100+ vs 100+ player battles are apparently too difficult for Blizzard to figure out after only having 5+ years to work on it. Or, if you try to issue a pass like some people, it’s just technically not possible to support something ‘so successful’ that you have to scrap its original intent. I mean, that’s 200 players all in one space, how the hell can we expect the little interweb tubez to handle that MASSIVE amount of data? What crazy future do we live in that could possible support such an insanely high number of players?
Of course, actual facts get in the way. Like the fact that EVE laughs at 100v100, or 200v200, or even 500v500. It laughs because CCP has 40k people all on one shard, has 1200v1200 fleet battles, and has Jita going 24/7. But that’s spaceships, and all those players are just doing boring mining anyway, so let’s (as usual) ignore EVE, pretend it does not exist, and return to the safe confines of elves, pet collecting, and hotbars.
WAR has a cap in place for Fortress sieges, and its endgame capital siege is instanced. Of course, RvR zones are NOT capped, handle more than 100v100, and even the Fort caps are higher than 100v100. Not to mention it’s a newer game, has a better looking graphics engine, and the resources Mythic can throw at server lag pales in comparison to mighty Blizzard and their millions of subscribers/revenue.
Moving much further down the resources list, DarkFall, even in its infancy, is more than capable of handling 100v100 battles. Let’s also not forget that the combat engine behind DF is just a little more complex than WoW, or that the graphics are a bit higher, or that the directional sound actually matters, or that you know… about 10 guys in a basement made DarkFall when we compare it to WoW. But we can’t mention DarkFall, no no, that really scary fan base might use facts to counter forumfall heresy, and we just can’t deal with that in our little WoW bubble of rainbows.
No WoW fans, Blizzard has to instance Winter Grasp because it’s simple not feasible to handle SOO many players in one area all spamming 1-2-3-2-3. It’s certainly not because they don’t want to put the resources into actually addressing the issue, I mean, who does massive updates like that to such an old MMO (remember EVE does not exist) when you have your new MMO to fund. Your $15 a month for WoW is not going towards WoW idiot; it’s funding whatever new MMO Blizzard is going to sell you for $60 a box. You are paying now so you can invest in great gaming for the future; do it for the kids!
One could point out that this is just Blizzard doing it’s familiar song and dance, claiming “Horde vs Alliance is the core of our game” while doing everything to place PvP on the back burner, and we should expect nothing more from a PvE game. But then, it would be difficult to use that explanation when you launch a new $40 expansion without a single new raiding instance despite your massive resource advantage, but again, facts are silly and it’s much safer to stick with blind faith, put your head in the sand, and keep telling yourself it’s all going to work out ‘soon’.
Hardcore Casual 
It’s always about money. Upgrading servers is very expensive. But instancing on old servers that were mothballed doesn’t cost anything. :O Solution found. I’M A GENIOUS. :)
See what I did there?
EVE systems/constellations/regions might as well be considered instances or on individual servers. Actually I remember reading that they will provide additional hardware support to systems out in 0.0 that are seeing a large fleet battle if you ask for it ahead of time. And you can read up from experienced 0.0 players about how to learn to play in the large amount of lag present in the huge fleet battles that you mention.
The last time I passed through Jita there was over 500 players and it was laggy as hell. CCP in the past has removed asteroid belts and mission hubs from high population areas to combat lag.
Not sure how WAR handled for you but I know that I can’t get into a battle with more than a few warbands on each side without near game breaking lag. This was as of only about two months ago. Not to even mention the number of low end tier 4 playes that are locked out of fortress battles all in the name of server performance.
You do bring up some good points.
Blizzard is not the only company guilty of having to change their game to force a change due to overpopularity of a feature.
I think you’re trivializing the difficulty of the task.
EVE counter-argument:
The amount of data passed around per-ship in EVE is likely very much lower than in WoW.
(a) WoW visualizes all pieces of armor, plus all character customization choices. (hair, features, etc)
(b)As you point out, combat is WoW is a spammy button mashing affair. EVE doesn’t have this issue – you engage your weapons/subsystems, and let the game do the rest. This means less data per second per player. (And you can pass around toggles instead of actions…. i.e. I just engaged my autocannon, vs I just pressed sinister strike for the umpteenth time).
