a bit more personal experience with Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, and his very, very well self-abused and overinflated ePeen. To get the obvious joke out of the way, the size of his real one was probably his personal highlight of visiting Japan.

> Honestly, it makes me wonder what idiot at the high end has a hard on for eSports. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same incompent who continues to keep the LFG system from being remotely useful...

Blizzard didn't learn a damn thing and that no matter what people expect, the arenas system was made by Kalgan for his need of being l33t.

Kalgan. Who also fucked over UO for cash, and him selling out WoW for the greedy farm/treadmill jagoffs at Blizzard would have made him fit right in with the rest. Except that unlike the people who raided EQ as their life's goal, Kalgan also has "previous design lead experience". That, and a recognizable name, means an assload more in this troubled industry than creative vision and talent.

Kalgan, the same piece of shit who is also known as Evocare.

Evocare (AKA, Evercarebear) was the piece of shit that ruined UO by rebuilding the game system from skill-based to item-based. Almost to the same fucked-up bullshit as WoW but without any item re-balancing or consideration to the game's theme, so everyone was stuck tooling around wielding Otter Pops for weapons while they dinked around in the VERY NON-UO setting of the Ultima Online: White Trash Ninja Empire expansion, which came out a bit after the REALLY infamous Ultima Online: Age of Shit (Age of Suck in more polite circles), and after the mocked cash attempt by tying in A Name (Todd McFarland) in Ultima Online: Whored Blackthorn's Revenge. You know, where they eventually had "Lord British" return in one of the most shitheaded of stunts around the industry.

http://www.uo.com/cgi-bin/newstools.pl?Article=7820

He also did some work on Ultima Online: The Turd Dawn, but it must have been mostly under some suit's desk at EA for him to suddenly be put into position as lead designer for UO an expansion later.

Then Kalgan/Evocare started mentally jerking off all over the pvp in the game because people actually could fight back against him and his group of gank buddies' "flavor-of-what-*I*-want-to-play" characters. So he ended up making what THEY wanted, and fuck the rest of the UO players.

Now it's happening again with WoW, again with the ePeen swinging contest of Tom "CIMB" Chilton, in particular with his class favoritism combined with his ignorance and derision of the "hybrid shut up and heal my warrior" classes. The DPS Peen of raids fucking up their raid makeup and sacrificing overall cohesion/survivability in favor of being able to churn out more personal DPS (because that is how most "DPS classes" are incorrectly given worth - how much personal DPS they did on the damage meters, no matter if the hunter who did a bit less damage helped almost every other non-caster DPS do more raid-wide DPS, they are often considered less raid worth than the rogue who topped the damage meters), and how Blizzard revolves the ENTIRE end-game around an invisible stat (threat) which you need a 3rd-party mod to accurately track WHILE you're doing a DPS race and avoiding pulling aggro - and is often broken routinely by Blizzard - is another whole argument entirely but is still pretty relevant to discussing design failures like Kalgan/Evocare. Many raid mechanics have been screwed over into cookie-cutter class builds because of PVP balancing. I also remind folks that Tom Chilton is the one claimed to be "WoW's PVP guru".

Now he's combining Blizzard's love for money over anything else with his own ego-polishing, resulting in the horrible atrocity that has thousands of WoW cattle lining up to be sent to the slaughterhouse a second time - PAID ARENAS.

Sure, the prize money is an appeal, but you have to consider a few things about it:

  • The arena "server" has the least amount of effort done of ANY "promotional" that requires you to dish out more cash to play it. The competent developers of UO, which excludes Evocare since he never had the balls to take credit for his own fuck-ups (the producer was to blame each time) but certainly took credit for everything done right under his "management" because he approved it, were able to make each shard more or less different than the others while Blizzard couldn't even bother to make a new area or a special server for something players are expected to pay MORE for. Instead, WoW players get to pay for grinding arenas on a lobotomized normal map without anything else really present. All of the background of the game, all of the suspension of disbelief, GONE in favor of cheaply cashing in on the stupid consumer whores that throw money at anything with the Blizzard logo on it. Kind of reminds me of when they added samurai and ninjas into Ultima Online. Because, y'know, that would be COOL! *rolls eyes* Nevermind the point that they basically added two more CLASSES into what was originally designed to be a class-less system. That was quite evident proof that Kalgan/Evocare didn't give a shit about the design of the game, or even the backstory, but only cared about his personal ePeen while whoring out the source material for cash while calling it "success".
  • Compared to how much Blizzard rakes in, the prize purse is a laugh and chump change for them, which is downright nearly criminal due to the lacking support they offer around the game. This includes the Hamster-Powered Servers for new realms so they run just as shitty as the overpopulated ones, though often with twice as many Evade bugs since the current Blizzard still can't figure out how to debug their own code worth a damn. From playing on a couple of low-pop servers, Blizzard's shitty farm-by-numbers approach to MMOG design just entirely swirls down the crapper. Oh, and count "minimally-trained phone centers" as GM support staff. Really, it just takes being able to think above "Delete your WTF folder" to move up the GM ladder. Sad.
  • Everyone rolls FOTM character classes and specs, because as Kalgan has proven - you don't need any skill to play the game, you just need to be a bigger cheesedick than the opponent. Unfortunately, outside of using the same lame FOTM tricks as people WITH skill, 90% of the FOTM rollers are clueless as hell and can't play worth a damn. Usually that means folks of the Kalgan "spamstring + Mace Stun Effect!" variety. So that leaves...
  • Finding competent UNpre-grouped people amongst the thousands of retards who bought into this cheap ploy for more cash by Blizzard. HAHAHAHAHA...

    Do I hate this shitbag? You bet I do, as I've seen his incompetence at hard work for about seven years now, and this will be the second MMOG he has proudly ruined. Why the hell would anyone hire him is beyond me, but he was the worst employment decision by Blizzard. But yet again, I have to realize that a recognizable name a company PR toadie can drop, along with "industry experience", means more to companies lately than actual ability and talent. Another EQ raider like Tigole would have been far more preferable in the long run, compared to a "designer" who makes Raph "Dipshit Dragon" Koster's work on SWG look like genius.

    More Kalgan love:
    http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6136345520&sid=1&pageNo=1

    • » reply

    Re: P.S. I was right again

    Innsmouth on May 14, 2008 - 05:12.

    I was aware of most of that. But then how you explain that Kalgan was hired when WoW was already late in beta and straight as a lead designer without any actual experience working at Blizzard?

    Not everyone can show a resume and get hired at the topmost position at Blizzard. Either he has some skills that he proved, or there must be something else that justifies all that.

    I only criticize what gets exposed, but it is a fact that he popped out of nowhere and got a leading position in a leading studios with no effort at all.

    Only him and Blizzard know that mystery, and that comes BEFORE everything he actually made in the game.

    » reply

    Re: P.S. I was right again

    Chuckles the Sane (not verified) on May 14, 2008 - 06:19.

    Probably the same reason why EQ raiders like Tigole also got into lead development positions almost from the start, by being EQ guild buddies with Rob Pardo (EnoYls).

    You have to remember something. Blizzard devs played a LOT of EQ, and it shows, from the number of references in the game to hiring on their buddies despite no previous (or in Kalgan's case, competent) experience. Except in Kalgan's case, it involved him turning UO into nearly the same item-based lootfest as Diablo, similar to what Blizzard has done with WoW, and he got attention from Blizzard for it. Hell, even being A Name in the industry is worth something to a company when you have nothing for morals or standards, and Kalgan cashed in. That's probably why he fucked over UO before he left, after taking a nice Japanese vacation and adding in an expansion to appease the Japanese playing audience and the Japanophile crowd without any consideration to the material or the fans.

    Then add on that even Kalgan could make it sound good by re-adding Lord British as a character in UO after Garriott left Origin and he was essentially written out, and you have a spin doctor AND designer in one that Blizzard could definitely use. Since, after all, they were doing nearly substandard MMOG work on almost all levels except take a beloved license and make elf tits bounce appealingly for all the kiddies in the Lion's Pride Inn.

    The PVP is crap, raiding has turned from the camaraderie from other games into a backstabbing drama fest over who gets a raid slot, and the rest is nothing special other than it looks and sounds good (and I *do* have the utmost respect for most of the graphics and sound designers, as they have propelled an otherwise worthless game), but it's essentially a graphical MUD lamely copying from EQ using Diablo-esque loot mechanics, yet has been written for the Lowest Common Denominator. This number also includes a great deal of morons who STILL can't figure out how to read their quest descriptions.

    As for how Kalgan/Evocare got into a lead position over much more competent folks at Origin to act as lead designer for a while, I have my theory about that as stated above.

    He worked some design on UO, then worked even harder under an EA exec's desk. Nobody from any UO sites I know, nor anyone I know who has worked with him, has really been able to come up with an answer to that mystery.

    » reply

    Comment viewing options

    Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.