Why it’s hard to scale upwards:
If WoW were to fix this problem they would most likely have to rearchitect their entire data transfer packets, and find ways to streamline them.
Now this in itself is possible, however once that change is made the ripple effect throughout all aspect of the game would be huge. Client architecture, server, environmental, instances, etc.
So the question becomes: does supporting massive WG battles have a good ROI….. to which the answer is apparently “no”.
(Of course the endless ROI-centric changes are what drove me away from the game anyways….. so maybe this isn’t such a good thing.)
(a) WoW visualizes all pieces of armor, plus all character customization choices. (hair, features, etc)
——–
This only has to be sent to each player once unless the person changing a piece of equipment.
(b)As you point out, combat is WoW is a spammy button mashing affair. EVE doesn’t have this issue – you engage your weapons/subsystems, and let the game do the rest.
————-
Just because eve has no button mashing doesn’t mean it isn’t sending data. Ammo remaining, position of ships, missiles and drones. Explosions and other special effects. Damage caused etc. It really is the same thing.
Eve does have 1 advantage in that it does not do collision detection for weapons. As in it does not check if something is blocking your fire such as a station or piece of geometry.
And as of now Jita has a max of 1000 people and hits that max a few times a day.
My opinion is that the Blizzard solution is to make a new MMO which they are.
@Squirt: My point was that Bliz took the cheap way out, hurting their game/players to save a few bucks. That IMO is not acceptable when you have millions of subs and crazy profit margins. The WoW players will take it and keep paying of course, but one would hope at some point they wake up and realize they are being bent over a barrel.
@Centuri: It’s not that EVE handles 1200v1200 flawlessly, it’s that 1200v1200 happened and did not cause the entire internet to melt is the significant event. When you consider that 1200v1200 happened, claiming 100v100 is technically impossible is a joke.
I’ve been in WAR battles with 4+ warbands fighting and the server being responsive (again not flawless, but certainly playable), and remember that while those WBs are fighting other players are also in that zone. The server can handle it, whether YOUR hardware can handle looking at it all is a different issue. I play WAR maxed, and I stay at 60FPS until I get into 3+ WB RvR. If I drop WAR to med settings, I can handle as many players as the server can support. I’m not saying design your game around the assumption everyone has an Alienware at home, but Bliz going instanced with WG has nothing to do with the toasters people run WoW on.
@Andrew: Not trivializing it. It’s a tough task, sure, but if Aventurine can do it with DarkFall, I’m guessing Blizzard could do it with WoW. And if the design of their game is the reason it’s not possible, don’t be stupid enough to sell an expansion pack with a main feature being the return of world PvP in this all new, non-instanced area that looks amazingly similar to WARs RvR.
Sadly I think they underestimated:
(a) how many people would like WG and play it so much,
and
(b) the extremely detrimental effect it would have on the Northrend servers when WG got populated.
The difference between Adventurine supporting it and WoW not is that Darkfall was built with this in mind, while WoW just bolted it on.
Again – I don’t agree with Blizzard’s ROI-driven game decisions, but I do understand where they’re coming from. That’s all.
(Odds are at this point Blizz is just milking players as best they can while their best developers are making the next gen MMO….)
All of Blizzard’s whining really does just melt away when you compare it with EVE so directly. I like that. They should shut up and get to work. Course they won’t, but they should anyways. :P
You forgot about DAoC!
EVE crushes its users when CCP’s CPU allocation predictions are wrong. I recall a point a few months back when BoB ran a huge, week long op in Empire space and the entire region came pretty close to being unusable, with 10-30 second response times on module activations and getting disconnected when changing systems about 20% of the time.
As for games designed for big PvP battles like, say, city sieges, it isn’t like any such games have thrown in the towel and just limited the number of participants allowed. Oh, wait, that would be WAR. And aren’t those sieges instances? Hrmm.
I have yet to run across an MMO that does not have problems when you get a couple of hundred people in proximity. But leave it to the Syncaine WoW hate machine to act as though Blizzard is somehow the only game that has such issues. Incompetent fools with their five year old game!
You could easily spin this story as Blizzard wanting people in WG to be getting the best responsiveness possible. Crazy idea, eh?
Wait so EVE lags sometimes during those 1200v1200 battles? Shocking. Almost as shocking as when WoW lagged every Tuesday night when all the raiding guilds entered a fresh instance, and you had to coordinate taking turns in BWL to even make it playable. Or like… when every single MMO ever released had bouts of lag at times.
But that’s a little different than what’s happening here, which is WG lagging EVERY time it gets X number of people, and Blizzard’s solution to the problem being to remove world PvP (again) from WoW, when a main feature of WotLK was the return of world PvP in that amazing new area called WG. This is not a sometimes problem like in EVE, this is a ‘we can’t make this work, we give up’ solution to a promised feature. That some people are trying to polish it up as a good thing is pathetic. The biggest company with the most resources is taking the cheap route with their customers, and some are cheering being shorthanded or trying to pretend that it’s impossible to get 100v100+ working in an MMO in 2009.
Wow, someone really hates Blizzard. On another point, with all the good PR you’ve given Darkfall I was wondering if you could tell me how to actually purchase the game? Note I am in the US, so if I need to wait for NA-1 that’s fine.
@Burly go to their site, set up an account then just buy the game from within your account page.
Ohhh burrrrn. Somebody didn’t get the memo.
Lineage 2 servers handle 1000+ players fighting in the same general area just fine – I’ve been in such castle sieges. The clients crash and burn and lag like hell, of course, but that’s to be expected (and you can always throw more hardware at it).
Was gonna mention DAoC as well, which handled 100vs100 PvP quite handily well before WoW was even on the table (or PC).
And in WAR, nope, I don’t have any lag issues in large PvP, and I never have. I’m on a 2-year old machine, not even running dual video cards, hell – not even a “hot” video card by today’s standards… So not sure why other peeps keep complaining about WAR lag, ‘cuz I ain’t seein’ it!
Yea DAoC was doing 100vs100 back in what… 2001? And it was playable on less than 1 gig of ram and a 850mhz processor.
I’m…. not sure if you’ve really thought about what you’re saying.
People ignore EVE because the combat is extremely slow, and so the massive lag is not noticeable. I could run a 1000 v 1000 battle with a 386 server if it was turn based and I had enough time between turns.
WAR featured massive lag in battles approaching that size. Not sure what your point is.
I haven’t played Darkfall so would have to rely on reports that it actually can handle 100 v 100 without massive lag. Of course, given your inaccurate assessment of WoW and EVE as supporting evidence, maybe I shouldn’t believe you on the Darkfall stuff either…
Also, I know using all these confrontational words is good for your google analytics, but it makes people respect your blog less.
Also, please explain what the graphics have to do with server lag. Do you understand the issue here at all? I am confused.
WoW netcode always sucked from day 1*, AV used to be a lagfest!)
*correction AV or any structured PvP didnt exist for the first 6 months.
@Melf_Himself: A) Have you ever actually PVPed in EVE? Its only slow when you have 500v500+ and the server starts chugging.
B) Up to 100v100 goes very smoothly in WAR, perhaps your machine needs an upgrade? That’s one thing WoW does very well, accommodates very shitty machines.
Maybe you shouldn’t be so concerned with Syncaine’s reputation and actually try playing the games you think you know.
@Melf_Himself: A) Have you ever actually PVPed in EVE? Its only slow when you have 500v500+ and the server starts chugging.
B) Up to 100v100 goes very smoothly in WAR, perhaps your machine needs an upgrade? That’s one thing WoW does very well, accommodates very shitty machines.
Maybe you shouldn’t be so concerned with Syncaine’s reputation and actually try playing the games you think you know.
Yes, I have PvPed in EVE. I was not implying that there is noticeable server lag in 100v100 battles. I was implying that the combat system is much slower than in other MMO’s, so that whether there is server lag or not is not noticeable. I’m sure if the combat were faster – say, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter style – you would notice a whole heap of lag.
I played WAR from release for several months. I participated in many large Tier 4 zergs. The performance was shitty. This was most certainly due to server lag because my computer was brand new at the time, and still runs new release games at max settings with no issues at all.
In summary, nobody has this stuff figured out.
I know exactly what you were implying I was saying that combat in EVE is NOT slow unless it is lagging. The only difference between eve combat and hotbar combat (ala WAR WOW etc) is you only press the button once in EVE.
The EVE server has to process multiple weapons (which may be different from one another) shielding modules, armor repair modules, as well as various other modules and five drones per ship. And even though the server does not waste resources on the same sort of collision detection as a planet-side mmo you have to take into account that in EVE you have three axis to move within as well as varying speeds.
I don’t think Syncaines point was that EVE or any other game has perfected the player number issue but instead that Blizzard has taken the easy and cheap way out to the disadvantage of their players while other games actually make the effort.
Speaking of which wasn’t Wintergrasp the big “Hai! We got PVP’Z 2” response to WAR at launch?
Comparing the ability of Eve to handle large PvP battles to WoWs inability to do so, is very much comparing apples to oranges.
I gave this a bit of thought a few months back. I was wondering how Eve can support such a large population on a single server when pretty much every other game cannot.
My best guess is that Eve simply requires a lot less server side processing than games like WoW do.
Just one example. Eve has a very small amount of collision processing to handle as space is mostly empty and any collision detection only takes place once the player gets close to a collidable object. A ground-based game on the other hand has to constantly perform that duty just to make sure the player doesn’t fall through the world or walk through trees and walls.
A better example to use would be how Darkfall handles > 100×100 battles. If they can do that, then WoW does indeed fall short.
The Blizzard devs have as much as admitted that this change is a stop gap measure while they upgrade their server architecture to handle the increased load presented by Wintergrasp battles. While I, as a paying subscriber, am frustrated by what might seem to be a lack of investment in their hardware infrastructure and netcode, I also recognize that the timelines for rolling out upgrades on the scale of Blizzard’s server farms is quite long. They have hundreds of servers to account for spread across several data centers spanning North America, Asia and Europe. It’s not like Wintegrasp battles of 400 players or more didn’t happen. Rather when they occurred they were slideshows for all involved and proved detrimental to the entire realm community. The same can be said of WAR or EVE. Blizzard just decided that they wanted to maintain a quality player experience, and this cap is a way to do that while hardware changes eventually “fix” the problem.
I’m completely shocked, shocked that a company’s actual product does not live up to the expectations conjured up by the designers and marketers.
I am equally shocked by the revelation that a game built from the ground up for several years for PvP might actually be able to handle large-scale PvP better than a primarily PvE game that had PvP tacked on.
Also, I’m shocked that a company whose primary goal by definition is to make as much money as possible might base it’s decisions on the return on investment of said decisions.
Finally, I’m shocked that people might be willing to pay actual money for “cheap” thrills. This P.T. Barnum fellow might actually been on to something.
Dear me, if these revelations keep piling up, I might just not be able to take it anymore. Better keep the smelling salts ready.
While I don’t think the comparison to EVE is appropriate, I agree that this is a major disappointment and should be described as a failure on their part. Is it a server or a client problem? Is it a bandwidth problem? Does the problem scale quadratically, as Tobold suggests? And most importantly of all, could they have fixed it, or was it just a cost-saving decision?
As long as they don’t bother answering these questions, we should assume the worst. Not exactly how I’d expect customers to be treated.
Is it a server or a client problem?
A server problem, mostly. It’s about the amount of logical messages the server needs to be able to handle, both ingoing and outgoing.
Is it a bandwidth problem?
No, the amount of data transmitted is relatively small. However, it is partially a latency problem. A lot of processing needs to be done in around ~100 milliseconds or so. If the pace of combat is slower and/or there’s less need for micromanaging, that time limit can be much more tolerant. For example, large fleet combat in Eve still works as long as one can target other ships and turn on guns every few seconds.
Does the problem scale quadratically, as Tobold suggests?
The core problem as it is does, but one can “chip away” at the problem by filtering.
For example, in Eve the player only needs to receive blow-by-blow updates on targets that have currently been locked and friendlies that are on the watch list. Because both modifying the watch list and targeting someone are non-instant operations that take place on the server, the server can dramatically reduce the amount of logical messages it needs to send to each player. If you don’t have a target locked or in the watch list, you only need to be notified when the target switches states from “okay” to “in structure” (read: wounded, shown as a burning ship) and finally to “destroyed”.
And most importantly of all, could they have fixed it, or was it just a cost-saving decision?
They could have, but the cost would have been disproportionate to the benefit. By contrast, both Eve and Darkfall are heavily PvP-focused games, so the large-scale PvP combat mechanics are the bread and butter of developers, figuratively speaking. Thus, the state of those mechanics has a huge impact on the bottom line and therefore are worth the time and money.
“Blizzard’s solution to the problem being to remove world PvP (again) from WoW”
Every single week you dip into new lows of ignorance. Listen to what you are saying man..
World PvP still exists.
Wait for that to sink in… that’s right, world PvP is still there. Its called a PvP server.
Your computer does not shut down when you come across the opposite faction in the world. Your account will not deactivate if you happen to attack someone in the ‘world’. PvP outside of that shitty little WG area still EXISTS.
All that has happened is they screwed WG up royally. And WG was a piece of shit anyway. Some crappy attempt to combat War’s keep sieges. Your making a massive deal out of fuck all as usual.
I’m glad I canned my account because WoW is shit. What is even shitter is someone constantly over dramatising warcraft information to try and generate hits. Its so sad to see you stoop this low time and time again.
For someone who doesn’t like WoW, you store up an awful amount of bile for the game over virtually nothing!
HAI YUO MAED FUN OF MAH LAZERS GAEMZ, I HAETZ YUO
Bonedead, sooo funny. When I was playing WOW we had someone in the guild who would type that way in chat and on the website. It was so painful to ready. I use to call him our english teacher.
I believe someone actually created a mod for this, similar to the ‘orc speak’ mod. That lasted about two sentences before we told the guildie to remove it.
The spoken version is my favorite. Nice to see people may actually want to hear it, maybe I’ll get motivated today.
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It’s a tough one. I wouldn’t gone with the technology argument too just based on the fact that was WoW was probably never designed from the ground up to deal with that sort of infrastructure. I think money is also a factor and they don’t want to invest in the radical changes it would require to make it work. I don’t think you can blame them or hate them for that decision, it’s perfectly rational.
It’s rational that they designed an MMO that’s unable to handle massive amounts of players interacting…? They already have server pop limits for a reason, so any way you slice it, it’s not the tech here.
And even if that was the case, why then charge people $40 for an xpac with one of the features being exactly that, an area for massive amounts of players to interact, if you know you can’t actually support that?
This all depends on your definition of massive. In a 100v100 battle any given player will have little to no interaction with *every single player* on the other side (unless the battle drags on forever).
Given that the max in most online multiplayer games I’ve played is 32v32 and those *still* feel like a massive zergfest (i.e. my individual contribution as a player doesn’t seem to count for much towards the final outcome), I’m not sure why you don’t consider 100v100 as massive for all intents and purposes.
“DarkFall, even in its infancy, is more than capable of handling 100v100 battles.”
Maybe so, but apparently it’s not capable of not f***ing over its existing paying European customers by making them pay for a new account on the new US server (or wait 3 months)…
“You are paying now so you can invest in great gaming for the future”
No, we’re paying now so we can enjoy a great game now, and get regular content updates.
That parts of it (especially the PvP ones) are not perfect is hardly something anyone would argue against.
However that still leaves plenty of other things to appreciate about WoW.
“But then, it would be difficult to use that explanation when you launch a new $40 expansion without a single new raiding instance”
Of course, you completely chose to forget all of the things which *were* released with the new expansion, and in the major patches released (rather quickly) since:
a new player class,
10 new levels with new skills and abilities,
a new profession,
an entire new continent with tons of new quests, lore, graphics, items and mobs,
several new 5-man instances,
new game mechanics (vehicles, phasing, destructible buildings),
Wintergrasp,
UI polish and improvements,
Achievements,
Dual-specs,
and more.
Last but not least, in spite of being re-hashed content, Naxx really was new for a large segment of the player population.
Not everybody got to raid it before BC was released and once BC was released, few were interested in going there.
So while it may not be to your personal liking that Naxx, rather than a totally new raid was released first, the fact remains that Naxx served a large segment of the player population very well.
We must have very different definitions of ‘regular updates’ then, since even the biggest fans of WoW would admit that Blizzard is by far the slowest to add content without charging it’s players another $40.
Compared to the updates of say, EVE or WAR, the content added to WoW without a new price tag is slim at best, and no, recycling Naxx does not count as new just because some players might not have seen it originally. This is millions of accounts Blizzard we are talking about, you are telling me they don’t have the funding to create at least one new instance for a $40 expansion? Come on.
Can I ask when the last time you played WoW was syncaine?
Also im sure if wow players were so unhappy they would vote with their feet, I just find it laughable this little crusade you have against the game and blizzard.
Pitrelli… look around… most gamers already left WoW and Syncaine writes for gamers. What is left in WoW are either former gamers who no longer enjoy gaming that much and people who thought those Mr. T commercials were “teh sh1t!!!”
It’s not like WoW created 11 million MMO gamers, or we would be seeing growth in others games. If you look at other titles everyone is still around 500k and under levels, just like in pre-WoW days. Like any other pop sensation, the masses pick up on it and follow it until it stops being cool. I guess we will have to wait for Blizzard’s next MMO to top out at 1m or less before dropping back for some people to realize it.
I’m glad you are enjoying the scraps Blizzard tosses you while paying full price though, supporting the practice of glacial progress and laughable excuses, doing your part to inspire future WoW-clones like RoM and Aion.
Einherjer , speak for yourself, im a gamer and whilst I enjoy the majority of syncaines posts he ruins alot of them with his bias and knit picking of blizzard and WoW in general.
@ Syncaine you are like a little boy bad mouthing a girl who gave them the knock back. I seriously wonder what can make you so bitter. The constant crap you talk about accepting scraps and blizzard not pulling their weight. If people arent happy then they wouldnt be there and certainly wouldnt be paying out money.
You and Mark Jacobs must be twins cause you both talk more shite than 10 bums.
Oh and I’ll bet Aion gets more subs than both Darkfall and WAR
A mass market WoW-clone will get more subs than DF? No wai! Come on, really? DDO has more subs than DF, still does not change the fact that DF is the best player skill-based PvP game out. No surprise that only a small percentage of MMO gamers are interested in that.
If WoW had 10k subs, I would not care what Bliz does with it. If it had 400k I would not care short of the major, major stuff (like SOE games going RMT for example), but when WoW has 11m, is the market leader, and is the reason we see Aion instead of something actually new, that’s why I criticize them more than others. When you are at the top, more people pay attention, and the spotlight is brighter.
And I’ll fully admit that I at times will take cheap shots at Blizzard and WoW (mainly because it’s so easy). That said, this WG issue does not fall under cheap shots, and much like the copy/paste job they did when WAR was near release, this I believe is actually ‘serious business’ and worthy of a post.
BTW, what’s a knock back from a girl? I mean I get the overall point, but what slang is that?
Have you played Aion? I am guessing no, so where does it give you the right to criticise a game you havent tried? You strung up Eurogamer for doing that to your beloved Darkfall but it seems ok for you to do the same?
I cant defend blizzard for the WG thing, I cant say im particularly bothered either. Im disappointed in the respect they have taken the easy way out but i dont really expect it to effect much. I could play WG fine with more than 100 v 100 so who knows.
It is Scottish slang
Nope, never played Aion, and never claimed to (the EG issue), but people who have praise it for how WoW-like it is. That’s a huge plus for many (hence it being used as praise), but it’s very telling of the goal with Aion. And it’s not like I’m breaking the game down piece by piece, I’m simply passing on the general comment many have made, that’s it’s WoW-like. Is that incorrect?
Hmm from the above I would say you are trying to make Aion look and sound like its a bad game, this is without ever trying it – rather relying on others opinions on it. Much like you do when you make snide remarks about any new WoW content.
I respect the stuff you write when you have experienced it ala darkfall and WAR, but i cant take anything you say about WoW etc seriously as 1. I know you havent played it yourself and 2. you have a weird vendetta against all games that arent ‘hardcore’ enough for you
Aion actually sounds like a good game, for those looking for more WoW, which I’m currently not. Whether my saying it’s WoW-like is good or bad depends on your current view of the source. Since you like WoW, I would think Aion being WoW-like is a plus in your book, right?
But WoW being what it is now, and what Blizzard is doing to support it are two different issues. WoW now is not the game for me, I accept that and it’s cool, the shots at it being too easy or whatever are in jest. Bliz doing what they do at times (copy/paste WAR, removing WG for ‘tech’ reasons, recycling Nax and calling it new) I take issue with, and I don’t need to collect the latest pet in WoW to be able to talk about it, do I? I’ve played WoW (probably more than most people currently playing it have), I know how it works, I know how Blizzard manages it. Hell, I’ve seen more of what’s in WoW than I’ve seen of DF, should I stop talking about DF?
And if I had a vendetta against non-hardcore games, how could I give The Sims 3 a 9/10 review?
Because you only played it for 2 hours, mainly just in character creation.
“Compared to the updates of say, EVE or WAR, the content added to WoW without a new price tag is slim at best”
I don’t know, I haven’t played EVE or WAR. Just how much new content can a game leaning mostly on player interstellar pvp get? new star-systems? ;)
But you’re right. Blizzard are known for their slow releases. They are also known for the polish of the content they release. There is a connection there :)
“and no, recycling Naxx does not count as new just because some players might not have seen it originally.”
It is not “some” players, it is a sizable chunk of the player population. So if 80% of your players haven’t seen some content and now have, doesn’t that make it new for them?
“This is millions of accounts Blizzard we are talking about, you are telling me they don’t have the funding to create at least one new instance for a $40 expansion? Come on.”
There were plenty of new instances, as I already said. 5-man instances are a big part of WoW, including the end-game. But I know, you mis-wrote and meant raid-instance. Well, what about Eye of Eternity? What about Sartharion? What about Archavon(*)? Don’t they deserve the title of raid instance, or do you think the lack of a large number of trash or multiple bosses makes them less of a raid? Because let me tell you, Malygos and Sartharion with 2 or 3 adds are *proper hard* and fully deserve the title of raid instance.
As for funding, I don’t know. I haven’t been inside Blizzard, I don’t know how much money they spend and on what. I don’t think you do either (with all due respect).
Furthermore, sometimes simply throwing more money at a problem doesn’t really help. If you need design and inspiration for a new instance and your design team is already backlogged with work, hiring fresh designers out of collage or other companies isn’t going to get you far – it probably won’t be worth the money. Especially not when you are known for the quality of your final product and so don’t want to release something half-prepared.
“copy/paste WAR”
Oh PLEASE, not that argument again. All games, good or bad, stole some features from somewhere. That doesn’t make them bad. Or good. Can you *honestly* say WAR didn’t copy/paste some game features from other games, including WoW?
“removing WG for ‘tech’ reasons”
It is not being removed. It is being *scaled down* to 100 vs. 100 players, or a maximum of 200 players total. I’ve been in WG and I can tell you, there’s no real need for larger groups. You can have a lot of fun with 100 players, the area isn’t that big that you need 500 or whatever number to support interesting engagements. Sure you could make the case that it sucks to limit it at all and that Blizzard should dropped the ball on the technical side of massive PvP battles. But this isn’t totally trivializing WG, nor making it disappear.
There are plenty of real, valid, reasons to criticize Blizzard or WoW for. PvP in WoW was and is a weak afterthought compared to PvP-centric games; more non-endgame content should be released, some default UI features suck (the bags, ugh), etc.
But please don’t be so hasty to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). That doesn’t help to highlight real issues and just makes you look like a someone with an agenda.
(*) Well okay Archavon deserves the title of Giant Pinyata Boss instead of Raid Boss tbh :)
I play WoW. I enjoy playing WoW. But in many Ways, similar to those listed above in the original post, Blizzard has failed me as a player. WG should be playable, but more than 1/2 the time it isn’t due to really really bad lag. Come on Blizzard. This isn’t a new science. They should have figured out in testing that it wouldn’t work, so why even bring out a large arena for players. Because they wanted to bring out siege weapons and copy what WAR had advertised.
In their attempt to be current and competitive with other MMO games, they’ve failed to even make these so called innovative features even playable for most subscribers. WG is what I would call an Epic Fail on their part. Why can’t they fix the net code for that area instead of making it instanced? Not that they have any problem with instanced areas except half the time on my server you can’t get into one because of over population issues. I’m so tired of getting the “unable to start an instance” message over and over whenever I want to run a dungeon. Epic Fail.
All of which ties into the question of why can’t or won’t Blizzard fix these issues? In the next patch they are adding another area similar to WG. I believe this is an attempt of fix the current lag issue, by splitting up the server populations into to areas. Not only will it NOT fix the problem, but it will drive the entire population over to the new area, which will Lag like crazy. Again, epic fail.
Fantastic Article for venting btw.
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